Loading the Shells, 19:30

LOADING THE SHELLS, 19:30
A summer fireworks festival. An iron shed, barred from the outside. A red tag on the handle: "IN USE — SOMEONE INSIDE".
A Japanese-style murder mystery for exactly 3 players. No host, no GM.
Printable PDF. Instant download. Plays online or in person. 60–75 minutes.
FOR FANS OF · Agatha Christie, Knives Out, and closed-circle mysteries

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The day of a summer fireworks festival in a Japanese town. The firing line is roped off, and only five people from a small fireworks house are inside. At 17:00 three signal shells go off. At 17:41 the Master is found inside the white iron shell shed. The door had been barred from the outside — and still the red tag on the handle said someone was inside.

Four people were in the zone — and the three of you are three of them. Whether you are the killer is written in your own booklet.

This one has no host. The Game Script carries the evening: you take turns reading it aloud, in order, and that is the whole job. The clues open together at the start of each act, so all three of you always see the same thing. The solution stays sealed until the end, and you open it together.

Two votes against one. Each of you names the killer on your own paper, and you reveal at once. Two votes for the killer, and the two innocent players win. Two votes for the one who dropped the bar, and the killer wins — an innocent person takes the blame. The killer cannot win just by getting away with it.

Same clues, different eyes. Only the wind-reader knows where the burnt scraps of a signal shell come down. Only the Master's apprentice knows his rules about the tag and the pen. Only the head clerk knows how the armbands and the firing board work. You must hand your reading keys over — the killer too.

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Three characters
Yuzuha Chinone, 27 — a fireworks maker who loads the shells.
Atsushi Tochio, 45 — the head clerk.
Yaichi Igari, 66 — the oldest hand, who reads the wind.

What you get — 9 printable PDFs and a plain-text file for virtual tabletops:
Read Me First · Game Script (all players) · three character booklets · Clues Act 1 · Clues Act 2 · Hint Sheet (only if you are stuck) · Solution (open last).

What you need — three people, paper and a pen each, and either a printer or three screens. Nothing to assemble, no props, no artwork to read. Every Japanese document is shown as it is, with English beside it — you never need to read Japanese.

Plays once. The hint sheet has three steps and you only open the ones you need — opening them does not change the result.

Content: a man of seventy-one dies of heatstroke after being shut in a hot iron shed (described briefly, nothing graphic); a family business and who takes it over; smoking where it is forbidden. Every person, organisation, fireworks house and festival in this game is invented.

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Licence — print and copy freely for your own play. Running sessions for other people is fine, paid or unpaid. Streaming and let's-plays, including monetized ones, are welcome. Please do not redistribute or resell the files themselves.

Written with the help of AI (Claude) and checked by a human before release. The cover is drawn by a program, not by an image generator.

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The cast

• Yuzuha Chinone (27) — A fireworks maker. She loads the shells, and tonight's finale is hers
• Atsushi Tochio (45) — The head clerk. He keeps the books and the running order. The Master's son-in-law
• Yaichi Igari (66) — The oldest hand. He reads the wind and blows the signal whistle

One character is written as a woman and two as men. The players' own gender does not need to match them.

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Good for

A game night for three · playing online over voice chat · a group that likes a little bluffing · a first murder mystery

Recommended for ages 15 and up.

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About us

Ai-Q Labs is a small studio in Japan. We write murder mystery in the Japanese style — マーダーミステリー, the format that fills game cafes in Tokyo, where the host runs the table and never solves it. This one needs no host at all: three people, and everybody plays.

Every title in this series is written in Japanese first and then rewritten in English, and every clue is a document — there is no artwork to look at and nothing to assemble, which is why it plays as well over voice chat as it does around a table.

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The series

• The Observation Deck, 21:30 — 2 players, no host — an observation deck, the night the lift stopped
• The Watch Log, 02:03 — 2 players, no host — a stakeout van in Tokyo, eight nights on one front door
• Last Contact, 04:00 — host + 2-4 — free — a winter ridge, mountain rescue
• Closing Hour, 01:00 — 2 players, no host — a neighbourhood bathhouse on its last night
• The Sutra Copy, 06:00 — 2 players, no host — a sutra-copying retreat, and the last bus down
• The Temple Gate, 17:00 — 2 players, no host — a mountain temple after the evening viewing
• The Tea Room, 14:00 — 3–6 players, no host — a tea house in the Kyoto hills
• The Deadline, 23:00 — host + 3-6 — a publisher, the night before press
• The Guest Book, 21:00 — host + 3-6 — a mountain inn cut off by a landslide
• First Light, 03:00 — host + 3-6 — a hut on Mount Fuji, three days before the mountain closes
• On Air, 25:00 — host + 4-8 — a late-night radio show, the last episode
• The Eulogy, 15:00 — host + 4-8 — a funeral, and a eulogy with the reader’s name left blank
• Curtain Up, 19:00 — host + 5-10 — a sixty-seat theatre, opening night
• The Ballot, 22:00 — host + 6-12 — an election count, tied
• Terminus, 05:00 — host + 7-14 — a night sleeper express, her last run
• The Eve, 20:00 — host + 8-16 — a night festival, on the eve of the shrine rite