Main menu · "The Files" (case selection) · An investigation in full swing · The case generator · The editor
--- ## Why you'll get hooked - **Pure deduction, zero luck.** Every case has exactly **one** solution, provable by logic alone — no guessing, ever. - **150 case files out of the box.** Hand-built mysteries from a cosy **4×4** to a sprawling **12×12**, across three difficulties and a tutorial. - **An endless supply of mysteries.** A built-in generator rolls fresh, guaranteed-unique cases across **14 themed settings** in three difficulties — you'll never run out. - **A fresh case every day.** The daily mystery waits right on the front page — one date, one board, one culprit. - **Build your own — and share it.** A full editor lets you paint a crime scene, write the clues and verify it's solvable — then play it, save it, or **upload it for everyone**. - **A community archive.** Browse the **user levels** other detectives publish, filter by stars, size and status, and rate solved cases with stars and properties. - **Take the case to paper.** Every mystery prints as a one-page **PDF case sheet** — the crime scene in full colour, the suspects' testimony, and a black-and-white deduction grid to crack it in pencil. An optional **solution sheet** rides along, sealed until you need it. - **Learn by doing.** An interactive, guided tutorial cracks a real mini-case *with* you, one step at a time. - **A casebook for every clue.** Not sure what *"entirely east of him"* really covers? The built-in **Casebook** explains every clue form on live mini-boards — blue for what a clue allows, red for the tempting tiles that *don't* count — and any clue in a running case links straight to its page and back. - **A crime scene with character.** Hand-drawn suspects and **70+ themed props**, dressed in a moody "case-file" look down to the film grain. - **Anywhere, in your language.** Plays beautifully on desktop and phone, in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French or Russian, with your progress saved automatically. On touch, tap a suspect's face and their dossier note unfolds — every term explained, every named person with their traits. --- ## A tribute to the inventor The brilliant core idea — fusing Sudoku logic with a murder case — comes from **Manuel Garand**. This project is a loving, freely-interpreted homage to his concept and is not affiliated with him. > **If you enjoy the principle, please buy Manuel Garand's book and support the inventor!** Without his idea, this crime scene wouldn't exist. --- ## How the investigation works 1. **Pick a suspect** from the file on the left. Their clue reveals where they could have been — the possible tiles light up. 2. **Place them** with a long press on a tile. A short tap leaves a pencil note instead. 3. As in Sudoku: **one person per row and per column.** When you place someone, Murdoku crosses out their whole row and column automatically — no tile can be used twice. 4. **Cross out** anything you can rule out yourself (even across furniture), until only one solution remains. 5. **Submit.** If everyone stands correctly, the mystery unravels: who was alone with the victim? Stuck? The **hint giver** explains the next logical step in plain words — it never hands you the answer, just a nudge in the right direction. --- ## The clues A whole vocabulary of evidence — **40 clue forms plus 5 case-wide clue types** — every piece rendered as a clean, grammatical sentence: - **on** or **beside** an object, **beside a window**, **in a corner**, **against a wall** - **in a row / column**, **alone in the room**, *"the only person on a chair"* - **in the same room as** another suspect, and **compass directions** — *"north of Dana"* - **room traits** — *"nobody in the room had a beard"*, *"a woman was in the room"* - **room adjacency** — *"…in a room adjoining the kitchen"*, *"a neighbouring room stood empty"* - **case-wide clues** — *"no room was empty"*, *"exactly 2 people were on a chair"* …all combinable with **AND / OR** and individually negatable with **NOT**. Suspects come with **traits that matter** — gender, beard, glasses, baldness and hair color. They aren't decoration; the logic leans on them, and each one has a hand-drawn avatar to match. --- ## The Casebook — every clue, explained on a board Reading testimony is a skill, so Murdoku ships its own reference manual. The **?** in the main menu's corner opens the **Casebook**: eight chapters covering the ground rules, every clue form, the case-wide clues, and the little words that decide cases — *suspects* vs. *people*, what truly counts as *outside*, why a lake is perfectly walkable. Every entry is a small investigation of its own: - the clue as a **real, in-game sentence**, spoken by a demo suspect on a real mini crime scene; - the board lit in the game's own colours — **blue** for every tile the clue allows, **red** for the tempting tiles that *don't* count: the neighbouring tile behind a wall, the diagonal that was never "beside", the room that isn't *entirely* south; - **variant chips to poke at** — flip the direction, negate the statement, switch the quantifier, and watch the tiles recompute live. The pictures can't lie: they're calculated by the very engine that solves the cases. And the Casebook is never far from the action: mid-case, open a suspect's dossier note and it offers a **"look it up"** line for each clue form in their testimony. One tap opens the matching page right over the running investigation — and stepping back drops you *exactly* where you left off, notes still open, nothing disturbed. --- ## The crime scene Every case is dressed by hand to feel *built*, not random: - **40+ objects** — armchairs, bookshelves, pianos, fridges, cars, beds, boats, tents, campfires, farm animals, statues and more — chosen to fit each setting. Boats and water lilies drift on the lake, cows fill the barn, fridges line the supermarket aisle, cars wait in the garage. - **Pieces that merge** — beds, cars and rowing boats span two tiles and join into one seamless object; carpets and open water tile together into continuous surfaces. - **Windows, doors, walls and soft pastel rooms**, with room names that follow the chosen theme. --- ## Endless cases — the generator Out of files to crack? Roll a new one. The generator builds **uniquely-solvable** mysteries on demand: - **14 themed settings** — apartment, mansion, grand hotel, police precinct, auto shop, school, hospital, farm, supermarket, campsite, castle, lido, zoo and ski resort — each with fitting