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 these detective games, so grab your deerstalker hat and magnifying glass; you'll need them.
We've investigated the best detective games around, from gritty episodic adventures to old-school point-and-click puzzlers, all with unique case-cracking mechanics to test even the cleverest gumshoe. 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:
1. The Seance of Blake Manor
The Seance of Blake Manor is a true indie gem, using time as a way to progress events and Irish folklore to root the mystery in solving the case of a missing person. You play as private investigator Declan Ward, who arrives at Blake Manor, a spooky mansion nestled in the barren Irish countryside, to find out what happened to Evelyn Deane, who vanished from the manor only days prior to All Hallows Eve. A special seance is due to take place as the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, and you only have the weekend to solve the case before it's too late…
To do this, you must uncover the secrets of Blake Manor by wandering its grounds, chatting with those attending the seance, and solving puzzles to access new areas and conversation topics. One by one, you can narrow down suspects and discover why each participant is drawn to the seance, all while finding clues to what really happened to Evelyn Deane. The dialogue is rich in Irish folklore and captures Victorian-era spirituality, drawing characters who hope and grieve together to create something frightening and beautiful. You can easily access a huge inventory of clues, findings, learnings, and more with a mystery tree for each character and tangents that help solve the overall case.
Blake Manor isn't quite a horror game, but it is spooky, and time only progresses if you interact with objects, people, or clues, with events and character locations changing on the hour. Each puzzle is extremely satisfying to solve, and the mysteries are the perfect level of difficulty, making it a great entry point for new and veteran detectives. Read more about what we thought in Aaron Down's preview of Blake Manor.
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2. The Roottrees are Dead
One of our favorite recent detective games, unlike wandering a vast manor or chatting to characters or unearthing secrets by interacting with objects, it's simply you alone in your apartment with an old PC and an empty board on the wall that needs filling. Playing as a private investigator, a mysterious person turns up at your door asking for your help. They want you to put together the Roottree family tree. Why? The Roottrees own a large candy company, but their president and his family just died in a tragic plane crash.
So where does the family inheritance go? And who is next in line to take over the prestigious Roottree Corporation? You put together the family tree by using the PC to type in keywords and phrases, uncovering new connections and photographs to help you identify each family member, all the way back to when the Roottree Corporation was founded.
It strips back investigative techniques to basic, slightly mundane detective work, making it a top relaxing game, too. As you piece together the family tree, things start to fall into place, and on successfully identifying each member, you edge closer to finding out why you were tasked with this case in the first place.
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3. Her Story
Similar to The Roottrees are Dead, Her Story involves sitting at a PC, poring over reels of footage of a suspect's testimony. It gives you little to no help on how to navigate between these interviews; there's no correct order or way, just a simple search bar at the top of the screen where you can type in keywords to find new footage.
It's all about paying close attention, listening carefully to the suspect's account of what happened, and following leads that could lead nowhere, or help you solve what happened. Her Story uses real footage, and the actor does an incredible job of creating unease and tension with Fraser Brown saying in his Her Story review, "Her Story is a captivating experiment in stripped down storytelling and the best use of FMV that I've ever had the good fortune to encounter. It's a story that we get to build, and thus, despite the way that it sometimes keeps players at a distance, Her Story becomes Our Story."
If you enjoy interactive narrative storytelling, check out our list of the best story games on PC. Her Story sits alongside similar point-and-click games like What Remains of Edith Finch and Norco.
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4. The Rise of the Golden Idol
We couldn't decide which to recommend, the debut entry to one of the best detective games around or the follow-up that expands on the story, mystery, and legendary, cursed artifact. The Golden Idol series is a point-and-click game where you have to piece together what happened by investigating different parts of a static scene and filling in the blanks.
Each scene plays the part of a much bigger picture, seeking the whereabouts of the infamous Golden Idol, a highly sought-after relic that has gone missing, and promises power to whoever obtains it. In tracking it down, you work through a pile of dead bodies, point your finger at suspects, and deduce what really happened to the coveted idol.
There are plenty of puzzles to solve in drawing out the conclusion, making this one of the best puzzle games on PC. The first game, The Case of the Golden Idol, is also worth checking out to experience the full story, with DLC and new scenarios available for both games, too.
