Overview
A boxed murder-mystery dinner, rebuilt as a real-time web app. Everyone shows up to an actual dinner party; the TV runs the show and the phones run the investigation. The scenario is "Murder at the Mansion," Hollywood 1955 -; a starlet dead at a glittering mansion party, a roomful of suspects each carrying a secret, played for the tone somewhere between a serious whodunit and Clue.
How It Works
It's a React + Vite app (Tailwind, Zustand, React Router) on a Firebase backend. The
host's laptop or tablet connects to the TV over HDMI/Chromecast and drops into a
fullscreen "Theater Mode" for the video briefings, while every player's phone locks to a
"Watch TV" screen. There are no raw websockets -; synchronization rides on Firebase
Realtime Database listeners, so when the host advances a phase, the new state fans out to
every device through paths under games/{gameId}/.
The game runs four rounds, each with three phases: a video briefing watched together, then 10-;15 minutes of investigation, then group discussion. Each player gets their own private channel to the AI Detective -; "Detective Reynolds," a noir PI built on Claude. Her system prompt pins down her personality and her limits: she stays in character, never names the killer outright ("That's above my pay grade, kid"), and only knows what's already been revealed, with her context assembled live from the game state, the player's character, and the last several messages of their conversation.
Current Status
Archived at the scaffolding stage. The architecture, routing, Firebase wiring, and a lot of the component tree are in place, and the 1955 scenario's cast of suspects is written. What it never got was the content that makes it playable.
- Video briefings were never recorded -; the scenario references placeholder URLs.
- Character bios and the full set of round-by-round clues are incomplete.
- Never playtested end to end.
A nod in the project's acknowledgments goes to the original Murder Party (1986, Apple IIe), which is where the format comes from in the first place.