What are the best detective games on PC? We’ve
investigated the best detective games around, from gritty episodic
adventures to old school point and click puzzlers, all with their own
unique case-cracking mechanics.
We’ve all seen an episode of CSI or Law and Order, read a John
Grisham book, or listened to a true crime podcast, and thought, “Yeah, I
could do that, I could solve the case.” Now you can live out your best
detective dream and solve murders, cold cases, and unresolved mysteries
through the best detective games on PC – so grab your deerstalker hat
and magnifying glass, you’ll need them.
If you’re looking for a sprinkling of sci-fi on your mystery, a touch
of fantasy in your murder, or a raw police procedural, then we’ve got
you covered with our picks of the best detective games on PC.
Here are the best detective games:
- Broken Sword
- The Wolf Among Us
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
- Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
- Discworld Noir
- Grim Fandango
- L.A. Noire
- Disco Elysium
- Gemini Rue
- Return of the Obra Dinn
Broken Sword
Broken Sword isn’t quite Monkey Island in the point-and-click
adventure games rankings, but it more than makes up for its lack of
pirates, sword fights, and grog, with fiendishly clever puzzles that
you’ll spend
just long enough pondering before you figure out the correct solution.
The Broken Sword series follows George Stobbart and Nico Collard as
they are drawn into dark conspiracies and ancient plots. The writing is
sharp and charming, as George and Nico become tangled in all sorts of
villainous escapades over the course of the series, meeting and
questioning eccentric characters wherever they go. Broken Sword is a
wonderfully testing point and click adventure series, taking polite
murder and intrigue to the romantic and idyllic cobbled streets of Paris
and beyond.
The Wolf Among Us
In this iridescent noir setting where all our childhood fantasies
live together in the grimy, crime-infested Fabletown, located in a
modern day Manhattan. You take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf,
Detective Bigby. In this episodic mystery from Telltale Games it’s your
job to keep the town in order, while investigating the violent murders
of fairytale characters, using dialogue choices as your primary path to
justice.
Your
flatmate is a pig with a bad attitude, Mr Toad isn’t taking his Glamour
(an enchantment used to disguise fairytale characters from humans), and
a severed head has just shown up on your doorstep. You’ll run into
familiar characters including Snow White, the Huntsman, and Sleeping
Beauty, as you slowly unwind the mystery of the Fabletown killer. The
premise comes across a twee, but in true Telltale fashion this is a
po-faced and sombre narrative – there’s not a lot here in terms of case
work, but just like in The Walking Dead, your choices have serious and
far-reaching consequences.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This first-person exploration game tells the story of Detective Paul
Prospero and his paranormal hunt for missing boy Ethan Carter in Red
Creek Valley, Wisconsin. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter wears its Twin
Peaks and Village of the Damned influences on its sleeve, as you analyse
clues and recreate scenes using paranormal observation skills.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is haunting and unsettling, contrasting
the natural beauty of the region with the unnerving quest to find the
missing boy before it’s too late. You’re free to explore the isolated
valley in its entirety, allowing you to explore every nook and cranny,
and delve deep into the secrets of Red Creek and what really happened to
Ethan Carter.
You’ll find tiny clues in hidden in the unlikeliest of places,
prompting you to regularly venture off the beaten path for more
narrative tidbits. Unlike so many other detective games, The Vanishing
of Ethan Carter lets you theorise your own conclusion from all of the
evidence you unearth.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
Managing to make players feel as smart as the world’s greatest
detective without granting them too many supernatural abilities is no
mean feat. In Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments it’s largely up to
you to scour the scene for evidence, piece it all together, and point
your finger at the correct culprit.
Holmes’ otherworldly intuition will help you out from time to time,
but what makes Crimes and Punishments special is how much freedom you’re
allowed to get things wrong. It’s possible to luck out and condemn the
right crook, but you’ll often be left wondering if you drew the right
conclusions or missed a key piece of evidence as you wrap a case.
While the animations and graphics are a bit wobbly, the performances
are solid throughout and each case is steeped in all the mystery and
grandeur you’d expect from the novels. It’s not just one of the best
detective games, it’s the best Sherlock Holmes game we’ve played in
years.
Discworld Noir
In the seedy underbelly of Ankh Morpork, private investigator Lewton
has been hired to investigate a brutal murder in the city and quickly
becomes embroiled in a dark and sinister plot. Many fans of the
Discworld novels will recognise locations and characters in Ankh
Morpork, such as The Palace and the City Watch, but unlike the first two
Discworld games, Noir takes on an edge of its own, deviating from the
usual tone of the series by swapping wizardry and magic for werewolves
and jazz bars.
