Statement Types
Eleven statement types live behind the scenes. Eight are passive and appear automatically. Three are active investigations you trigger by selecting one or more targets. Each clean role uses exactly one type. Corrupt roles fall back to a generic lie producer when their disguised role would have spoken.
| Type | Role | Kind | What it says |
|---|---|---|---|
| declare_innocent | Mayor | Passive | Names one official as innocent. |
| pair_alignment | Vice Mayor | Passive | Points to two officials and claims one is corrupt and one clean. |
| distance_to_corrupt | City Planner | Passive | Reports the circular distance to the nearest corrupt official. |
| corrupt_adjacent | Council Chair | Passive | Yes or no: are any two corrupt officials seated side by side? |
| blackmailed_count | HR Director | Passive | Counts how many clean officials are currently being forced to lie. |
| adjacent_has_corrupt | Police Chief | Passive | Yes or no: is at least one neighbour corrupt? |
| longest_clean_chain | IT Director | Passive | Reports the longest unbroken run of clean seats. |
| verify_truth | Legal Advocate | Active | One target. Reports whether they are currently lying or telling the truth. |
| count_corrupt_in_three | Finance Director | Active | Three targets. Counts how many of them are corrupt. |
| same_alignment_pair | Zoning Director | Active | Two targets. Reports whether they share alignment. |
| lie | All corrupt roles | Passive | Generic lie producer. Fires whenever a corrupt role's disguised identity would have spoken truthfully. |
Truth vs Lies
Every official at the table has a fixed lie status decided at the start of the case: telling the truth, lying or silent. The status does not jitter between refreshes. A truthful clean stays truthful unless a Blackmailer is forcing them. A lying corrupt stays lying. A silenced official stays silent until the Silencer is arrested.
Alignment is not the same as lie status
A blackmailed clean official is producing false statements but is still clean for the purposes of arrest. The Legal Advocate's verify ability checks lie status: it will flag a blackmailed clean as "lying." The Finance Director's count and the Zoning Director's pair check alignment: they will both treat that same blackmailed clean as clean.
Conflating the two is the most common way to lose a case. If a Legal Advocate flags someone as lying, the only safe conclusion is "their current statement is false." It is not a confession.
Statements lock at start
Some statements need a chosen target or chosen lie value. To prevent you from rerolling by waiting for refreshes, the game decides these once and reuses them all game. That includes the Mayor's innocent target, the Vice Mayor's pair, the City Planner's lie value, the HR Director's lie count, the IT Director's lie chain length, the Silencer's victim and the Converter's victim.
Only Silencer ends on arrest
When the Silencer is arrested the muted target plays a "freed" animation and resumes producing statements. Blackmail and Manipulation are different: those effects persist for the rest of the case even after the corrupt card is arrested.
Annotations
The annotation system is local to you. The game does not read your stamps or ribbons. They exist as a place to externalise your deductions so the board carries the case for you instead of your memory.
Note Stamps
Right-click a card or press Space while hovering it to cycle through four stamp states.
- None: the default. Nothing on the card.
- Innocent: green stamp. You believe this official is clean.
- Corrupt: red stamp. You are confident this seat should be arrested when the timing is right.
- Suspicious: yellow stamp. Something is off, but you do not yet have a clean read.
Color Ribbons
Middle-click a card to cycle through five ribbon states. Ribbons are deliberately abstract, with no in-game meaning. Use them however you want: by Vice Mayor pair, by Finance Director group, by neighbourhood, by anything.
- None · the default.
- Pink
- Blue
- Orange
- White
Arresting
Select a card, then press the arrest button or hit the arrest shortcut to trigger an arrest. The card flips to its true identity, the statement engine refreshes for everyone still at the table and the wrong-arrest counter ticks up if the arrested seat was clean.
Wrong arrests
A wrong arrest is any arrested official whose true alignment is clean. Blackmailed cleans, framed cleans (when the role exists in the build) and the Mayor all count as wrong. Three wrong arrests in a single case lose the level.
In a campaign run the wrong-arrest counter is per-level: each level starts with three lives. Losing the level ends the run. There is no global wrong-arrest pool that carries across levels.
Win and Lose
How you win
- Arrest every corrupt official at the table. The case closes the moment the last corrupt goes down.
- In Endless Mode every cleared level pushes you into the next one, so there is no terminal win.
How you lose
- Three wrong arrests in a level (see Arresting above).
- Arresting an innocent Mayor at any point. Instant loss.
- Losing a campaign level ends the run. No retry, no checkpoint, the save is deleted. Abandoning from the pause menu also ends the run; quitting to the main menu mid-level is safe and resumes from the same arrest state when you reload.
Difficulty Modes
Two modes are currently in play. Easy is the default for Act I and Demo custom games. Normal is the default for Act II and Early Access custom games.
| Aspect | Easy | Normal |
|---|---|---|
| Arrested cards as ability targets | Yes | No |
| Corrupt roles shown in briefing | Yes | Yes |
| Available corrupt pool | Act I roster | Act II roster |
| Default act | I | II |
In Easy mode, abilities can target arrested officials, which lets you keep using the chamber as a workspace after a card has been resolved. In Normal an arrested card is removed from the targetable pool entirely.