Paper Alibi Contains No Filler At All, Which In Our Records Is Unprecedented
Twenty-eight cases in thirty-one hours, each with its own structure, and a twenty-ninth that only unlocks if you solve every other case without using a single hint. It is the first game we have completed where the completion requirement is the best idea in it.
We keep a column in the ledger headed "structural repeats", and in twenty-nine completed games it has never been empty. In Paper Alibi it is empty. Twenty-eight cases, twenty-eight distinct shapes of problem, no template reused even loosely. We went back through our notes twice looking for a pair that matched because a zero in that column seemed like a recording error.
The nearest thing to a repeat is a pair of cases in the second act that both hinge on a witness lying about a time. Even there, the first requires you to notice a contradiction between two statements and the second requires you to notice that the contradiction is absent when it should be present. Those are opposite mental operations dressed in similar clothing, which is precisely the sort of craft that the count is designed to detect.
What the completion requirement is
Paper Alibi ships with a hint system that is genuinely useful and non-punitive: three escalating nudges per case, available at any time, with no scolding. It also tracks whether you have used any. Solve all twenty-eight without a single hint and a twenty-ninth case appears, which is about ninety minutes long and recontextualises the framing device of the whole game.
We want to be careful here, because "hidden content behind perfect play" is usually a bad design pattern that rewards guide use rather than skill. What makes it work in this case is that the hint system is per-case rather than global, so a fresh start on a single case restores your clean record. You are not locked out by one early mistake, and the requirement therefore measures whether you eventually solved everything yourself rather than whether you were flawless the first time.
The hours
| Segment | Hours | Cases | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| First pass, act one | 7.5 | 9 | Two hints used, later re-solved clean |
| First pass, act two | 10.0 | 11 | Hardest sequence in the game |
| First pass, act three | 8.0 | 8 | Shortest cases, densest writing |
| Clean re-solves | 4.0 | 2 | Restoring the no-hint record |
| Hidden case | 1.5 | 1 | Unlocked at full clean completion |
Thirty-one hours is short by the standards of the games we usually report on, and the brevity is a large part of why the record is clean. It is far easier to avoid filler in a thirty-hour game than in a two-hundred-hour one. We would rather say that plainly than pretend the achievement is unqualified.
Where it is imperfect
Two cases in the second act rely on a piece of period knowledge that the game never teaches and that we happened to have. We got both through recognition rather than deduction, and a player without that background would need a hint and lose the clean record until they came back to it. The game should have taught the fact in an earlier case and did not.
The board interface also has one genuine annoyance: pinned items cannot be grouped, so a case with eleven pieces of evidence becomes a visual scramble by the end. In a game whose entire interface is one corkboard, that is a more serious complaint than it sounds.
The ending, and whether the hidden case ruins it
The twenty-eighth case ends the story properly. The hidden twenty-ninth does not extend the plot; it re-reads it, and a player who never sees it has not missed a resolution. This is the correct way to gate optional content and we would like to see it copied. Nothing is withheld that a reader needs; something is offered that only makes sense to a reader who did the work.
Completion verdict
The first game in our records with no structural repetition at all, and the first where full completion produced material worth having. Thirty-one hours, twenty-eight distinct cases, a hint system that respects the player, and a hidden final case that rewards independence rather than persistence. Two cases lean on untaught period knowledge and the board cannot be organised, which is the entire list of complaints.
Complete it. This is the rare game where we would say so without qualification, and the only one this year where stopping early would cost you the best part.
How we classify a structural repeat is set out on the desk page. Full ratings and their bands are on the rating page.