How to design a murder mystery timeline + 10 tips to spice it up
English-language jubensha writers have the cards stacked against them. Imagine trying to write a screenplay only knowing the idea of a movie and if you’re lucky, having seen one or two. With limited existing options in English, the conditions to support prospective jubensha authors and create original English-language games are just not there. Thus resulting in the lack of English language games. It’s sadly a vicious cycle.
I want to help break down this cycle by sharing my most impactful tips on designing your own jubensha game. The source of this knowledge? I’ve written three original jubensha games, the most recent of which is currently being published for an early 2026 release. Over 3+ years of designing, testing, and hearing feedback on dozens of both translated and original games, I’ve learned what people love and don’t love about jubensha games, and I’m here to share this knowledge with you!
A timeline is a classic component of many jubensha games (check out other components here!). Designing a timeline is essentially designing a puzzle, so I can’t tell you exactly how to do it. There are, however, some basic components to consider first. Once you have the basics, consider elements that make solving the timeline interesting and fun.
Objectives to keep in mind:
Difficulty
You probably already have in mind your target audience for the game. If it’s a beginner game, make it a simpler timeline. If advanced, then a more complex one (especially if the timeline is the main feature). Avoid dragging it out as it becomes tedious work unless you spice it up. You don’t want it too simple so that players solve it without any friction, or too difficult that it’s unsolvable. The right difficulty is one where players have fun!
Believability
Your players should never feel cheated by the timeline or have to suspend logic to believe the timing or duration of actions.
Cohesion
A timeline, like any element of a jubensha, should only be used if it fits with the overall design. The way you present a timeline might be very different if you’re writing a medieval fantasy game versus a contemporary game.
The basics:
Time Range
How long is the timeline? Is it overnight? Over the course of 2 hours or perhaps 2 days? Choose what makes sense for your story, though the typical range is between roughly 1 to 24 hours.
Precision
This is tied closely to the time range. If the timeline lasts 1 hour, the precision of each timestamp will likely be down to the minute. For longer time ranges, perhaps 30 minute segments or even 1 hour segments make sense. Try to keep it consistent—if you use 1 hour segments, throwing a 12:32 might confuse some players. Some games don’t have timestamps at all and rely on environmental cues to determine the order of events.
Character Actions
This is the meat of the timeline. What was everyone up to, where, and when? When I build the timeline, I create a chart with the timestamps as the rows and the characters as the columns. Often, timeline-based puzzles will have a few key time points, the time or time range of death being the most common.
Sounds easy, but this is the part that requires careful consideration. You’re designing a puzzle. Make sure to add elements of intrigue that match the theme and story you’re trying to tell. The best jubensha, like escape rooms, are full of puzzles that tie strongly to the theme. See the below section for a few elements you might consider for your jubensha.
Elements to spice it up:
Unreliable/incomplete POV
The character has an imperfect perception of the events they experience, leading to a wrong conclusion.
Example: You hear a scream from inside the room, but it was a TV show that was playing.
For this example, you’d want
Alibis
Characters meet up then part ways throughout the timeline, giving them partial alibis.
Example: At 12:00am, you were in the room with your sister. When the lights turned off at 12:10am, she immediately left the room, while you stayed behind to find a flashlight. At 12:30am, your best friend enters the room, urging you to leave with them.
In this example, you have alibis at two different points in time with two different players, but you also have 10 minutes of unaccounted time. Using a mix of both makes it more interesting and allows for both red herrings and the narrowing down possibilities.
Changed states
Characters enter a location at different points in time and make different observations. They may seem irrelevant at first, but they are clues to determine what took place over the course of the timeline.
Example: At 12:00am, you enter the old man’s room and see everything in order. At 1:00am you return to the room and oddly enough, this time, you note that the lamp is unplugged. What could this mean?
Close calls
Tight timelines are usually more elegant and exciting, meaning that there isn’t unnecessary space between actions. Characters just pass each other or just miss each other during the timeline.
Example: A character slips out the window a second before another character enters the room through the door. They might or might not have been caught, but it was a close call.
Eavesdropping/spying
Place characters right next to each other but divided by a wall, window, hedge of bushes, etc. This allows for either an alibi, an opportunity for an unreliable narrator moment, or evidence against a character (if you catch someone doing/saying something incriminating).
Example: You are on the roof trying to do something and from there, you see another character throw something into the dumpster at the back of the building.
In this example, you might not want to openly share what you were doing on the roof (perhaps something unsavoury). You also have knowledge about the actions of another character and something you might want to confront them about. You also don’t have the full picture because you don’t know what they threw into the dumpster. You’d be looking for information about this during the investigation.
Outcomes unknowingly altered by others’ actions
One character performs one action expecting a specific outcome, but another character unknowingly does something to change that outcome.
Example: You poisoned the old man tonight but this morning, unbeknownst to you, another person swapped the labels of all the vials. You don’t realize you didn’t poison the old man until the label swapping comes to light.
Global events
All characters know about an event or environmental change. It may help ground the timeline.
Example: The lights in the mansion suddenly go off, prompting everyone to check their watch and confirm the time.
During the investigation, these events prompt questions like “where were you when the lights went off?”
Unique time measurement
A setting or circumstance where typical clocks or time measurements aren’t used.
Example: Bell tolls of a clocktower for a medieval game, or the location of the sun for a crew shipwrecked on an island.
This opens the door for new complications or puzzles to figure out the timeline.
Reliability of time measurements
Call into question whether the time is accurate.
Example: Continuing with the clocktower example, the players find out the gears were tampered with. The time they originally thought all actions occurred might not be correct. Then players must figure out when the time was tampered with and by how much.
Time delayed actions
A mechanism might only take effect after it’s set up by a character.
Example: A poison takes 1 hour to kill or a weapon set to go off using a remote or timer.
This means the timeline will only tell a partial story, and players need to reverse engineer what must have been true in order for the outcome to come to be.
The most important thing is to choose the timeline elements that tell a cohesive story alongside your characters, setting, and themes. Mix, match, and adapt them to your jubensha. There are infinite variations of how you can build a timeline, but I hope this list gives you inspiration and guidance. Leave a comment with how you design your timelines, or what you enjoy about timelines puzzles you’ve played.