Instead
of your trusty luggage, you’ll have a notebook in which you’ll store
all your clues and slowly cross off each one, opening up places and
discovering new threats. There’s something terrifying about the lonely
streets that cut through Ankh Morpork, not to mention the spidery
characters you’ll meet in its shadowy alcoves.
Grim Fandango
In the world of Grim Fandango, when you die and embark on your
journey to the Land of the Dead, you’re assigned a travel agent who
determines the mode of transport you take which is determined by how
many good deeds you have completed in the Land of the Living. Enter
Manny Cavelera, an afterlife travel agent with a jerk of a boss, a
smarmy rival, and conspiracy to solve.
Manny’s own journey through this point and click detective game is
both humorous and dark as he becomes travel agent turned noir detective
upon discovering his boss has been rigging the system and damning
countless souls to an arduous trek to the Land of the Dead. The
characters you meet are loaded with charm and humour, and every new
chapter is a feast for the eyes as you explore new locales in the
afterlife.
L.A. Noire
In 1940s L.A you play as Cole Phelps, a police patrolman turned
detective, on a mission to work your way up through the police force
without deviating from your morals along the way. You comb through crime
scenes, question witnesses, and pursue leads until you’ve got a suspect
or two who you can interrogate. How well those interrogations go
depends entirely on your investigatory nous, the number and quality of
clues you’re able to unearth, and your ability to read and react to
microexpressions when questioning witnesses and suspects. This is a
completely interactive crime drama, replete with all the detail you’d
expect from a Rockstar title.
As with any classic noir there are plenty of surprises along the way,
so expect the odd shootout in a Hollywood film studio or a car chase
through the iconic flood-control basin. It’s not long before you uncover
a major arson case with ramifications that go far beyond the seedy
underbelly of Los Angeles.
Disco Elysium
A narrative-driven RPG where you’ll shape your character by assigning
skills, clothes, and items as you attempt to solve a grisly murder with
the mother of all hangovers. Disco Elysium adds its own spin on
procedural police work by letting you use your own hurriedly reassembled
mental state to veer wildly off course at any given moment – you’re
unconventional, but you get results. It’s a wickedly clever RPG game, with dialogue heavy interactions that brought to life by some of the sharpest writing in any game we’ve played.
There
are multiple ways of deciphering scenarios and progressing the plot,
dictated by your characters muddled-together personality traits. Will
you play the professional detective who rocks up in a suave suit, or the
belligerent drunk who bulldozes through the crime scene in soiled
briefs? It’s not hard to see why Disco Elysium was one of 2019’s best PC games.
Gemini Rue
In this cyberpunk detective game, you’ll explore the sodden planet
Barracus as detective Azriel Odin, stumbling through a rotten world
where identities are bought and sold, and people slowly lose their grip
of their lives through debt and drug addiction. Azriel’s story is
intertwined with that of another playable character, Delta-Six, a man
without a memory who wakes up in a bizarre training facility on the
other side of the galaxy.
This moody point-and-click adventure game
has plenty of references for sci-fi fans, with Blade Runner and Phillip
K. Dick clearly key inspirations for developer Joshua Neurnberger. If
you’re a fan of cyberpunk games, pixel art, and bleak dystopian cities then this grim noir tale is a must.
Return of the Obra Dinn
Not all detective games are about police work. In Return of the Obra Dinn – easily one of the best indie games
of the decade – you play as an insurance evaluator investigating the
disappearance of crew members and passengers from a merchant ship, the
titular Obra Dinn. Armed with a pocket watch you’ll need to solve each
individual death, scribbling down clues into your journal as you go and
eventually piecing together the tragedy that befell this mysterious
ghost ship.
The simplicity of this mystery is in the real detective work and
hours you’ll need to put in. Instead of unravelling a live murder or
ongoing case, you’re working on a proper cold case, scouring through the
eerie interior of the vessel for any and all evidence you can get your
hands on.
Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
Both games in this series are worth playing for their earnest and
charming dialogue, not to mention the fact that each one will only take
you an hour or so to romp through. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the
Invisible Wizard dumps the greatest detective in the world – who just so
happens to be a frog – on another island with plenty of townsfolk to
question and hidden objects to discover with a gigantic magnifying
glass.
Frog Detective 2 is about as far away from a hardboiled detective
drama as you can get while still nominally being about solving
mysteries, so if you’re looking for a more relaxed experience this is a
visual treat packed with twee jokes at every turn.
Whether you want an episodic adventure or a dialogue intensive
mystery, these are the best detective games on PC. Or for fast-paced
shootouts and cop simulations check out our guide to the best police games
.
0 Comments