There are three ways to play a Cold Ledger mystery, and each one costs something different. One costs ninety seconds and nothing else. One costs an evening and a few dollars. One costs a guest list, a printer and two days of notice. So the useful question is not which of them is best. It is which cost you can pay this week.
When we first wrote about the two paid games, there were only two doors, and the article weighed one against the other. There is now a third, with no price, no printer and no second person, so this comparison starts with it and sets the paid two beside it on the things you actually decide with: time, people, money, paper, what you do with your hands, what you can replay, and what carries from one to the next. What is inside each paid box is in that earlier article, and running the party is in the host's guide. Neither is repeated here.
The Three, Side by Side
| Format | Cost | People | Time | What it asks of you | Replay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The 90-Second Case | Free | 1 | 90 seconds, on a clock | A browser. No account, nothing to install | One lie per case, so a case is spent once you know it. Three cases so far |
| The Orpheum File | $6.99 | 1 or 2 | 60 to 90 minutes, no timer | A printer or a PDF reader, and a pen | Hand it to someone else and watch them read it |
| The Hundredth Episode | $24.99 | 8 to 20 | About three hours, or 90 minutes to a fixed end time | A printer, a guest list, and guides sent two days ahead | Four sealed versions, so one night leaves three unopened |
The free case runs right here on the site. Both paid games are sold on the site and on Etsy.
Ninety Seconds, Free: Where to Start
The 90-Second Case is a numbered series of one-screen mysteries, free in the browser, one case to a page. Each case gives you four exhibits and three suspects, and one of the three is lying. A clock starts at ninety seconds. You read, you pick the name you think is lying, and the page grades you on the spot: a right answer in thirty seconds or less is an A+, in sixty or less an A, and anything slower a B. A wrong name is a C, and letting the clock run out is graded Cold.
That is the whole price: attention, and not much of it. There is no account to make and nothing to install. When the case closes, the result card points you to the next or previous case in the series and gives you a one-line result to copy and send to anyone who thinks they would have been quicker.
What you give up is everything that takes longer than ninety seconds. There is no second act, nobody across the table and no slow build, and once you know a case's lie, that case is spent. There are three so far. That makes the free case the right door if you want to find out whether you enjoy this kind of puzzle before you spend an evening on one, and it is the only one of the three you can finish before a kettle boils.
An Evening or a Party: What the Paid Two Ask For
If ninety seconds left you wanting more to read, the next step is The Orpheum File. It is a cold case for one or two people, printed or on a screen, that most tables finish in sixty to ninety minutes: seventeen exhibits, a timeline worksheet and four objectives. It asks for a pen and an unhurried evening, and it has no clock at all; its start file says there is no wrong pace. Where the free case grades you against the clock, the case file grades you on commitment. You write down four answers, and only then open the sealed solution and score your own solve.
What you give up is a crowd. It is built for one or two, and with two, its own advice is to share the reading aloud and argue. Its replay value, as its start file puts it, “is in giving it to someone else and watching.”
If it left you wanting to argue with more people than that, the party is The Hundredth Episode, for eight to twenty players. It is the one door that needs notice: each player's character guide goes out two days ahead, so the room arrives already in character. On the night it runs about three hours, or ninety minutes when you need a fixed end time and send the evidence out ahead as homework. What you give up is spontaneity. Of the three, it is the only one that has to be planned.
What you get for the planning is the one thing the other two cannot do. It is the only format where the room votes before the answer is read, by secret card, after an evening of accusing each other in character, and where the person running it learns the answer at the same moment as everyone else. Four sealed versions ship in the file, the setup picks one without showing the host which, and a night uses one, leaving three unopened for another.
What Carries From One to the Next
The three share a world, not answers. All three are set in the same small town, Gilder Falls. The free cases wear the case file's frame: each is presented as material from the research archive of a true-crime podcast called The Cold Ledger, the years are redacted “per release agreement”, and every case page names the two paid games under “Also in the archive”. The party puts that podcast on the stage. It is set on the night the show tapes its hundredth episode live, in the theater where its case began.
What does not carry is a solution. Each free case is a closed story with its own answer, and the party game's start file says of the two paid games that each stands alone and neither spoils the other's solution. So the order is yours. Play the party first and the case file later, or play the free cases and stop there; nothing is ruined either way.
One question settles it
What can you give it this week? Ninety seconds and a browser: open a case, free, now. An evening, a pen, and a printer or a screen: The Orpheum File, $6.99, for one or two. A guest list, a printer and two days of notice: The Hundredth Episode, $24.99, for eight to twenty. Both paid games are sold on the site and on Etsy, and Four Killers in One Box covers what is in each.