- New DLC "The Battalion" Announced! - 20 July 2026
Surprise! The time has finally come to reveal the secret. We’re incredibly excited to introduce The Battalion - the brand-new DLC for The Darkest Files and our biggest and darkest case yet.WISHLIST NOW!🎮 NEW gameplay mechanics🕵️♀️ MORE Interactions with the Bauer-Team🗺️ NEW places to explore A huge thank you to everyone who has been with us on this journey so far! Your curiosity, feedback, and support have allowed us to keep working on The Darkest Files, and for that we are incredibly grateful.To everyone who has been waiting, following along, and speculating: We can’t wait to put this special case into your hands! Stay tuned and don't forget:Wishlist HERE!Love,The Paintbuckets 🧡
- Steam Summer Sale is here! - 26 June 2026
Hi everyone,We're joining the Steam Summer Sale once again this year!After this sale, we're gearing up to announce some big news 🕵️♀️ We can't share any details just yet, but we're already excited to tell you more very soon.So if you need a companion for your summer vacation: from June 25 to July 9, The Darkest Files is available at 35% off.And if you'd like to take the investigation with you on the go, The Darkest Files is also available on Steam Deck.A huge thank you to everyone who has joined us on this journey and supported us along the way. We truly appreciate your enthusiasm and encouragement. 🧡Try not to burn your fingers while playing!The Paintbuckets
- We've won THE German Video Game Award! - 30 April 2026
Hi folks,We still can't believe it, but The Darkest Files really won THE German Video Game Award (DCP) in the categories Best Serious Game and Best German Game! 🥳We are incredibly grateful to you for believing in us and supporting us every step of the way. It's only with your feedback and support that The Darkest Files became the game it is today 🧡 Also, a big thank you goes to the jury and huge congratulations to the other nominees and winners - every single one deserved the award so much!We are very tired but very, very happy and probably need a couple more days to process this amazing evening fully :DThank you, thank you, thank you!!Love,The Paintbuckets
- We're nominated for THE German Video Game Award! - 17 April 2026
We have some incredible news to announce! The Darkest Files has been nominated for THE German Video Game Award (DCP) in no less than five categories! 🥳⚖️ Best Serious Game🎲 Best Game Design 🎨 Best Graphic Design✍️ Best Story 🎮 Best German Game Thank you to the jury and congratulations to the other nominees. We're really grateful to be alongside so many great names 🧡 And if you'd like to join us in hyping up our team, visit our Discord for a watch together!Get some behind-the-scenes fun facts from the devs, cheer us on, and hopefully celebrate with us 🥳📅 When? 29th of April, 18:30 CET📍 Where? The Darkest Files Discord ServerLove,The Paintbuckets
- Watch the devs play The Darkest Files! - 11 March 2026
Dear fellow investigators🕵️♀️Something curious is happening on Steam… From March 11–18, we’re part of the Curious Odyssey Steam Event! With 30% off on The Darkest Files.So... If you'd like to take a break, lose yourself in great stories, and forget the burning world outside for a moment, then check out the great titles featured in the Curious Odyssey Sale. ✨All the best,The Paintbuckets
- Fun, Dark & Cozy Steam Event - 3 February 2026
Hi everyone,We're part of the Fun, Dark & Cozy Steam event! Check out the amazing games that are fun, dark, or cozy (or all three?) - where would you put us?Also, did you see the version update of The Darkest Files? We fixed achievement issues and brought back some missing VFX! Best,The Paintbuckets
- Version 1.0.8.2 - Achievement Fix - 30 January 2026
Hi folks, We just updated The Darkest Files to fix the issue where some of you weren't getting the "Silver Tongue" achievement. We really appreciate your patience with this one 🧡 Also, the VFX that disappeared in the last version are back! Thank you to everyone who reported the bug and helped us to find the issue! If you still encounter any bugs, we’re definitely interested in knowing about them. Don’t hesitate to press F5 in-game and write a quick report, so we can fix it as soon as possible. Love, The Paintbuckets
- Demo Update & Detective Fest Sale - 12 January 2026
Surprise! Just in time for the Steam Detective Fest, we updated our The Darkest Files demo. This is a brand-new demo released in January 2026, and it replaces the very dated one from 2023. 🕵️That makes now the perfect time to try out The Darkest Files! And if you decide to buy it: it is currently 30% off - our biggest discount yet! 🥳Do you enjoy searching for clues, collecting evidence, and combining your findings? Don’t forget to check out the other awesome detective games featured in the Steam Detective Fest. 🔍Happy investigating,The Paintbuckets 🧡
- German Developer Award 2025 - 4 December 2025
