Criminal Case MOD APK (Unlimited Money, Stars and Energy)

Criminal Case opens with a slashed throat at the Grimsborough town sign and a partner who talks you through your first search. New detectives who keep running dry at 110 energy will find the star and report math that keeps cases moving here. Replaying a scene you already cleared at five stars costs 5 energy instead of 20, and that one habit funds most of the early game.

How to Play Criminal Case as a Grimsborough Detective

Criminal Case is a free hidden object game where you join the Grimsborough Police Department and solve murders by searching fixed crime scenes for listed clues. You send samples to the lab, question suspects, match the evidence to one person, and arrest them.

The city breaks into six districts, and the first fifty-six cases run through all of them. Your own detective never speaks. David Jones, your partner, does the talking and repeats your ideas out loud.

Two street gangs, the Vipers and the Skulls, drive the opening story. Behind them sits a secret society that surfaces much later. However, none of that matters until the tapping loop feels natural under your thumb.

What the Crime Scene Search and Clue System Does

Each crime scene is a painted room packed with objects, and a list at the bottom names what you need. You tap items on that list to bank points and clear the scene. Some finds are ordinary props. Others turn into clues that move the investigation forward.

Clues then split into two paths. First, you examine them yourself in a small mini game, such as unscrambling a torn photo. Then you hand biological or technical samples to Grace Delaney for autopsy work or to Nathan Pandit and Alex Turner in the lab. Because those specialists return attributes rather than names, the hidden object game and the deduction sit on the same rail.

The Grimsborough Setting, the Vipers, and the Crimson Order

Grimsborough is laid out like a rain soaked version of New York, and the six districts each carry their own story arc. The Industrial Area covers cases 1 to 11 and belongs to a gang war between the Vipers and the Skulls. Later districts move you into finance, an old historical quarter, a university, the suburbs of Maple Heights and finally the airport.

That district order is not decoration. Each block of cases builds toward one antagonist, and the arcs stack into a city wide conspiracy involving a secret society called the Crimson Order. For example, a name you question casually in the docks can reappear forty cases later with a motive attached. Consequently, skipping the Additional Investigation chapters costs you real story, not just rewards.

Criminal Case vs June’s Journey and Hidden City on Android

June’s Journey from Wooga and Hidden City from G5 Entertainment are the two closest Android rivals, and both take a softer route. June’s Journey wraps its hidden object scenes in a 1920s estate builder, so a large share of your time goes into decorating an island. Hidden City leans supernatural, with magic, creatures and a long chain of monthly events.

The split comes down to what surrounds the searching. This title keeps almost everything inside the forensic loop, so a session is scene, sample, suspect, arrest. By contrast, Seekers Notes and June’s Journey both ask you to manage a base between searches. Players who want procedural crime stories rather than home decoration will prefer the Grimsborough approach, although the darker murders make it a worse fit for younger players.

The Android Version Against the Facebook and Windows Versions

The same detective career runs on Android, iOS, Facebook in a browser and Windows through the Microsoft Store, and Facebook login carries your progress between them. Touch controls actually suit this genre better than a mouse, since a fingertip covers small props quickly and combo timing rewards fast taps.

One difference matters more than any other. The energy bar does not sync across devices, so a drained mobile bar leaves your desktop bar untouched at 110. Additionally, the premium Cash currency only exists on the desktop version, while phone players buy the same instant analyses and energy items directly as in-app purchases. Alternating between a laptop and a phone therefore doubles your daily play time at no cost.

Crime Scene Controls, Combos, and Medal Scoring

Tapping a listed item in a crime scene adds points and extends your combo multiplier. A wrong tap subtracts points and breaks the chain.

Speed alone will not carry a score. Precision does, because the multiplier climbs only while consecutive taps land on real targets. New players tend to stab at the screen and wonder why their totals stall.

