Best Indie Detective Games

Everybody loves a good mystery, but going out and actually solving them is a whole other story. Real mystery-solving is best left to law enforcement and mouth-breathers on “unsolved mystery” subreddits, but that doesn’t mean you can’t live out your detective dreams from the comfort of your couch.

The best way to scratch your mystery-solving itch is by playing detective games from the safety of your own home, and these indie titles do not disappoint! From sci-fi noirs to maritime mysteries, this list of the best indie detective games has something for everyone.

12 Tails Noir

Crime-Solving Raccoons

Formerly known as Backbone, Tails Noir is an indie detective game that is often overlooked.

If you’re a fan of noir detective games, then you’re going to be absolutely frothing at the mouth for this indie title. This game is so deliciously noir that it might as well be painted black and white; Tails Noir is absolutely dripping with nihilistic cynicism, moral ambiguity, and, of course, gritty mysteries.

To be honest, this game low-key reminded me of The Red Strings Club; you play as a deeply flawed protagonist who has just enough self-awareness to know that there’s nothing you can really do to change the bigger picture, but try to regardless just to spite the odds.

You get to play as a bipedal raccoon named Howard Lotor, a trench coat-wearing private eye exploring a dystopian Vancouver. While trudging your way through the city’s grimy underbelly, you do your best to help its citizens in any way you can, using your skills as a detective to uncover clues in pursuit of the truth.

For a game about a crime-solving raccoon, it’s unexpectedly philosophical and is almost unsettling in its emotional depth. If you want a game that’ll bring unexpected tears to your eyes, then this’ll be the one. Also, you get to walk around and solve crimes with a big, fluffy-wuffy tail, so that’s another bonus.

11 Mercury Abbey

Mystery Solving Puppers

Mercury Abbey is one of those games whose title tells you literally nothing about the game’s contents, and honestly? I think it fits the game way better than any other title could.

If Scooby-Doo had a baby with Sherlock Holmes in a fever dream, then you’d get something close to Mercury Abbey. Mercury Abbey is a wild, yet conspiratorial ride, as you play an anthropomorphic dog and his puppy sidekick as they uncover mysteries that not even H.P. Lovecraft would touch.

Uncovering inconceivable conspiracies, exploring secret societies that only appear at midnight, and discovering the existence of legendary mythical creatures are all that you can expect to find in Mercury Abbey. Sounds unnecessarily convoluted for a furry detective game, right? Well, that’s not even the half of it.

Solving smaller, more digestible mysteries until you get to the biggest of them all is probably the most satisfying aspect of Mercury Abbey. Just when you think you get to the meat of the story, another clue is thrust in your face that makes you question everything all over again.

Arthur Conan Doyle wishes he could’ve come up with Mercury Abbey.

10 Jenny LeClue – Detectivu

Nancy Drew Simulator

If you were a fan of the Nancy Drew books as a kid, then you’re going to go feral over this game. Jenny LeClue – Detectivu is like a Nancy Drew simulator with a dash of extra sass, perfect for gamers of any age.

This game lets you step into the mystery-busting shoes of Jenny, a pint-sized detective with more sass than a sleep-deprived toddler, as she navigates Arthurton to uncover a mystery that’s as oddly charming as it is sinister.

Pretty much everything is a potential danger to someone that little, so staying on your guard and planning out every expedition is essential to succeed.

Jenny Leclue is one of those games that you go into not thinking you’ll get overly invested, only to find yourself red-eyed and white-knuckling your controller at 3:00 a.m. because there’s a new mystery that you just have to see the end of.

This game gets addictive fast, so you’ll definitely want to clear your schedule before starting it.

9 Back to the Dawn

Furry Prison Break

Okay, I know that this is the third furry detective game on this list, but it’s the last one, I swear. I don’t know why so many indie detective games have anthropomorphic animals in them, and frankly, I’m not going to ask. But furries aside, Back to Dawn is actually an incredible investigative RPG.

In Back to the Dawn, you play as a foxy reporter (pun intended) who gets arrested for sticking your adorable whiskered nose in places it didn’t belong. Getting thrown into a jail literally crawling with furry criminals isn’t the greatest thing to happen to your career, but what can you do.

You’ll have to somehow survive the prison’s deadly social hierarchy while also figuring out how best to blow that popsicle stand, all while trying to solve the mystery that got you stuck there in the first place. Spoiler alert: It’s harder than it sounds.

If you’ve ever wondered what Shawshank Redemption would look like with furries, then this is your chance to find out.

8 Nobody Wants to Die

Cyberpunk Detectives

Nobody Wants to Die is as eccentric as it is addicting. It’s definitely one of the more unique titles on this list, as it combines noir-adjacent mystery solving with futuristic sci-fi, but it’s a wild ride that no one would want to miss. It also low-key reminded me of Detroit: Become Human, but that’s neither here nor there.

Nobody Wants to Die is set in the year 2329 in a dystopian New York City, crawling with artificially immortal citizens and a serial killer intent on bringing death back into play.

You play as James Karra, a detective from the Mortality Department (which is apparently something that exists), who hunts down anyone who messes with the city’s immortal elites.

Using time manipulation augmentation, futuristic technology, and good old-fashioned clues, you’re able to virtually reconstruct the events leading up to each murder on your quest to find the killer. It’s every bit as cool as it sounds, even if it’s not as easy as you might like it to be.

This game actually sucked me in a lot deeper than I thought it would. As you might expect, morality and ethics come into question a lot in this game, which can make it difficult to make judgment calls in the middle of investigations.

Nobody Wants to Die is the perfect game to play if you want to feel like a scumbag while also saving the day.

