JustPlay — Sherlock Holmes Consulente Investigativo

Companion web app for the Italian edition of the board game Sherlock Holmes — Consulente Investigativo, including the Carlton House / Queen's Park expansion, the Scrittore Senza Nome extra cases, and the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI) edition.

Play it here: https://sherlock.justplaybo.it/

Nothing on the page talks to a server while you play: your session lives entirely in the browser's localStorage.

What's on the screen

A Leaflet map of Victorian London (with Queen's Park and a Bologna overlay) takes the main area. Two side drawers fold out from the toolbar:

• Times (left) — every issue of The Times included with each edition, as scanned pages. Click a thumbnail to open it full-size.
• Annuario (right) — the directory pages, same treatment.

On the map you'll see two kinds of markers: hollow orange circles are investigation points (click for the hint), filled polygons are interactions (buildings / characters, click for the detail card).

Playing a case

1. Scegli Avventura lets you pick from the published catalogue. Carica avventura (JSON)... loads one from a file you have locally (see the format below). Crea avventura... opens the in-app editor to write one from scratch — no external tools needed.
2. Nuova partita starts a session. From here on, the app tracks:
   • Visited places — map circles fill with brown when you've opened their hint.
   • Appunti — a freeform textarea inside each hint dialog for your own notes.
   • Indizi cerchiati — the "circle letter S / W / …" mechanic from BSI. The hint dialog has a chip row where you record the letters you've circled, and hints with matching requires unlock automatically.
3. Cerca (magnifying-glass icon) opens a searchable list of every point. Filter by name or id; "Solo visitati" turns it into a notebook of where you've already been.
4. Taccuino — summary view of the session: started-at, list of visited places with their notes, list of circled letters with where you found them.
   • Esporta JSON downloads the full session so you can pause a case and come back to it on another device.
   • Importa JSON loads a previously exported session.
5. Risolvi il caso shows the adventure's solution.
6. Domande (only when the adventure ships them) walks through the two sets of end-of-case questions. Each card reveals the correct answer on expand; mark "Risposta esatta" to add the points. The dialog keeps a running total per set and overall.
7. Percorso di Holmes reveals the reference walkthrough — Holmes's step-by-step path with the clue letters he'd have circled at each step. Clicking a step flies the map to that point.

Adventure JSON format (v1)

An adventure is a single JSON file. You can browse a working example at src/assets/ddt/adventures/sample-bsi.json or open Crea avventura... and hit Anteprima JSON to see the shape build up as you fill the form.

{
  "id": "my-case",
  "title": "Il caso della …",
  "version": 1,

  "intro":    { "title": "Introduzione", "html": "<p>Londra, 1889…</p>" },
  "solution": { "title": "Soluzione",    "html": "<p>…</p>" },

  "places": {
    "3SO": {
      "default": "<p>Indizio visibile ogni volta che visiti il luogo.</p>",
      "conditional": [
        { "requires": ["S"],      "html": "<p>Si rivela se hai cerchiato S.</p>" },
        { "requires": ["S", "W"], "html": "<p>Solo con S e W insieme.</p>" }
      ]
    },
    "6SO": "<p>Anche una semplice stringa va bene se il luogo non ha rami.</p>"
  },

  "questions": {
    "primary": {
      "title": "Domande principali",
      "items": [
        { "id": "p1", "text": "Chi…?", "answer": "…", "points": 15, "rationale": "opzionale" }
      ]
    },
    "secondary": { "title": "Domande accessorie", "items": [ /* … */ ] }
  },

  "sherlockPath": {
    "title": "Percorso di riferimento",
    "steps": [
      { "at": "3SO", "title": "Criterion Club", "description": "…", "gains": ["S"] }
    ]
  }
}

Things worth knowing:

• Clue letters are normalised to uppercase. A conditional fires when every letter in requires is currently held by the player — it does not replace the default, it's appended. Design each branch so it reads naturally alongside whatever came before.
• places["id"] can be a plain HTML string for a straightforward single-clue location.
• Question ids must be stable across edits. The session scorecard keys on them, so reordering or editing the text of a question won't lose progress; changing the id will.
• sherlockPath.steps[].gains is informational. It tells the player which letters Holmes would have circled, but the app never auto-applies them — that would spoil self-scoring.
• at on a step is optional; without it the step still renders but has no fly-to button.

Additional architecture and evaluation notes live in CLAUDE.md if you plan to hack on the app itself.

Local development

npm install
npm start          # ng serve → http://localhost:4200

Requires Node 20.19+ (Node 22 is what CI uses). npm run build emits dist/justplay-shic/.

Credits

• Sherlock Holmes — Consulente Investigativo © Asmodee / Space Cowboys — game text and materials.
• London and Queen's Park map overlays © Asmodee; Bologna overlay © Archivio Digitale Comune di Bologna.
• Base map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors (CC-BY-SA).