rooms and props. - **Three difficulties**, on boards from a tight **4×4** up to a sprawling **12×12**. - Runs in a **pool of Web Workers** — several investigators hunt candidates in parallel and the best case wins — so the interface never stutters. Keep a case you like, print it as a PDF, or simply play and move on. --- ## Build your own crime scene (the editor) Got your own Murdoku puzzles on paper? Recreate them 1:1: - Paint **rooms, floor, objects and windows** straight onto the board (4×4 up to 11×11). - Create **suspects** (name, traits) and assemble their clues in the flat **clue builder** — including case-wide global clues. - **"Check"** tells you whether the case is solvable **and unique** — and who the murderer would be. - **"Play"** tests it instantly; **"Save"** offers two destinations: **upload** it for everyone as a user level or **keep** it in your local archive — and the little printer icon turns your draft into a PDF proof sheet. Room names follow the chosen theme — and can be swapped anytime. --- ## The community archive (user levels) Solved everything? Other detectives publish too: - **Upload straight from the editor** — only uniquely-solvable cases pass the gate. A title is required, the author line is optional (stay anonymous if you like). Behind the scenes every upload is **moderated** and its title **translated into all six languages** before it goes live. - **Browse and filter** the archive by stars, board size, solved status and — on desktop — theme and property. - **Rate once per case** after solving it: one to five stars plus up to two properties — *easy, hard, creative, confusing, fair, gripping, tricky, well built*. Cases that are unique but beyond the deduction engine are auto-tagged *trial & error* (the hint button can't help there). - **Light on your data plan.** The archive syncs incrementally and stays fully playable offline from its local cache — only rating and uploading need a connection. --- ## The paper edition (PDF) Some cases deserve a pencil. The **printer button** in a case's header (on phones: in the board's **?** legend sheet) turns any mystery into a one-page **A4 case sheet**: the crime scene in full game graphics, every suspect's dossier with portrait and testimony, a clean **black-and-white deduction grid** to solve on — and a *"The murderer is …"* line to fill in with a flourish. On request, an optional **solution sheet** comes along: the solved board and the numbered chain of deductions that convicts the culprit — stamped *confidential*, so no peeking until you've cracked it yourself. The case sheet itself is always unsolved and always one page, fully offline; on Android it goes straight to the share sheet. --- ## The settings desk A gear in the corner of every screen opens the **settings case file**: - **Language** — switch between English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian at any time. - **Investigation aid** — pick your rank: **Assistant** highlights every tile the statements still allow, **Inspector** marks only the clues' references (the objects, rooms and traces named), **Master Detective** shows nothing at all — you combine entirely on your own. - **Stopwatch** — show or hide the elapsed-time counter in the game header. - **Files by gender** — tint the suspect cards (and the victim's name) softly in rose and blue, or turn it off. - **Blocked cells** — on top of the white card, mark non-walkable tiles **darkened**, **hatched** (blueprint-style), or both — a lifesaver on big boards full of crosses. Everything is stored locally and applies across the game, picker, generator and editor instantly. --- ## A case file with atmosphere Murdoku is dressed as a **noir case file**: warm near-black "interrogation room" ink, brass and crimson accents, and a faint **film grain** over the whole app. The display face is **Fraunces**, headings and testimony are typed in **Special Elite**, the body is **Spline Sans**. Cases arrive as **polaroid evidence cards** taped into place, solved files get a slanted crimson **SOLVED** stamp, the title bleeds its letters, and the generator is laid out as a stamped, **confidential** dossier. Form, not just function. --- ## Under the hood Murdoku is built **engine-first**: the entire game logic is a pure, framework-free TypeScript engine (no React, no DOM) — testable, portable, and the single source of truth. | Area | Tech | |-------------|------| | **Engine** | Pure TypeScript (strict): model, composable `Clue` classes, a backtracking **solver** (uniqueness oracle + answer key) and a **DeductionEngine** for explainable hints | | **Frontend**| React 19 + Vite, board rendered on **Canvas 2D** | | **Generator** | Builds guaranteed-unique cases across 14 themes, in a **Web-Worker pool** | | **Community** | A small PHP API (upload · moderation · translation · ratings) with incremental sync and an offline cache | | **i18n** | i18next / react-i18next — all text from locale files (EN, DE, ES, PT, FR & RU) | | **Quality** | Vitest, ESLint and strict `tsc` throughout | --- ## Getting started at the scene ```bash npm install # gather your gear npm run dev # start the investigation (dev server) npm run build # secure the evidence (production build) npm run preview # view the build locally ``` Quality assurance: ```bash npm test # engine tests (Vitest) npm run lint # ESLint npm run typecheck ``` And a few bloodhounds for the engine — small CLIs that solve, generate and analyze cases: ```bash npm run solve # solve a case npm run generate # roll a new case npm run show # print a level in the terminal npm run check # verify levels are uniquely solvable npm run hardest # hunt down the trickiest cases ``` --- ## Project structure ``` src/ engine/ Pure-TS game logic: model · clues · solver · io · generator game/ Engine <-> UI bridge: board rendering, furniture art, sessions, settings, storage components/ React building blocks (board, file, toolbar, settings, editor …) screens/ Start · Case select · User levels · Daily case · Game · Generator · Tutorial · Editor · Casebook i18n/ English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French & Russian + the clue renderer levels/ Case files (JSON) php/ The community-level API (upload · sync · ratings · moderation · stats page) screenshots/ The images above ``` --- ## Credits Built by **Dirk Aporius** ([@TheApo](https://github.com/TheApo)) — from the pure logic engine down to the last hand-drawn armchair. Original concept: **Manuel Garand**. Enjoying Murdoku? Then **buy his book** — and happy sleuthing.