Score decides stars, and stars pay for every task in the investigation. Medals sit above that as a quality record for each crime scene. Moreover, those gold medals control when your first police pets become available, so early sloppiness has a cost that shows up hours later.

Tapping Clues Without Losing Points on Misses

Random tapping is the most expensive habit in this hidden object game. Every miss removes points and resets the combo you were building. Slowing down by half a second per item usually raises a final score more than rushing ever does.

Work the list in the order that suits the scene rather than the order printed on screen. First, sweep the corners and edges, where artists hide thin silhouettes against clutter. Then take the center, which is busier but easier to scan once the frame is clear. If a single item resists you for more than ten seconds, spend a hint instead of burning the clock, because time pressure costs more than the booster does.

Combo Chains and the Three Medal Tiers

The combo multiplier is the difference between a two star run and a five star run. Consecutive correct finds raise it step by step, and a miss drops it back to the floor. Skilled players deliberately pause on hard items to protect a live chain rather than guessing.

Medals arrive in bronze, silver and gold tiers depending on the final score of each scene. Gold medals do not carry over between seasons, so the count you build in Grimsborough belongs to Grimsborough alone. Because pet shops read that total, chasing gold on early Industrial Area scenes pays better than chasing it later.

What Happens After You Solve a Crime Scene

Finishing a scene awards stars, coins and XP, and a short results panel breaks the total down. Your chosen teammate appears here too, since the partner hint bonus applies during the search itself. Any adopted police pet then searches the scene once more and may return coins, energy, XP or lucky cards.

Stars land in a small counter attached to the current case. They do not transfer between cases, so unspent stars at the moment of an arrest are simply gone. As a result, experienced players spend down to zero before naming the killer.

How to Unlock New Cases With Reports and Stars

Case unlocking in Criminal Case runs on two separate gates, and both must clear before the next investigation appears. Stars earned in crime scenes pay for autopsies, lab analysis and interrogations, while three case reports act as the final key.

Most beginners only notice the first gate. They grind scenes, spend stars, arrest the killer, then find the next marker on the district map still closed.

Reports are the missing piece, and they come from teammates or from Jones himself. This gate is also the single most common reason a solo player stalls halfway through the Industrial Area. Understanding both locks turns this Criminal Case walkthrough from a list of tips into a working plan.

How the Three Case Reports Work

Reports are social items requested from teammates, meaning other players connected to your account. Three of them open the next case during a long stretch of the season. Jones fills one in himself if nobody answers within a day, which keeps solo accounts moving at a slower pace.

Build a teammate list early even if you do not care about leaderboards. Ten active teammates make reports arrive within minutes instead of overnight. In addition, those same teammates send daily energy gifts, so the social layer pays twice for one setup.

Spending Stars on Autopsies and Lab Analysis

Every investigation task carries a star price. Sending a body to Grace Delaney for autopsy costs stars, and so does unlocking a new crime scene, questioning a suspect, or handing a sample to the lab. Stars come only from crime scene runs, which is why energy and progress are the same resource wearing two hats.

Analysis then runs on a real time clock of roughly three to twelve hours depending on the sample. The counter keeps ticking while the app is closed. Therefore the correct order is always the same: spend stars on every timed task first, then spend the rest on interrogations and scene unlocks while the lab works.

Additional Investigation Chapters After the Arrest

An Additional Investigation chapter opens after most arrests, and it acts as an epilogue rather than filler. You revisit innocent suspects, help them with small problems and tie up loose story threads from the district arc. Rewards include coins, energy items, XP and avatar clothing handed over by grateful characters.

Several of these chapters cost stars to open, especially across the first twenty-six cases. The very first case is the only one where the chapter stays fully optional. Skipping them saves a little time, but you lose free outfits and the connective story that makes the later Crimson Order reveal land properly.

How to Unlock Police Pets, Boosters, and Avatar Items

Police pets in Criminal Case unlock through gold medals rather than coins alone, and six pet shops sit across the Grimsborough districts. Each shop opens after you earn a set number of gold medals, and coins then buy the pet.

