The Posthumous Investigation
Frequently Asked Questions

The Posthumous Investigation is a point-and-click mystery adventure set in 1937 Rio de Janeiro. You play a detective hired by the ghost of a murdered wealthy man (Brás Cubas) to investigate his own death. The game features a time loop mechanic, a manual evidence board (the Thinking Board), 14 suspects with fixed daily schedules, and no hand-holding — you must deduce and connect evidence yourself.

The main story (Standard Ending) takes most players 8–15 loops, roughly 6–10 hours. The True Ending adds another 2–4 hours. 100% achievement completion (all 28 achievements) requires approximately 38 loops total, around 11–14 hours across the full run.

No. The Posthumous Investigation deliberately has no hint system, objective markers, or confirmation sounds. You are treated as a professional detective. The Thinking Board is your only structural guidance — it accepts or rejects your logic, but it doesn't tell you what logic to apply. Use our guides if you're genuinely stuck.

You can pause time by opening any menu (inventory, Thinking Board, settings). The clock only advances while you are actively in the game world. Conversations also advance the clock — plan accordingly.

No difficulty settings exist. The investigation's challenge is fixed by design. The game becomes easier with each loop as your knowledge grows, but the underlying mechanics never change.

The loop resets to 07:00 and you retain all memories. There is no permanent failure state. Running out of time is not a punishment — it is a signal that your route planning for that loop needs refinement.

Everything in the game world resets: NPC positions, NPC dialogue memory, NPC emotional states, object positions, triggered events, locked doors, and the in-game clock (returns to 07:00). Your player memory, Thinking Board entries, unlocked dialogue topics, and loop counter do not reset.

Open the main menu from the pause screen and select the reset option. Manual resets are instantaneous and cost no in-game time within the loop. Use them decisively when a loop has no remaining productive objectives.

With no prior knowledge: typically 8–15 loops. With this wiki's guides: 5–8 loops. With full prior playthrough knowledge: as few as 3 loops using the critical path. 100% achievement completion requires 38 loops regardless of case knowledge.

No. Every NPC resets completely at the start of each loop with zero memory of previous interactions. Your knowledge of their secrets persists as your detective's accumulated inference, but the characters themselves have no loop memory.

Yes, absolutely. Your knowledge state accumulates across all loops. If you learned in Loop 5 that Character A was at the port at 18:00, you can reference that knowledge in Loop 10's conversation with Character B without any restriction. The game models your knowledge as detective inference capability.

Accusation rejection means one of your three chains (Motive, Means, or Opportunity) is incomplete. Common causes: the Opportunity chain is missing an alibi contradiction evidence node (not just testimony); the Motive chain has only testimony nodes and no physical Evidence anchor; the Means chain has a deduction node not backed by physical evidence. Trace each chain from the Accusation node backwards to find the gap.

After a rejection, the game provides a brief response indicating which of the three chains is logically insufficient. Note this carefully before the loop resets — it tells you exactly which chain to prioritize in the next loop.

Yes. Both nodes and connections can be removed at any time. Removing a node also removes its connections. Use this when you discover a testimony was false and need to restructure a chain around the corrected information.

Yes. The Thinking Board is one of the few elements that persists across all loops. Everything you add to the board stays there permanently unless you manually delete it. This is the game's primary information management tool — use it extensively.

The minimum is 3 nodes per chain (9 total plus the Accusation node = 10 minimum). Each chain requires at least one physical Evidence node as its anchor. In practice, complete chains typically have 3–5 nodes each.

Yes — two achievements require a fresh save file with specific early conditions: Ghost Satisfied (True Ending in ≤10 loops) and Hasty Judgment (wrong accusation in first 2 loops). All other 26 achievements are available at any time in any loop on any save.

Black Eye (68% unlock rate) is obtained by choosing the most aggressive confrontational dialogue option when speaking to Henrique Moura (the politically-connected, easily-angered suspect). Select the fight-instigating dialogue in his morning window (09:00) at the main house. The physical altercation triggers the achievement immediately.

Exhaust Marie Grant's entire dialogue tree in a single loop, including all knowledge-gated branches (morning, midday, and evening time windows). This requires maximum knowledge state — best done in Phase 3 after both endings are achieved. See the Achievements guide for details.

No, but many achievement-specific dialogue branches are only accessible with high loop counts and accumulated knowledge. Most achievement conversations are most efficiently reached after completing both endings.

The game is available on Windows PC via Steam (App ID: 2466900), released on March 31, 2026. Mac and other platform availability has not been confirmed as of this writing.

Check the official Steam page for current system requirements: store.steampowered.com/app/2466900. The game is a 2D point-and-click adventure with modest hardware requirements.

Check the Steam page for the current Steam Deck compatibility rating. As a 2D point-and-click adventure with mouse-driven interaction, Steam Deck controller mapping may require customization. The game's time-pressure mechanics and precise click interactions are best experienced with a mouse.

Steam Cloud support status is listed on the Steam store page. We recommend manually backing up your save files (located in your Steam userdata folder) before any major game updates, especially given the multi-loop save file complexity.

The game autosaves after each loop reset. An unexpected crash during an active loop will roll you back to the start of that loop (07:00), but all previous loops' progress, Thinking Board entries, and knowledge state are preserved.

The Posthumous Investigation is directly inspired by Machado de Assis's 1881 Brazilian novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas). The game shares the satirical ghost-narrator framing device, the character name, and several thematic preoccupations of the original novel. The game also references two other Machado de Assis works — Dom Casmurro and Quincas Borba — through hidden Easter egg dialogues.

No. The game is fully standalone. Knowledge of Machado de Assis's work enriches the literary Easter eggs and adds ironic layers to Brás Cubas's characterisation, but the murder mystery investigation is entirely self-contained.

The game's developers (Mother Gaia Studio, a Brazilian studio) have stated that the setting uses 1937 Rio as an atmospheric backdrop with some deliberate anachronisms for narrative convenience. Key locations are inspired by real historic Rio neighbourhoods (Largo do Machado, the port district), but are not documentary reconstructions.

Brás Cubas is the murdered man — a wealthy, sardonic, and morally complex figure directly named after the Machado de Assis character. He is already dead at the game's start but hires you as a ghost. His motivation for investigating his own murder is not entirely benevolent — he has his own secrets, and his ghost's behaviour across the investigation is deliberately unreliable.