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5. Nobody Wants to Die
A glitzy technoir that wraps a not-so-subtle exploration of transhumanism in blanket-y homage, Nobody Wants to Die is a delightful detective game that places you in the freshly-filled shoes of 24th Century New Yorker James Karra. One of the city's leading lights has supposedly taken their own life, but something doesn't add up. Now, Karra, assisted by handler Sara Kai, has to figure out what happened.
Nobody Wants to Die takes us on a journey from New York's gritty underbelly up to the decadent Art Deco heights inhabited by the Big Apple's biggest names. Aaron Down's glowing Nobody Wants to Die review marks it as "a fascinating retrofuturistic murder mystery experience," so dive in if it sounds like a bit of you.
If you enjoy the aesthetic, why not check out some of the best cyberpunk games on PC, alongside other great puzzle games like Signalis?
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6. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Take a journey back to 19th-century England and Japan for The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles as you step into the shoes of rookie lawyer Ryunosuke Naruhodo, one of Phoenix Wright's ancestors. This collection brings together two Great Ace Attorney Nintendo 3DS titles that were only released in Japan - detective fans can finally learn about Ryunosuke's wacky adventures involving the legendary Herlock Sholmes.
In our The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles preview, Jen Rothery says, "As is typical for the Ace Attorney games, the plot of each case takes unexpected twists and turns; even if you can usually see a few steps ahead, you've no way of knowing how things will eventually develop."
If you have struggled with detective games in the past, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is a great place to start as it features a convenient storytelling mode, allowing you to watch the game like a TV show if you get stuck. Save yourself the confusion and watch the story play out; as soon as you're ready to play, you can take over at any point.
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7. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
All three Frog Detective titles in this series could be regarded as the best detective games for their earnest and charming dialogue, not to mention the fact that each one only takes you an hour or so to romp through. Our favorite is Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard, which 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.
As the games are so short, it's worth starting from the beginning, as there are only three Frog Detective games, each taking around one to two hours to complete.
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8. Disco Elysium
A narrative-driven RPG where you'll shape your character by assigning skills, clothes, and items as you attempt to solve a gruesome murder with the mother of all hangovers. Disco Elysium adds its 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.
There are multiple ways of deciphering scenarios and progressing the plot, dictated by your character's 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? Richard Scott-Jones says in his Disco Elysium review that it's "an utterly original RPG that sets new genre standards for exploration and conversation systems, and a brilliantly written tragicomedy about our inability to let go of the linchpins of our identity. Even when they hurt us."
As well as having an incredible story, it's a wickedly clever RPG with dialogue-heavy interactions that are brought to life by some of the sharpest writing in any game we've played.
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9. Return of the Obra Dinn
Aboard the Obra Dinn, you play as an insurance evaluator investigating the disappearance of crew members and passengers from a merchant ship. Armed with a pocket watch, you'll need to solve each individual death, scribbling down clues in 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 the hours you'll need to put in to tie up every loose thread. Instead of unraveling a live murder or ongoing case, you're working on the aftermath of a terrible mystery, scouring through the eerie interior of the vessel for any evidence you can get your hands on. It's no wonder Obra Dinn earned a spot among our best games of 2018, as Rachel Watts says, "Return of the Obra Dinn is a captivating detective game with unsettling sights lying just beneath the surface. Hearing the events and deaths before you see them is what makes it unique - it heightens the tension and fills you with dread."
Not all detective games are about police work, but Return of the Obra Dinn is easily one of the best, as well as one of the finest indie games of the decade.
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10. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This first-person exploration title 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 the Twin Peaks and Village of the Damned influences on its sleeve as you analyze 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 roam the isolated valley in its entirety, allowing you to explore every nook and cranny to delve deep into the secrets of Red Creek and what really happened to Ethan Carter. As Fraser Brown says in his The Vanishing of Ethan Carter review, "Like the unnerving fiction that inspired it, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a bold and fascinating story."
You'll find tiny clues hidden in the unlikeliest of places, prompting you to venture off the beaten path for more narrative tidbits regularly. Unlike so many other detective games, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter lets you theorize your own conclusion from all of the evidence you unearth.