We still can’t believe it! Last night was the DEP, and we are so happy and grateful to have won in the two categories “Best Game Design” and “Best Game Beyond Entertainment” 🥳Especially because the other contenders had such amazing projects as well! Shoutout to "Deine Stimme", "Rascal's Escape", "Herdling", and our friends "Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders".Thank you to the jury and the whole organization team of the award show, it’s always a great joy to be at the industry Christmas party! 🎄Also, a big thanks to you, our community, because without your valuable feedback during playtests, The Darkest Files would not be the game it is today.Lastly, perhaps most importantly, since the cases we investigate in our game are based on real crimes and their proceedings, we want to thank all the lawyers, judges, and prosecutors who, though often sadly in vain, worked hard to bring the true perpet…
- The Darkest Files on Gamescom's Opening Night Live! - 19 August 2025
Surprise! We’re proud to share that The Darkest Files was part of a very special Gamescom moment: The Opening Night Live show. Jörg Friedrich, one of our CEO’s, was invited to speak on stage about The Darkest Files and the important role games can play in strengthening our democracy.At this year’s Gamescom, The Darkest Files is part of a collaboration with other awesome indie titles: the “Games for Democracy” booth by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). We are grateful for this opportunity, because as Jörg said:“Games are more than entertainment - like any great art form, they reflect our concerns, our fears, and what preoccupies us. Democracy is under attack, minority rights are being violated, and the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Games are a powerful medium for addressing these issues, and they have the potential to inspire change.”For us, The Darkes…
- The Darkest Files goes Gamescom! - 15 August 2025
We’re back at Gamescom in Cologne - Find us in the Indie-Arena! 🕵️🔍This year, The Darkest Files is part of a very special collaboration alongside other awesome indie titles: the “Games for Democracy” booth by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).📍 Meet us here in Hall 10.02 and play games about past and current politics, democracy, its challenges, and its importance. Check out our fantastic booth mates: Glasshouse, Compensation Not Guaranteed, Media Circus, and Take us North.💬 Community Meetup! If you are reading this, thank you! You are part of our valued community, and we want to invite you to a small and cozy community meetup. Join us at our booth on Thursday at 2 pm, come chat with us devs and fellow community members at our booth, and grab some special merch - we’re excited to meet you! Of course, you are welcome to stop by at any other time as well.🏆 Award New…
- Version 1.0.8.1 - 4 August 2025
Dear prosecutors! We’ve been made aware by some of you that it wasn’t possible to load a savegame in the epilogue-chapter since our last patch. This was a result of a bugfix related to the Notebook. So, today we’re pushing a hotfix that lets you load epilogue-savegames again. Thank you very much for the bug reports about this! If you still encounter any bugs, we’re definitely interested in knowing about them! So don’t hesitate to press F5 and write a quick report, so we can fix it as soon as possible. See you in court! Your Paintbucket team.
- Version 1.0.8 - 17 July 2025
Hey dear prosecutors, It is patch time again! This is a relatively small update that fixes a couple of minor issues and a couple of spelling errors. Something bigger is in the making, read the end of the note for more info on what we are cooking. Changes & Fixes Updated the “Report a bug” menu with additional (optional) input fields for email and discord user names. You can fill these out when submitting a bug report if you want us to allow us to get in touch with you regarding further details. Fixed a bug in the main menu which resulted in certain options not being selectable with a controller, in languages other than English. Fixed a bug which resulted in Characters from The Insurgent appearing inside the Notebook during The Looter Fixed various spelling errors in English and German Not in this patch yet: Optimization & Nintendo Switch We are currently working on porting the game to t…
- Steam Summer Sale is here! - 26 June 2025
Hi everyone,We’re part of the Steam Summer Sale! If you've been waiting for the right moment to jump into the investigation, this is it ☀️The Darkest Files is 20% off from June 26th to July 10th - our greatest discount so far!And if you want to enjoy the warm weather outside, The Darkest Files also runs on Steam Deck 🕵️♀️Also, we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has already written a review, this helps our visibility and motivates us so much!See you in court,The Paintbuckets 🧡
- Version 1.0.7 - 28 May 2025
Hello, dear prosecutors! We once again have a new patch for you to make some improvements, fix bugs, typos and grammar issues reported by you all. Thank you very much for all the reports when you find bugs. They really help us a lot to make The Darkest Files the best it can be as we continue supporting the game. If you encounter a bug or any inconvenience while playing the game, don’t hesitate to press F5 and write a bug report. We are also on a continuous quest to make major performance optimizations which will make the game run on much less powerful hardware via a future patch so if you’ve been getting game crashes, rest assured that we’re on the case! Changes Improved the viewing angle when in a kitchen talk with Simon Peters Fixed missing comic panel text in Naumann case Fixed an issue where the bullet hole and the graffiti above the mattress in the insurgent case were not highlight…
