A Murder in Graycap

A Murder in Graycap

A Murder in Graycap is a browser-playable murder-mystery interactive fiction and classic text adventure. You play by typing commands. The town answers with silence, half-truths, and details that only matter once you notice what does not belong.

You are a Houston private investigator whose normal workload is oil companies and tycoons. When a small coastal mayor calls you in, it is not because you are cheap. It is because Graycap Harbor is running out of room for excuses.

There is a public refit project under inspection, anonymous threat letters aimed at Charter Night, and insurance sign-off problems nobody wants on paper. Then the celebration begins at the Graycap Pump House Museum and Civic Hall, nicknamed the Pump House, and the case stops being theoretical.

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Inside the Pump House during Charter Night

What it feels like

Coastal fog, old machinery, civic pride, and a town that knows how to smile while it hides a knife. Day 1 is quiet work and paper cuts. Day 2 is Charter Night and the body. Days 3 and 4 are pressure, interviews, and forcing the story to stay consistent.

The harbor air tastes like salt and cold iron. Somewhere close, a bell marks time you did not ask for. > look Streetlamps glow as soft halos in the fog. The Pump House sits back from the road, brick and steel, dressed up for a night that feels rehearsed. > examine letter The paper is clean. The message is not. Whoever wrote it wanted you to imagine the ending first. > ask mayor about refit He answers like a man trying to remember what version of the truth he already used.

About the story

This case begins as three stacked problems that are still technically not a murder: suspected refit fraud or sabotage, anonymous threats aimed at Charter Night, and an insurance situation that could shut the whole event down.

Graycap Harbor is small enough that everybody has history, and old enough that some of that history is stored in places nobody visits anymore. Your job is to get ahead of the noise before Charter Night makes every room crowded, every timeline sloppy, and every witness a little more performative.

Mechanically, it is a classic Infocom-style text adventure rebuilt for the web. You explore by typing natural commands, searching rooms, questioning people, reading documents, and tracking what changes when the town realizes you are not leaving.

Quick facts

For readers, streamers, and anyone searching for this kind of interactive mystery.

genre: interactive fiction / text adventure / parser game / mystery / detective play style: investigation + exploration + interviews + evidence chain platform: web browser (no install) tone: fogbound harbor, civic pressure, old machinery and newer lies saving: automatic progress, optional manual save best first commands: look, examine, inventory, read, ask, search

If you like slow-burn detective work where the environment is part of the motive, Graycap is built for you.