Boosters follow a different key. They arrive at level 5 and stay purchasable with coins from that point on.

Avatar items work on a third track again, tied to level milestones and to gifts from cleared suspects. All three systems drain the same coin pile, so spending order matters early. Pets generally repay their price fastest, because they generate resources after every single crime scene rather than during one run.

Gold Medals and the Six Police Pet Shops

The six pet shops appear in sequence as your gold medal count rises, and later shops sell better animals at higher prices. A pet searches each finished crime scene and has a chance to return coins, XP, energy, orange juice, potato chips or lucky cards. Some pets also speed up star fills on strong scores.

Treat the first pet as an economy purchase rather than a cosmetic one. Because it triggers after every scene, a cheap early pet compounds across hundreds of searches. Most competing articles list pets as decoration, yet the gold medal requirement makes them a direct reward for scoring well in the Industrial Area.

Buying Hints, Magnifiers, and Combo Starters With Coins

Three boosters open at level 5, and each one costs coins per use. The hint booster points at a listed item, the magnifier reveals a target instantly, and the combo starter begins your run with a multiplier already active. Buying them mid scene is possible, though the coin drain adds up quickly.

Save the combo starter for scenes you are replaying for a gold medal. Hints belong in first attempts, where a single stubborn object can wreck your time. If you buy a booster and then change your mind, closing the app before starting the scene returns both the coins and the energy.

Avatar Shop Items Tied to Your Level

The Avatar Shop unlocks new clothing and accessories as your level climbs, and innocent suspects hand over extra outfits during Additional Investigation chapters. Your detective is customizable from the tutorial onward, including body, skin tone, hair and clothing.

Nothing here changes performance, so treat it as a coin sink for later. New players should feed coins into pets and boosters first. Once the reward economy runs itself, spending on appearance costs you nothing meaningful, and the game deliberately keeps the character gender neutral so other characters address you as a rank rather than a name.

How Ranks, XP, and Lucky Cards Work in Grimsborough

Ranks in Criminal Case sit on top of levels, and levels come from XP earned in every chapter, interrogation and lab result. Lucky Cards run alongside that track as a collectible set of four suits, traded in for boosters once a full flush is complete.

Levelling does more than change a number beside your avatar. Each level up refills the energy bar to 110 instantly, which makes it the most valuable free refill in the game.

Ranks then arrive at set levels and trigger shareable rewards for your teammates. Meanwhile the card collection quietly stockpiles hints and multipliers for the scenes where you actually need them.

XP, Levels, and Rank Promotions

XP flows from nearly every action: examining clues, questioning suspects, reading lab results and finishing chapters. Once the bar fills, you level up and your energy tops back to 110 automatically. Note that the refill fills up to the cap rather than adding on top of it.

This creates a timing trick worth using daily. If your level bar sits nearly full, run scenes until it flips while your energy is low, and you effectively convert progress into a free bar. Rank promotions come at specific levels and let you share potato chips with teammates, who often return a lucky card as thanks.

Collecting Lucky Card Suits for a Royal Flush

Lucky Cards arrive from teammates, from daily activity and from certain police pets after a scene. They come in four suits, and completing a Royal Flush in one suit lets you trade the set for a fixed reward. Diamonds return 20 XP, spades give a x6 combo starter, hearts give five hints, and clubs give an instant magnifier.

Storage is capped, so hoarding backfires. Trade completed sets as soon as they finish rather than sitting on them. For example, banking a spades flush before a gold medal attempt turns an average replay into a strong one at zero coin cost.

Replaying Solved Scenes for Elite Rings

Every crime scene stays open after the case closes, and each one keeps a personal high score. Elite Mode adds a second tier of collectibles on top of the medals, in the shape of bronze, silver and gold rings for replayed scenes. Completionists chase them long after the arrest.

