Planned Release Date: August 2026

About This Game

Scapegoat is both singleplayer and multiplayer. The singleplayer version hosts a cast of characters that utilize an AI LLM for their dialogue choices. The characters were human authored and the art is human made and the story was human developed. The AI is only meant to enhance gameplay through improvisation based on established personalities and stories.

In singleplayer, you play as Grey, hired by the Duke whose Duchy the valley resides in, to investigate trade caravan disappearances happening in Deepwood Valley. Unfortunately, as soon as you walk into the local inn, someone turns up dead. Aldric, the fresh corpse, appears to be a merchant but looks have been known to be deceiving. Unfortunately for you, any incidents are required to be investigated per your contract.

Interrogate, make friends with, or terrorize the inn's residents. One of them is a killer. Your job is to make sure the right person is held accountable for the crime while the scapegoat is cleared of suspicion.

What makes it tick

A cast that actually thinks.

Living characters

No scripts. No dialogue trees.

Each suspect is driven by its own mind — memories, motives, a temperament, and a secret it will bend the truth to keep. Say something new and you get a new answer. It all runs offline, on your own PC, no account and no connection required.

Speak, don't select

Just talk to them.

Type your questions, or hold a key and say them out loud — speech recognition runs locally on your machine. Interrogation, the way it should feel: you asking, them dodging.

No canon culprit

A different killer every game.

The murderer is drawn fresh at the start of each round, and the evidence is written so the guilty and the innocent look exactly alike. Learn the tells and they'll still fool you.

Solo & six-player

Deceive alone, or together.

Play the singleplayer mystery against the AI cast — or drop into a six-player round where the liars across the table are human, and one of them is quietly steering you toward the wrong neck.

A night at the inn

How a case actually breaks.

1

Make the rounds.

The six pieces of the story live in what people say, scattered across the whole cast. Nobody hands you the picture — you assemble it, room by room.

2

Find each person's key.

Red gives way to the truth. Yellow to gentleness. Green only to hard proof. Bring the wrong approach and the door stays shut — bring the right one and it swings open.

3

Catch the confession.

Press the right suspect the right way and the ground goes out of them. It's the one thing the evidence can never do for you, and the only thing that names the killer for certain.

4

Name the killer — and clear the scapegoat.

Accuse on evidence alone and you'll condemn the innocent one it was built to frame. It takes the truth to hang the guilty and free the falsely blamed. Be sure.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

The suspects' personalities are written by humans, but none of their dialogue is scripted — it is generated live by a language model (a bundled on-device model by default; optionally the player's own local model, or an optional cloud model). Every AI line passes through a deterministic, non-disableable content filter that blocks explicit sexual content, illegal content, and hate speech; romantic dialogue is capped at suggestive innuendo. There is no AI of any kind in Multiplayer.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Scapegoat is a murder mystery: a killing has occurred and its aftermath, motives, and suspects are discussed throughout. There is no combat or graphic gore in gameplay. Alcohol is served in the inn setting. NPC dialogue is AI-generated at runtime and is not scripted: it may include moderate profanity and suggestive (never explicit) romantic remarks. A built-in content filter that cannot be disabled blocks explicit sexual content, illegal sexual content, and hate speech before any line is shown.