The Temple Gate, 17:00 - Printable PDF Murder Mystery for 2 Players

A mountain temple after the evening viewing. Six people booked a place today. Four have gone home - or are supposed to have.

A Japanese-style murder mystery for exactly 2 players. No host, no GM. Printable PDF, instant download. 90 minutes.

An hour after sunset in late November, with no electric light. The great gate is barred, and the bar can only be set from the inside. Nobody is coming until morning.

THIS ONE HAS NO HOST. In most murder mysteries someone runs the table and cannot play, so "a game for two" needs three people. Here the Game Script carries the story: you take turns reading it aloud. The clues open together at each act, and the Solution at the end.

YOU ARE TWO OF THE SIX, AND YOU MAY LIE. About what you saw, where you were and what you think, lie as much as you like. The one thing you cannot lie about is a clue - how many there are, what state it is in, the time printed on it. Nothing new appears after the game starts.

SEVEN POINTS EACH. At the end you each write five things. Naming the killer is worth 3; the rest are worth 1 each. Higher score wins, a tie is a draw.

THE CAST

Naoto Momiyama (41) - A joiner. He repaired the great gate three years ago

Ayame Ioroi (45) - She has recorded local history, alone, for twenty years

Both roles are written so that gender does not matter.

WHAT YOU GET - 8 printable PDFs (56 pages). You need two people, paper and a pen each, and a printer or two screens. Plays online or in person, and plays once.

BEFORE YOU BUY - a man in his thirties dies after being pushed down stone steps. No gore, nothing in detail. A child was badly hurt three years earlier and appears only in documents. A body is moved and disguised. Digital download. English edition, first written in Japanese. Ages 15+

Made by Ai-Q Labs, a one-person studio in Japan. Written with AI assistance (Claude, by Anthropic), then edited and checked by a human. Everyone and everything here is invented.