Rings serve a practical purpose too. Because replays at five stars cost a fraction of a fresh search, ring hunting is the cheapest XP and coin activity available. Players who want a long tail after the story therefore have hundreds of scored runs waiting across the six districts.

Energy Bar Errors Most New Grimsborough Detectives Make

The energy bar in Criminal Case holds 110 points, and one fresh crime scene search costs 20 of them. That maths gives a full bar roughly five investigations before the waiting starts.

Nearly every complaint about this game traces back to that number. Yet three specific habits waste far more energy than the cap itself does.

Fixing them changes the pace of the whole season. First, the replay discount goes unnoticed by most players. Second, the Daily Bonus streak gets broken constantly. Third, real money leaks into timers that would have expired during sleep anyway.

Burning 20 Energy on Scenes Already Worth Five Stars

Here is the number almost nobody prints. A crime scene already sitting at five stars costs only 5 energy to replay, not the usual 20. That is a quarter price on every star you still need for autopsies, interrogations and scene unlocks.

The practical routine follows directly. Push one scene to five stars, then farm that scene repeatedly instead of spreading energy across fresh rooms. A full bar therefore stretches from about five searches to roughly twenty, and the extra runs also feed medals, pet finds and XP toward the next free refill.

Skipping the Daily Bonus Streak and Ad Refills

The Daily Bonus sits behind a gift icon on the map screen, and the reward scales with consecutive days played. Day one pays 1,000 coins. Once the streak passes five consecutive days, it pays 50 energy every single day, which is nearly half a bar for one tap.

Missing a day resets you to the opening coin reward, so a two minute login beats a long absence. Rewarded video ads add another 20 energy each, and watching a couple during lab downtime costs nothing but attention. As a result, disciplined free players rarely sit idle for long, although the reset time of 00:00 UTC catches out anyone playing late in the evening.

Paying to Skip Lab Timers You Could Sleep Through

Instant analysis exists for a reason, and there are moments when it is worth it. Most beginners misuse it anyway. A sample that returns in twelve hours started at bedtime costs nothing at all in practice.

Build your session around that reality. Start the longest analysis last thing at night, close the app and collect the result with breakfast. Save paid instant results for the rare occasion when a single missing attribute stands between you and an arrest you want to finish tonight. Similarly, energy items are better spent during a level up push than sprinkled randomly across a slow afternoon.

How to Name the Killer From the Killer’s Profile

Every clue you analyze adds one attribute to the killer’s profile, such as right-handed, wears a blue cap, or wears the number nine. You then compare that profile against your suspect list and arrest the only person who matches every line.

Attributes come from three places: autopsy results, lab reports and answers given during interrogations. Some suspects reveal a trait simply by talking to you.

The deduction is genuinely fair. No case hides a killer who never appeared, and the profile always narrows to exactly one person. Because a wrong arrest carries a real cost, patience beats guessing every time.

Reading Attributes Like Right-Handed and Blue Cap

Attributes split into physical traits, habits and possessions. Physical traits like right-handed or a blood type come from autopsy and lab work. Habits and possessions, such as a preferred drink or a team jersey, usually surface during interrogation.

Cross out suspects as each attribute lands rather than waiting for the full list. Two attributes often reduce five suspects to two, which tells you exactly which sample to prioritise next. Consequently, the star spending order should follow the profile rather than the map, since one well chosen analysis can end a case faster than three cheap interrogations.

Why a Wrong Arrest Costs Stars With No Refund

Naming the wrong suspect does not simply throw up an error message. The stars you spent on that arrest are gone, with no refund, and you must earn more before trying again. That is why the profile exists as a checklist rather than a hint.

Treat the final arrest as the last thing you do, not the first thing you attempt. Confirm every attribute against your chosen suspect, then commit. Judge Hall passes sentence afterward, and the length of that sentence depends on the evidence quality rather than on your speed.

