It was seven o’clock in the morning and you could tell from the aroma of coffee rising in the air like decomposition gas from a long-dead stiff. Detective McKeand was thinking the case over, pouring over the clues as the rain tapped on his window. “What are the best detective games?” he asked himself. The answer came to him like a shotgun slug through the eye socket.
There they were, the best murder mystery games, dancing in his peripheral vision like ocular floaters after too many whiskeys. The pieces were all there, and now he just had to put them together in some kind of list format – people like their information digestible, see? Nobody wants facts that fester in the gut like reheated takeout. He’d show them. He’d show them all.
Ahem, here are the best detective games.
Return of the Obra Dinn
Don’t be put off by its ‘1-bit’ monochromatic graphical style inspired by early Macintosh games – Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the best mystery games ever made. You start the game by boarding the Obra Dinn, a ship whose crew has disappeared. It’s up to you to find out why. There’s very little hand-holding here, and that’s what makes it so satisfying. You find the crew’s bodies, see a vignette of their death play out, and use the other clues you have to deduce who everyone is from the ship’s logs.
The Wolf Among Us
The only game you’ll likely ever play where ‘glass them’ is offered as an option alongside dialogue responses, The Wolf Among Us places you in the shoes of the Big Bad Wolf, a famous detective in the world of this dark fairy tale. It’s pure noir, opening up with Bigby Wolf receiving a severed head in a parcel at his door. You never have all the answers, and there’s usually only a choice between ‘bad’ and ‘slightly less bad’, but you still feel like a detective peeling back the layers of a case. Sometimes you just have to blow the house down (or smash a pint glass into some goon’s face).
L.A. Noire
The facial animations in this game were revolutionary at launch. These days, it might seem like everyone’s chewing on an entire packet of dry crackers when they’re talking, but these exaggerated expressions are key to the game. You see, this one’s all about reading people – every facial tic, every chew on a wasp. When you’re not doing that, you’re free to explore a gorgeous recreation of ’40s Los Angeles.
Disco Elysium
Don’t mind the vomit and urine on your shoes, pal. It’s just another day in the life of a deadbeat cop who loves narcotics and might die of a heart attack if you try to reach for his tie, which is somehow hanging from the ceiling fan. Disco Elysium starts small, asking you to find a missing shoe, but it soon opens up into a proper murder mystery game, where you’re tasked with finding out who killed the guy hanging from the tree behind the hotel you’re staying in. Mind you, you could just as easily leave the body up there and figure out who you are, hunt some cryptids, or befriend a kid to score amphetamines instead.
Her Story
Her Story doesn’t tell you anything at the start. It’s just you and a computer filled with video files. Using this database, you enter specific keywords and find clips associated with the words until you eventually form a picture of the mystery in your head. Using actual actors instead of video game graphics, it’s as voyeuristic as video games get.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Witchers are monster hunters, which might mean they don’t immediately spring to mind when you think of the best detective games. But The Witcher 3 is all about solving mysteries, and you can absolutely mess them up if you’re not paying enough attention. It doesn’t matter so long as you’re getting paid and you’re playing one of the best RPGs ever made.
Batman: Arkham Knight
Batman also goes by the moniker “the world’s greatest detective” in the DC universe, so we’d basically have to punch ourselves repeatedly in the groin if we didn’t include him here in some fashion. Mind you, if I did repeatedly punch myself in the groin and Batman came along to study the aftermath, he’d be able to tell that I died of blunt force trauma to the privates. He’d use his X-ray vision and see my gonads all smashed up. He’d send me to Arkham Asylum. What a legend.
Hypnospace Outlaw
Welcome to the internet before it went bad and let guys write lists about punching themselves in the groin – an internet predating monkey JPGs and duck face selfies. A better, purer time. Inspired by GeoCities, you’re trawling through a simulated net searching for illegal activities, breaching firewalls, and cracking passwords as you go.
Paradise Killer
Explore a vivid, otherworldly tropical island at your own pace and try to link together clues in the aftermath of a mass murder. Wildly original and stunningly gorgeous, Paradise Killer is another great detective game that lets you get things wrong, and where a single piece of evidence can challenge everything you thought was true.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Much like Batman, Sherlock is another guy we’d have to sacrifice our groin area for. There are a bunch of Sherlock games, but this one is easily the best. It won’t tell you whether you’re on the right track or not. Instead, you have to physically connect synapses together in Sherlock’s mind, tying people to events, before questioning subjects and making accusations, even if you’re wildly off track.
Backbone
You’re a raccoon. The wife of a missing mouse hires you to investigate his disappearance, and there’s an upmarket cocktail bar in town where they might be killing and eating patrons. Any accumulated detective game fatigue you might have weighing you down until this point is firmly shaken loose by Eggnut’s Backbone, which looks almost like it came from the beige age of PC point-and-clicks, but has a lot more up its sleeve. The puzzles here won’t stump you for days, and the twists and turns are ever-more preposterous. But the story can withstand that beating, and maintain a genuine sense of tension and intrigue until the very end.
Unheard
We all know how a traditional mystery is solved. The detective investigates the crime scene, talks to some of the witnesses, and then gathers everyone in the most dramatic location possible to accuse someone. However, you won’t be able to do any of those things in Unheard. All you get is a birds-eye view of the crime scene, with outlines of people wandering around.
Your job is to listen to their conversations to solve the crime. This means not only do you have to work out who done it, but who everyone is. It’s a very novel take on the genre that plays with unique scenarios. For example, you have to figure out who stole a valuable painting, but there is another plot involving a fake painting going on at the same time, so you need to follow them both around the scene to deduce who walked away with the real thing.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village
One of the breakout franchises from the original Nintendo DS, Professor Layton is stuffed to the brim with charm. Not just from Layton’s suave British accent, but from the whole quirky world. Strange people wait around every corner and they’re just desperate for you to solve some logic puzzles for them. They’re not the most challenging mystery games out there, but if you like the idea of spending a quiet afternoon puzzling away, this is right up your street.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker
Much like Her Story, The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker relies heavily on the charm of FMV content to drive the story. You are a psychiatrist interviewing patients of the recently murdered Doctor Dekker. Each patient has (or thinks they have) a strange power, making them all suspects in the murder. The game allows you to type your own questions, of which it picks out keywords to play the right responses. It’s a fun system, and the acting is the right kind of cheesy to make everything pop.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Although the Ace Attorney games are technically about proving your client’s innocence, every case involves you gathering clues to find the real killer, so Phoenix Wright may as well be a detective instead of a lawyer. This visual novel series is full of iconic moments, and it makes the war of words in the courtroom thrilling to experience.
Every case is a rollercoaster ride of twists and turns as you pick apart testimonies waiting for your chance to yell “Objection!” as loud as you can. You’ll meet the most colourful cast of characters any game has ever seen, some of which are lovable and huggable, others you’ll want to burn alive. Either way, they’re the most memorable mystery games you’ll ever play.
Written by Kirk McKeand and Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