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7. 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. Steve Hogarty's review of Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse says, "There's something bizarrely, stupidly funny about Stobbart's straight-delivery of an idea that his trap of putting a biscuit inside a matchbox is good enough that he might fall for it himself."
Broken Sword is a wonderfully testing adventure game series, taking polite murder and intrigue to the romantic and idyllic cobbled streets of Paris and beyond. If you're wondering where to start, we recommend the first in series, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars.
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12. The Wolf Among Us
In an iridescent noir setting - one of the best for detective games - all our childhood fantasies live together in The Wolf Among Us' grimy, crime-infested Fabletown, located in modern-day Manhattan. You take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf, Detective Bigby, in this episodic mystery from Telltale Games, and 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 roommate is a pig with a bad attitude, Mr. Toad isn't taking his Glamor (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 unravel the mystery of the Fabletown killer. In his review of The Wolf Among Us episode 1, Fraser Brown says, "Bigby is every bit as lost in New York as the fables who get sent to the farm - the ones who can't fit in. The more time we follow him on his investigation, the more clear it becomes that Bigby is an animal trying to be a man, not a man wrestling with his dual nature."
The premise comes across as twee, but in true Telltale fashion, this is a po-faced and somber narrative. There's not a lot here in terms of casework, but just like in The Walking Dead, your choices have serious and far-reaching consequences.
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13. L.A. Noire
In 1940s Los Angeles, L.A. Noire sets you up for a great detective gaming adventure in the land of Tinseltown. 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. There's also an L.A. Noire VR adventure; check out Matt Purslow's L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files review to see how the game adapts to virtual reality.
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.
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14. Batman: Arkham Asylum
When it comes to the best detective games, it's hard to imagine a better detective than Batman in Arkham Asylum. Still regarded by many as one of the finest superhero games ever made, Arkham Asylum's story about Batman needing to stop Gotham's worst criminals from taking over the game's namesake asylum is as timeless as ever.
Arkham Asylum brought an emphasis on Batman's detective skills with the introduction of Detective Mode. Essentially an X-ray vision connected to a supercomputer's worth of info, the Dark Knight uses this to help find the key to solving the game's plethora of mysterious, puzzling, and gruesome encounters.
Sure, the following games in the series brought Detective Mode back. However, it's in Arkham Asylum's more self-contained setting compared to its sequel's open-worldness, where the game shines brightest in the light of the World's Greatest Detective, making this one of the best Batman games on PC.
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15. Grim Fandango
In the world of Grim Fandango, you're in for not just one of the best detective games, but one of the funniest games there is. When you embark on your journey to the Land of the Dead, you're assigned a travel agent who determines the mode of transport you take, calculated by how many good deeds you have completed in the Land of the Living. Enter Manny Cavalera, an afterlife travel agent with a jerk of a boss, a smarmy rival, and a conspiracy to solve.
As Fraser Brown says in his Grim Fandango remastered review, "A suspicious clerical mix-up, however, sends Manny on four year trip - accompanied by a catchy jazz soundtrack - in search of a woman he hardly knows, with his elemental demon sidekick, degenerate gambler and car enthusiast, Glottis. Enter hitmen, gangsters, conspiracies and one mean octopus - it's all a lot more exciting than staying in the office."
Manny's journey through this point-and-click detective game is both humorous and dark as he becomes a 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 humor, and every new chapter is a feast for the eyes as you explore new locales in the afterlife. You can also experience the game through a Grim Fandango fan made remastered mod.
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New detective games
For new detective games, be sure to check out our upcoming PC games list of all approaching releases in 2026 and beyond. If you loved the games on this list, look out for Evil Trout's next game; The Incident at Galley House which sounds a bit like Obra Dinn, as you use a contraption to discover the secrets of a decrepit house. The new game in the Darkside games, The Darkside Detective Backside of the Moon, is also on our radar, as Detective McQueen and Officer Dooley return to Twin Lakes. If you want a bit more action in your detective games, the Mouse PI For Hire release date is fast approaching. This noir-themed shooter where you play as a cartoon mouse seems to have more combat than problem solving, but at least you play as a detective!
For now, there are 15 games on this list that vary from action games to laid-back mysteries, but if you have any suggestions, think we've missed something, or just want to chat about your favorite investigations, pop over to our community Discord. For more genre-bending games, here are the best PC games to play right now.