Red Herrings Like Ash Bison in the First Case

The Death of Rosa Wolf sets the template on purpose. A young woman is found with her throat slashed at the Grimsborough sign, and two suspects emerge. Ash Bison, a Vipers gang member with an abrasive attitude, looks obviously guilty.

Matt Barry, a 24 year old football player, is the actual killer, and the blue cap plus the number nine jersey give him away. The lesson carries through all fifty-six cases: attitude is not evidence. Ash Bison then returns in the Additional Investigation chapter, which is a neat demonstration that innocent suspects stay part of the story instead of vanishing.

Best Criminal Case Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Autopsy and lab analysis timers run in real time, between three and twelve hours depending on the sample. They keep counting while the app is closed and while your phone is locked.

That single fact should shape how you play. Sessions work best in two short visits per day rather than one long grind.

Teammate choice, energy pacing and district planning fill in the rest. Each of the habits below targets a specific pressure point in this hidden object game, from the partner hint bonus inside a crime scene to the uneven case counts across the six Grimsborough districts.

Starting Autopsy Timers Before You Log Off

Order of operations beats raw playtime here. Run scenes until you can afford the autopsy or the lab analysis, start it, then close the app. Your remaining stars can go toward interrogations and new scene unlocks while the clock runs in the background.

Getting this wrong wastes hours. A player who spends every star on questioning suspects and only then discovers a twelve hour analysis has effectively paused their own case overnight. For example, in a case with two timed samples, starting both before bed usually saves a full day of progress.

Picking the Teammate Hint Bonus That Fits the Scene

Before each crime scene, you choose a teammate to join the search, and that choice provides a hint bonus during the run. Higher level teammates supply more hints. Story characters such as Jones are available too, with Jones offering a single hint from level 10.

Match the partner to the room rather than picking the first face on the list. Cluttered interiors with heavy shading justify the strongest hint partner you have. Save weaker teammates for clean, well lit scenes you already know, since hints are wasted where you can find everything unaided.

Pacing Energy Against Each District’s Case Count

The six districts are not equal in size, and knowing that shapes your week. The Industrial Area carries 11 cases, the Financial Center, Historical Center, University and Maple Heights carry 10 each, and the Airport closes the season with 5. Fifty-six cases sit in the city in total.

Longer districts reward a steady rhythm rather than binge sessions. Because energy caps at 110, four short logins spread across a day out-produce one long evening every time. The short Airport run at the end is where the Crimson Order story pays off, so save your stockpiled energy items for that stretch rather than spending them in the docks.

Frequently Asked Questions About Criminal Case

Is Criminal Case free to play on Android?

Yes. Criminal Case is free on Android, with optional in-app purchases for energy items and instant lab results. The developer sets a minimum age of 13 in its terms, and the Android release has been on Google Play since April 2015. No part of the story sits behind a paywall.

How long does it take to finish a case?

Most cases run around nine scenes plus bonus rooms, so one case fills two or three short sessions for a free player. Clearing the whole first city takes months at that pace, since the energy cap limits daily play. Difficulty stays steady throughout, although later cases simply contain more moving parts.

Can you replay crime scenes for a better score?

Yes, and replays are where high scores actually happen. Every scene keeps its own leaderboard against your teammates, which turns repeat runs into a small competition rather than pure grinding. Elite rings add a second collectible target on top of medals, giving completionists a reason to revisit rooms long after the arrest.

Who Should Add Criminal Case to Their Phone

Grimsborough suits patient players who enjoy story-driven hidden object work more than fast reflexes. Fans of June’s Journey will feel at home, though the tone here runs far darker and the murders get genuinely grim. I played the Industrial Area across a week of short sessions, and the twist waiting near the end of Maple Heights honestly caught me off guard. Skip it if real time timers annoy you, because autopsies really do run for hours. Anyone who wants a long crime story on a phone, with no money required to finish it, should install it and start with Rosa Wolf.