Casework: A Voice-Native AI Detective Game

Casework is a browser-based detective game where your voice drives the investigation. Interview fictional suspects and witnesses, challenge their accounts, and piece together what happened using a visual board of portraits, clues, and notes. Your AI investigative partner, Detective Rowan, helps you explore leads using information you have already discovered. You remain the detective: compare testimony, identify contradictions, and submit a reconstruction supported by evidence. The current game includes three authored investigations: Grange House, Blackwater Cabin, and The Willowmere Affair. AssemblyAI's Voice Agent API powers live speech conversations, distinct character voices, and interruptions. Groq generates character dialogue from permitted case context. A Node.js backend checks the rules for revealing clues and uses authored wording for critical revelations. Spoken discoveries are added to your investigation only after the app acknowledges playback, keeping flexible AI conversations grounded in a fixed mystery. Built with React, React Flow, and MongoDB Atlas, Casework combines an interactive investigation board with independent progress for each player. No signup is required, and investigation progress can be recovered for 24 hours. Casework explores a new format for interactive entertainment: mysteries you investigate through conversation, with reusable case packs that support additional stories. Its central idea is simple: AI brings the characters to life, while the game engine protects the logic of the case.