How the Case File Portal Works After You Pay

Payment goes through Stripe by card. Seconds later an email arrives with your order. Its first block, before the invoice, is black and carries a code in the form BW-XXXX-XXX: letters and digits chosen so that none can be confused, no zero and no letter O, no one and no I or L. It reads aloud and copies onto a phone at the table. The email does not carry the PDF. It carries the code and the link to the portal. File it somewhere you will find it three weeks later; if it is missing, look in spam first, then use the lost code page, which sends the code back to the address of the order.

Go to the case file portal and enter the code. It is checked on the server and kept in a cookie your browser cannot read from the page, so nobody can extract it from the screen. From there you download the PDF of your case or kit, laid out on A4, ready to print at home or at a print shop. The code waits indefinitely before its first use: you can buy a month ahead. It then stays valid one week from that first opening, for four things at once: entering the code, the page, the download and the answers.

A case file offers four levels of help, each a voluntary click: spotting, comparing, reasoning, unblocking. The first only tells you where to look; the fourth tells you what you missed. Then two tiers of questions. The intermediate one checks that you hold the right thread and, when answered, gives an intermediate conclusion. The final one, usually the culprit or the place, opens the full solution and a reconstruction table. After three wrong answers a safety exit opens the solution anyway. A group that paid is never held hostage by a form.

A murder mystery kit has no hints, because it has a host. The portal gives that host their complete guide in four parts: before the game, during the game, ending the game, and the solution for them alone. The guide includes the release schedule of the exhibits, what each exhibit brings, how to adjudicate the signed agreements, and what to say when a player goes missing. At the end, once the ballots are counted, the host enters the killer's name on the portal and the reveal text appears, to be read aloud. The reveal is not printed anywhere, so no guest can read it early.

Three reasons. The old kits carried the solution inside the PDF behind a decorative unlock button; anyone leafing through could read it. A 13 MB picture dossier is refused by a share of corporate mail servers, so sending the file that way is not reliable delivery. And a code valid one week from first opening cannot circulate from group to group the way an eternal file link can. The printable murder mystery kit page explains what you print and what stays online, product by product.