Investigators,
The Society's archive has a new shelf, and on it sits a single, unusually thick dossier.
The Madness from the Sea, is out now as a free update for everyone who owns DarkDice. Open the Locations screen and pick the new Long Cases tab to begin.
Providence, 1925. A young sculptor dreams of a Cyclopean city dripping with green ooze, and wakes with a clay tablet he does not remember making. Ninety-one-year-old Professor Angell has seen its likeness once before, seventeen years ago, in the hands of a New Orleans police inspector.
▍A year-long investigation across half the globe
This is the largest case DarkDice has ever shipped. It starts in Providence and runs through the Louisiana bayou, Sydney harbour and the Dunedin docks to a door in the South Pacific that should never be opened.
515 scenes and over 1,100 choices, the scale of several standard cases combined.
One run takes far longer than an ordinary case file.
▍Every choice is a trade-off
48 groups of mutually exclusive choices: follow one lead and you lose another. You cannot open every door in a single run.
Time moves, and the world moves with it: witnesses leave, evidence disappears, and enemies get there first.
Failure is not a dead end. A missed roll puts you in a new situation, and the investigation carries on a different way.
▍Companions who remember
Professor Angell, the sculptor Wilcox, Inspector Legrasse, the sailor Johansen and more, 10 characters in all, can come to trust you, keep their distance, get hurt, or turn into your rivals. Who sails with you changes how the final chapter plays out.
▍18 victory endings
Before you reach the door, you must piece together clues scattered through dreams, idols and testimony, and work out the truth yourself. The evidence you hold, the people you trust and the choice you make at the last moment lead to 18 distinct victory endings, and just as many ways to fail.
Play the same case again and it may tell a completely different story.
▍Patch notes (1.37.0)
New free long case: The Madness from the Sea.
New Long Cases tab on the Locations screen.
Fixed: Chinese case-file text now matches the rest of the game's font weight, and "——" dashes no longer render broken.
The door has waited a long time. Good luck, Investigator.