- Remembrance and Reflection & Game Availability - 8 May 2025
Remembrance and Reflection: May 8th - The Anniversary of Nazi Germany's Defeat Today marks the anniversary of May 8th, 1945 - the day that Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered, ending the Second World War in Europe. This pivotal moment in history not only liberated Europe from fascism but continues to shape our society and our collective responsibilities today. For us at Paintbucket Games, this day of remembrance holds profound significance. Through our work, particularly with The Darkest Files, we strive to keep historical memory alive by telling stories of those who fought for justice and human dignity during and after one of humanity's darkest chapters. We believe that understanding our past is crucial to ensuring such horrors are never forgotten nor repeated. We're deeply grateful to everyone who has joined us on this journey - for playing our games, sharing your impressions, an…
- Version 1.0.6 - 16 April 2025
Hello, dear prosecutors! Today, we've got a new patch for you. This patch contains improvements to the notebook and adds a certain detail in a document to make things a little more consistent. We’ve also fixed all the most urgent and some more minor bugs and issues that you all have reported to us on the forums, our discord server, or the in-game bug report tool which can be opened via F5. Thank you very much to everyone who has been reporting issues in the game to us. Your reports enable us to improve the experience for everyone. We are still supporting this game with fixes and always look at every new bug report coming in, so if you find any issue in the game, we’d be grateful if you could press F5 and write a quick note describing the issue. Thanks again for all the continued support, See you in court! Changes Made certain documents more consistent in the Insurgent Case. (Thanks, Sta…
- Big Balancing Patch & Trading Cards! - 9 April 2025
Hey folks, 📢 Thank you so much for all your support and reviews, this means a lot to us! We also heard your valid critique and are excited to announce this big balancing patch of The Darkest Files. But before I tell you more about the update, we also want to share that we now have Trading Cards! You can now collect and trade the whole team of Mr. Bauer, plus the cat Marlene. 😻 🔍 Patch 1.0.5 was released on April 8 and is a major update that adds a lot of possible solutions for conclusions and interruptions, making the game less strict and more open to different ways of thinking. We also added a new difficulty mode for a more balanced experience. The changes in detail are as follows: Adjusted the difficulty of Investigator Mode to make it a little easier. (Removed the requirement to specify the paragraph in a given document and enabled the counter in the testimonies that shows how man…
- Version 1.0.5 - 7 April 2025
This is a major balance patch which adds a lot of possible solutions for conclusions and interruptions, making the game less strict and more open to different ways of thinking. We also added a new difficulty mode in between the easy and hard difficulty for a more balanced experience. Dear prosecutors, After watching a lot of you play and make reviews and community posts regarding the game’s difficulty, we’ve carefully taken notes and created a major balancing patch. The game is a lot less strict about what it considers the correct solution now as we’ve added many alternative combinations for conclusions as well as many more alternative correct solutions for interruptions during witness interviews. Many of the steps can be solved with more ways of thinking than we realized initially, and this patch addresses this. Furthermore, after watching people struggle with the difficulty selection…
- Version 1.0.4.4 - 31 March 2025
Thank you for your continued support! We're excited to bring you this new update with several improvements and bug fixes: Changes Changed the unlock requirements of the "Fledgeling" and "Respectable Result" so they can be unlocked when having more of the required steps to unlock. Bugfixes Fixed an issue where the achievements "Silver Tongue" & "Argumentative" would not unlock Fixed an issue which prevents an epilogue Save game to load, which has been used to play through other cases Fixed an issue where opening the Steam Overlay with the default binding also opened the ingame Radial Menu. Fixed an issue where the Interruption could get clicked away instantly. Fixed an issue where the research option for Call Protocols wouldn't trigger properly in Emilia Becker's and Otto Wagner's Testimony Fixed an issue where the option to ask Paula about Peters would sometimes not appear properly in t…
