What is Dossiê 195
Dossiê 195 hands you a sealed file on a country and asks you to name it. Only the continent card is open when the case begins. The other eight are locked, and every one you unlock is subtracted from the value of the case. An outline costs a lot. The average temperature costs almost nothing. You type your answer into a box that accepts country names in four languages, and the moment you confirm, the case closes: right, and the remaining value becomes points; wrong, and you lose points and one of your attempts.
The clock drains you too. After eight seconds the case value starts falling on its own, faster at every level, so hesitating costs you in the same currency as guessing wrong. The game becomes a bet against yourself: is the fact you need worth more than the points it costs to see it? Higher levels sharpen that bet on purpose. Populations turn into ranges, capitals lose their middle letters, outlines arrive rotated or mirrored, and the strongest clues stop appearing at all.
How to play
- Open the first case. The continent card is already showing. Tap any locked card to reveal it and pay the cost printed on it, which comes off the case value.
- Type the country into the answer box and confirm. Suggestions accept names in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French, plus common alternatives.
- A wrong accusation costs a fixed penalty and one of your three attempts. Use them all and the case is shelved, costing a reputation star.
- Five cases make a level. Clear one with at most a single failure and you get a star back. Lose all three stars, or press End shift, and the run is over.
Strategies that work
- Perfect deduction pays 250 points times your level, and only for a case solved with no extra clues and no wrong guesses. That bonus grows while case values shrink, so from level four a confident answer straight off the continent card often beats a well evidenced one.
- The first eight seconds are free, because the drain starts after that. Costs are not proportional to usefulness either. Sea access, religion, temperature and government all sit near 65 to 85 points, and the position card gives hemisphere and climate zone for one price. Three cheap cards usually cut the field further than one outline at 200.
- Watch the tier tag above the cards. Routine and Regular cases are countries everyone knows, so answer fast and cheap to build the streak. Save Cut the field for Obscure and Cold Case files, where narrowing the answer to six countries of that same tier is worth far more.
- The streak multiplier reaches three times after eight straight solves and resets on any lost case, including one you shelve yourself. Shelving spares your star but not your streak, so spend it early.
- A wrong accusation costs about 190 points at level one and near 400 by level eight, more than the priciest card in the file. Down to two candidates, buying one more clue is usually cheaper than testing one of them.
A little history
Dossiê 195 is an original game made for this site. The intelligence agency framing is fiction and there is no folk history behind it, but the mechanic is old. Paying for information and deciding when you have enough is the heart of Twenty Questions, and the same question information theory asks when it measures an answer by how much uncertainty it removes. A clue that halves the remaining countries beats one that eliminates three, whatever the two of them cost. The archive is built from open geographic datasets, including world-countries, Natural Earth and country-json, and sorts its 194 states into five tiers.
Frequently asked questions
How many countries can come up?
The archive holds 194 states, split evenly into five tiers of obscurity. The tier of the current case is shown above the clue cards, and higher levels draw from the harder tiers far more often.
Can I type country names in my own language?
Yes. The answer box accepts names in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French, plus common alternatives such as UK, Holland or Burma. The interface language switches with the buttons at the top right, even mid-case.
Does a run ever end on its own?
No. There is no final level. The run ends when your third reputation star is gone, or when you choose End shift. Either way, the score you hold at that moment goes to the leaderboard.
