Best murder mystery games that let you play detective

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as Sherlock Holmes, here are the games for you

Whether you’re into Poirot or Diagnosis Murder, it’s always nice to get to the bottom of a mystery before the credits roll. However, there is a way to be in charge of the investigation. By taking the murder mystery to gaming, you put on the detective’s hat, find clues and piece them all together at your pace. If that’s your style, then read on to find out the 10 best murder mystery games of all time. 

Disco Elysium

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Disco Elysium is a game like no other, even the ones on this list. It mixes together racial identities, accents, and dialects to give you a feeling of both familiarity, and simultaneously confusion. While the detective you control has a name, a body, and a face, but all aspects of his personality are up to you. You can choose to have a charming silver-tongue, or to beat the answers out of people. Both paths are just as valid. If you want the real detective experience, where no method is better than another, then this is the game for you.

Return of the Obra Dinn

If one murder sounds too easy to solve, then how about 60? As you board the ship, The Obra Dinn, you can see a snapshot of how the 60 people on board lost their lives. Detailing what happened to each, every three murders solved correctly will check it off your list. Each snapshot isn’t enough to give you all the clues as you travel back and forth placing the pieces together. While an insurance broker is not as flashy a title as detective, you’ll have your work cut out for you finding out what happened aboard the Obra Dinn.

Zero Escape

Zero Escape is a series of three games that mix murder mystery detective work, with escape room-style puzzles. The first game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, is the soft entry to the series, because, as the name suggests, there are only nine escape room puzzles to solve. However, the unique part of this game is that you can jump back and forth, make different decisions, and see how those work out. The series peaks at Virtue’s Last Reward, which has the most intricate, intertwining timelines, giving you endless clues you need to piece together.

Danganronpa

In Danganronpa you are an exceptional student locked inside a school with 15 other exceptional students, all desperate to escape. However, the only way anyone is able to leave is by murdering another classmate, and getting away with it in a trial of their peers. However, your classmates always seem incapable of working it out, so it’s down to you to figure out the murderer in each case. The best part of Danganronpa is how it constantly surprises you, all the way through to the third entry.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Phoenix Wright is the classic game when you think of murder mysteries, though as the title tells you, Wright is a lawyer not a detective. However, unlike in real life, he goes to the scene of the crime, collects clues, and stitches the whole story together in court. The original trilogy has dated a bit, it can be frustrating getting your point across when the judge wants you to be so specific, but with the collection’s quick save feature, you don’t have to let it get you down. Give it a try and see how you can handle the courtroom.

AI: The Somnium Files

The sequel Nirvana Initiative released last year, and the developer was kind enough to separate the two stories, you can start with either and you won’t be subjected to spoilers from the other. The twist in Somnium Files is that you can control an AI to go through someone’s memories to extract key parts of information that will help you solve the case. While each clue leads to the next part of the story, there are overarching themes that you can piece together right from the start. 

Immortality

The most modern game on this list, Immortality sees you search through the footage of three unreleased films from the same actress who has since gone missing. As you watch scenes, rehearsals, and behind-the-scenes footage, you get to know more about her, and her relationships with other people on the film crews. Like Zero Escape, you will have to connect together clues from all three films, to find out what happened to her, and where she is now.

The Wolf Among Us

The Wolf Among Us has that gorgeous graphic novel art style like all Telltale games, and is based on the Fable series of comics. Each character is based on classic fairy tales, and you must investigate and interrogate throughout the town. Despite the childish basis for the characters, it takes on the dark tone of a film noir, and is much more mature and thrilling than even a Grimm Brothers tale. Less about finding clues, and more about making the right choices, and each has a bearing on the story.

Professor Layton

The most Holmesian of all of these choices, while Professor Layton isn’t always solving a murder, there is always a compelling mystery at the core of the story. Seemingly, wherever Layton goes, he’s surrounded by people who are just really into puzzles, and they’ll give you a clue if you solve one. These aren’t your usual video game puzzles. They are old-school puzzles, like the riddle of the sphinx or a river crossing puzzle, that are sure to have you scratching your head.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

This is one of the harder games to get hold of due to its age, and that it was a DS exclusive, but it’s also charming for the way it connects to murder mystery games’ point-and-click roots. It’s unique in that you play holding it vertically like a book, and it uses all of the DS’ gimmicks like the microphone and closing the console in order to play. As you uncover the mysteries of the Hotel Dusk you must complete boss fight-style interrogations which can end in the investigation’s failure if handled incorrectly.