The Lens Detective

Find your way, walk the city, solve the puzzle.
A detective story played outside.

Your phone is the Lens: a surveillance tool that reveals echoes from the Lattice, a hidden network the city's authorities don't know exists. You're a recruit in the Urban Investigation Bureau, and your handler Pracht has cases that need solving on the streets you already walk every day.

Solve real puzzles. Decode messages hidden in plaques and books. Catch operatives of the Syndicate of Silence before they erase what's left of the city's truth.

Your city is the case file. Cases unfold on the real map around you — a waypoint two streets away, a witness on the corner, a mark on a foundation stone you have to stand in front of to read. You find your own way there; nothing here can be solved from the sofa.

Get it on Google Play Download on the App Store Press kit

Free on Android and iOS.

This game will not hold your hand

The Lens Detective is made for experienced players. There are no arrows pointing at the answer and no hint button. A witness says something once, and whether you wrote it down is up to you. A case asks you to count what is really on the street, read what is really carved in the stone, and remember a shape you saw three blocks ago.

You will get stuck. You will walk back. And then the number on the plaque suddenly explains what the witness said, and the whole case falls into place. That moment when it clicks is what the game is built around, and it's yours: nobody solved it for you.

Bring a notebook and a pen. You'll need them.

What it looks like

The map with a glowing waypoint two streets north and the objective 'I dropped my badge while trailing a suspect. The Lens has the sync node. Get there.' — Walk there

Agent Pracht introduces himself on the street and tells the recruit to grab a pen and paper, because the Lens won't store what you see. — Meet your handler

A Cistercian numeral drawn on screen with a text field asking which number it is. — Decode the cipher

John of Basingstoke, an Echo, explains how the Cistercian number system works before setting a task. — Meet the Echoes

Four more

The objective points to a real café 180 metres southeast, marked on the map. — Find a real place

A drone circles overhead with the instruction to predict where it will be, not where it is. — Catch the drone

Pracht offers two open leads and asks which one to follow first. — Pick your lead

The opening briefing: the Urban Investigation Bureau explains the Lattice and the Syndicate of Silence. — You are recruited

Season One: thirteen fifteen

Agent Harding has disappeared. He left behind a badge, a number, and a cipher nobody uses any more. Over a season of cases you'll trace what he found: the Echoes who remember him, the folder he hid, and an organisation that would rather the city didn't look too closely at itself. Real history is woven through the cases.

What a case asks of you

Walk to a place and look at what is actually there
Count what a witness could not have counted from memory
Find a real library, a real place of worship, a real café — the Lens marks them for you
Repeat a rhythm, sketch a shape you were shown a street ago, hold a stakeout
Catch something that does not want to be caught
Answer for what you saw, from your own notes

A complete story

This is a hand-crafted story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Four hours or so of cases, playable wherever you can walk. Like a series of detective novels, except the next chapter happens when you go outside. Season One is complete and playable start to finish; Season Two will take the mystery further.

What you'll need

This game needs GPS and it needs you outdoors. It cannot be played indoors or with location switched off.
Distances are real. A case may ask for a few hundred metres; some ask for more.
Watch where you are going. The game is designed to be played with your head up — the screen tells you where, the world tells you what.
Data use is modest but present: the map streams as you walk.

Season One is free

There are no adverts, no loot boxes, no energy meters and nothing to buy. You do not make an account. Anonymous gameplay analytics are strictly opt-in — you're asked once, and "no thanks" is a real answer. If you want to join our mailing list, that is completely optional.

Your coordinates are never sent to our analytics; that is enforced in the code, in every build. The privacy policy explains exactly what the game does and does not collect.

Credits and attribution

Map data and imagery in the game come from © Mapbox and © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under the Open Database License. Place names and street data are OpenStreetMap's; if something on the map is wrong, it can be fixed at the source, and the correction reaches the game. This attribution also appears on the map inside the game, where the licences require it.

The game is built in Unity. It uses GO Map — 3D Map For AR Gaming for map rendering, City People by Denys Almaral for the characters, and a low-poly sci-fi drone pack, all licensed from the Unity Asset Store. The interface is set in JetBrains Mono, licensed under the SIL Open Font License.

Hear when Season Two is out

Contact

Press enquiries, bug reports and anything else: info@jousoft.fi. There's a press kit with a factsheet and assets.