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There’s simply one thing about fixing mysteries in video games. Piecing collectively clues, interrogating suspects, and at last discovering that oh-so-satisfying reply. It’s absolute magic.
Needless to say, I’m a little bit of a style obsessive—and significantly this 12 months, I discovered myself sleuthing via a file variety of trendy classics.
I think 2025 was one of the best detective game years ever, if not the best. Who knows what it was about these particular twelve months that suddenly made the idea of criminals actually suffering consequences so appealing? That’s enough of me being hilarious—on with the list!
The CEO of a tech startup has been murdered, and you need to solve it by identifying the names, job titles, and even the pets of everyone who worked there.
Openly inspired by The Roottrees are Dead (more on that game later!), this is much simpler. Piles of evidence are just dumped on you rather than revealed through anything as clever as that game’s brilliant built-in search engine. But it’s still a great little game that makes inspired use of the office setting.
God bless the HR nightmare who helped me identify most of the women on the systems team because he kept hounding them for dates on the workplace chat…. ugh.
Proof that one of gaming’s least-respected genres can be an excellent way to tell a story. It’s a resource-management idle game (stop booing) where you unlock townsfolk and put them to work rifling through the bins, working at the diner, and practising a religion that involves worshipping a giant sloth. You’re rewarded with little nuggets of story that offer more insight into a murder that rocks the town.
Set over several distinct time periods, Asbury Pines smuggles a narrative of surprising scope into a game where all you really do is assign people jobs and then wish they’d hurry the hell up. So its managed to simulate the agonising wait for revelations between episodes of a TV detective drama. Er, good!
Customers come into your horrible little store with queries like “my neighbour forgot my birthday, bought any cursed talismans that’ll damage her life?” or “I’d like a Munted Leg please! No, I don’t care to offer any details as to what that is”. You then use your almost-helpful books, along with your senses of sight, touch, smell, and general vibes to deduce which antiquity they want. And hand it over to a clearly dangerous individual instead of calling the police.
This sequel is packed with puzzles, like a macabre remake of Professor Layton and the Curious Village, if the professor decided to drown Luke in goat’s blood to make a nifty totem.
Very satisfying to chip away at, even when with every new sale you believe you studied you’re most likely making the world worse. A bit like working for Microsoft.
Posh Cat Studio needed to make a detective recreation, however after a number of weeks of researching homicide, they ended up about as depressed as I used to be when Netflix all of the sudden pulled The Rise of the Golden Idol from my subscription. So they determined to take the wonderful Golden Idol components and as an alternative apply it to extra mundane mysteries, like ‘who broke my favourite mug?’ or ‘where did my cat wander off to?’
Lovely artwork and charming presentation make this a simple recreation to underestimate. But it’s really bought robust sleuthing chops and proves you don’t want excessive stakes to make a fantastic detective recreation.
I used to be thrilled when Inkle gave us a shock sequel to Overboard!, their excellent push-your-husband-to-his-death-then-try-to-get-away-with-it simulator. I was less thrilled when Expelled apparently didn’t sell nearly as well. Bah! Everyone missed out on the best boarding school adventure since Rockstar bullied potential uni— I mean, since Rockstar’s Bully.
Verity Amersham has been accused of throwing another student out of a window. Now you have to clear her name, solve plenty more schoolyard mysteries, and basically act like a right little scumbag. Go buy a million copies so they can make another one.
You’ve been summoned to Blake Manor to investigate the disappearance of Evelyn Deane. Could something sinister be afoot? Well, on my first morning of investigating I met two people who were planning on killing her before I’d barely even had breakfast, so let’s call that a ‘yes’.
Blake Manor is crammed with suspicious guests who are a delight to irritate. Break into their rooms, rifle through their belongings, then innocently ask why they keep a half-empty vial of poison on their nightstand.
Impeccable presentation perhaps disguises that this is more of a traditional point-and-click than it initially seems. But what kind of detective can’t appreciate a great disguise?
The Roottree sisters have tragically died in a plane crash and it’s up to you to fill out their massive family tree, with all the investigative tools that ’90s dial-up has to offer.
Roottrees is a joyous send-up of the early internet, right down to the horrifying screech your computer makes when you first go ‘online’. You’ll type out those words in the search engine with 100% correct spelling or get nothing at all, bucko.
I’d love a modern-day sequel where you have to use the AI-poisoned bullshit that is search engines now, but I also don’t want to put the developers of one of 2025’s best games through such trauma.
As moaned about briefly earlier, Netflix suddenly pulled this game’s excellent DLC from subscribers halfway through its roadmap. If they successfully buy Warner Bros, we’ll be lucky if the next Arkham game lets you play beyond Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot.
Anyway, the winning Golden Idol formula, wherein you poke around crime scenes for words and phrases then piece together what the Hell happened, reached incredible new heights here.
The highlight is the case set in someone’s brain that’s under attack. That screenshot above is their subconscious, complete with spinning balloon face screaming “I am a FOOL!” (instantly the series’ most relatable character). Developer Color Gray Games is clearly at the height of its powers. Can we pass some sort of law forcing it to make these wonderful games forever?
This itch.io game (ridiculously, completely free) sees you accessing the onerous drive of a detective who apparently solved a homicide, just for their laptop to mysteriously be locked away by their superiors. Unfortunately the pc has no photographs, an inbox with just one message, and 4 brief dialog transcripts. Oh, and the fourth transcript is definitely lacking half the title, so you may’t entry it till you determine what that was and kind it in. Good luck!
Text adventures died out many years in the past due to how little leisure worth there was in typing out an extended concept solely to be instructed ‘I don’t perceive’. But Type Help is aware of that if you do kind an accurate deduction into its bloody laptop, it feels higher than profitable the lottery on the identical day all of your childhood bullies get identified with terminal sicknesses.
You’ll endure that deliberately-frustrating interface for each the frenzy of these deductions and to get extra of its gripping story that may be an all-time nice detective yarn in any medium. Fingers crossed the upcoming remake can retain the stripped-back magic of 2025’s most interesting detective recreation.
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