You play as a police investigator assigned to a murder case involving a young woman and her boyfriend, a couple living under witness protection. Your job is to examine the crime scene, search the safe house, and piece together what really happened. The location is small, consisting of only a few rooms, so how long you spend with the game depends entirely on your observation and deduction skills. In short, it can be finished in around one hour.
The apartment is explored from a first person perspective, and because the game wants you to discover everything on your own, there are no visual hints highlighting interactive objects. To inspect something, you need to move close and aim the dot in the center of the screen over objects around the apartment. If something is worth examining, the dot becomes larger and the object's name appears, letting you interact with it.
Interacting with an object either brings up a close up view with a short comment or lets you look inside if it's a container such as a drawer or cupboard. Containers aren't opened physically. Instead, their contents are displayed as icons on a single screen, similar to an inventory in a role playing game. From there, you can inspect items with the right mouse button or pick them up with the left.
Unlike objects you examine directly in the environment, items found inside containers can be collected and stored in your inventory. The catch is that your inventory only has room for three items. You can place anything into any container, whether it's a phone charger in the freezer or a frozen steak in a bedroom drawer, but you'll need to remember where you left it in case you need it later.
Using items is straightforward. Whenever you interact with something that requires an item, an empty slot appears, much like the container interface. Place the item there, click the "Use Item" button, and if you've chosen correctly, the puzzle progresses. If not, the item simply returns to your inventory.
Still, inventory puzzles are only a tiny part of the experience. The real detective work begins once you gain access to Ann's computer by finding the password. There, you search through her journal by entering keywords. You can type almost anything, even common words like "room" or "thing," and every entry containing that word appears. The only limitation is that searches can display a maximum of three results. If a keyword matches more than three entries, you'll need to be more specific to uncover the rest.
In practice, this system is easier than it sounds. New journal entries naturally introduce more keywords to search for, and once an entry has been discovered, it's added to a calendar where you can revisit it instantly without searching again. Every new entry also increases your level, which unlocks additional information.
Some journal entries contain censored words highlighted on the calendar. These hidden details can be revealed simply by clicking on them, provided you've reached the required level. Hovering over a censored word tells you exactly what level you need. The information hidden within these entries provides clues for unlocking the remaining obstacles, including the phone and the safe room door.
This part doesn't take long, and before long you'll obtain an upgrade that removes the three result search limit, allowing you to uncover many more journal entries and finally start putting together the story's big twist. The uncensored words also play an important role in the final report you must complete before finishing the game. Most of the report is already written, and your task is to choose the correct names, places, and objects to fill in the blanks.
The report consists of three paragraphs. Once you're confident in your answers, you can click the "Submit Report" button to check your work. You can't fail this section. Whenever a paragraph is completely correct, it becomes locked so you can focus on the remaining ones. After completing the report, you're free to leave the house and finish the game. The ending itself is not worth mentioning, but you're rewarded with another character's journal, complete with several more keywords to uncover if you're interested in digging even deeper.
![[Redacted] The Safehouse](https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/403620/de4167ba19150f58bc1807c17fde298b3d2eebc1/header.jpg?t=1785288465)