7 Killer Frequency

A Love Letter to Retro Horror

Anyone who loves old retro horror movies will love Killer Frequency. This game is the ultimate love letter to classic horror and retro radio shows; if you don’t come out of this game feeling like you’ve just bested Michael Myers himself, then you’re playing it wrong.

In Killer Frequency, you get to play as a radio DJ in 1987 Gallows Creek, a town where the only thing deadlier than its neon-soaked nightlife is the relentless serial killer on the loose.

While taking calls on what is most certainly the worst graveyard shift of your life (pun intended), your callers start getting unexpectedly slaughtered by an unknown assailant.

With the police unable to help and, apparently, no one else to call, you’re the only one left to save the town’s inhabitants.

Using branching dialogue options and stressful puzzles, you’ll need to guide your callers through life-or-death situations while piecing together clues to stop the killer in his tracks.

Uncovering the identity of a pop-up serial killer while playing the sickest tunes of 1987 isn’t as easy as it sounds, but it’s worth every single second. I’d recommend this game to literally anyone, but especially to those who are as in love with 80s horror movies as I am.

6 Paradise Killer

Murder in Paradise

Paradise Killer is almost like the opposite of a gritty, nasty, noir mystery, so if that’s your thing, then you may not want to add this title to your collection. If you’re down to clown with unique twists on the detective genre, however, then this game is for you!

If the 1980s and surrealism had a neon-lit love child, then it would be Paradise Killer. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that Paradise Killer is an acid trip of a game, with a premise so ridiculous that it’ll have you wondering what the developers were on when they made it.

This game takes place on an island, Paradise, outside of reality that contains a rogue civilization of humans; all of whom are trying to find ways to resurrect ancient alien gods in the hopes of reviving a new deity. No, I’m not kidding.

Every few millennia, Paradise regenerates and becomes a newer, better version of its previous self. On the eve of its latest rebirth, however, Paradise’s council is murdered in one fell swoop, leaving the island’s inhabitants in a state of panic and disarray. This is where you come in.

You play the part of Lady Love Dies, an “investigation freak” who is brought out of exile to solve the mystery. Unfortunately for you, however, facts and truths are not the same on this bizarre island, and the possibility of many killers looms over every decision you come to.

How you interpret the evidence is entirely up to you, but whether that evidence holds up in court is another matter entirely.

Paradise Killer is probably the most bizarre game on this list, but it’s also easily one of the most entertaining.

5 Shadows of Doubt

Essentially LEGO Sherlock Holmes

Shadows of Doubt may not be the most beautiful game of all time, but what it lacks in visual perfection, it more than makes up for in investigative mystery. If you’ve always wanted to solve crimes as a pixelated Sherlock Holmes cosplayer, then Shadows of Doubt is going to be your new best friend!

Though its title may suggest otherwise, Shadows of Doubt is the ultimate noir mystery that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Don’t get me wrong, the conspiracies, shifty characters, and gripping narrative all make Shadows of Doubt one of the best indie detective games of all time, but it also feels more like an actual game rather than an abrasive investigative experience.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be kept awake at night, being haunted by my actions in an over-the-top, interactive murder mystery game. Sue me.

Working as a private investigator in a hyper-industrialized city in the 80s isn’t as glamorous as it sounds, but it sure as Hell beats unemployment, so you do what you gotta do.

By channeling your inner detective, you’ll have the power to take on more and more PI cases to make money; it won’t make you rich, but it will make you a better detective, which is better than nothing.

The coolest thing about this game is that its entire world is fully simulated and procedurally generated, meaning Shadow of Doubt’s world is quite literally your oyster. Literally every single character in this game has their own story and mysteries to unravel, which means you could play this game for days and never get bored.

4 The Wolf Among Us

Among Us: Twilight Edition

If you’re an Among Us fanatic who’s always dreamed of becoming a werewolf, then there’s literally nothing that you won’t like about this game. The Wolf Among Us is like those social deduction board games you used to play with your grandma at Christmas, but with less dust and missing pieces.

The Wolf Among Us is a social deduction thriller based on the original Fables comic books, which becomes pretty obvious once you get a good look at its art style. The art of this game is like if a comic book came to life; it’s bold, full of primary colors, and looks exactly like something Stan Lee would come up with.

This game plays like a choose-your-own-adventure book; Every decision that you make, and even when you choose to make it, drastically affects the outcome of your playthrough. You could have a radically different experience literally every time you play this game, making it easily one of the most replayable games on this list.

In The Wolf Among Us, you play as Bigby Wolf, a big bad werewolf who must investigate a series of murders in Fabletown.

As you might’ve guessed by its name, Fabletown is a clandestine community consisting of various storybook characters from popular fairy tales and folklore; as you get further down the list of murders and suspects, you’ll discover however that not every little pig and blind mouse is as innocent as they seem…

3 Disco Elysium

More Panic Than Disco

Despite what its name may imply, there aren’t actually all that many discos in this game (I know, I’m just as disappointed as you are). Despite this, Disco Elysium is easily considered by fans to be one of the best detective games of all time.

With its number of positive reviews nearly in the triple digits, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Disco Elysium isn’t just another mystery game – it’s an entire experience.

Equal parts detective mystery and existential crisis, Disco Elysium throws you into the crumbling seaside town of Revachol as an amnesiac detective with a penchant for poor decisions and moral dilemmas.

The game starts off with you waking up after a bender of truly apocalyptic proportions, and becoming tasked with solving a murder while piecing together your own shattered identity. Not the greatest way to treat a hangover, but it’s what you’ve got to work with.

While on the hunt for clues, you can make pretty much as many stops as you want along the way. Want to sing karaoke at a sad bar in the middle of the night? Go for it! Feel like resorting to violence and taking your anger issues out on the poor people of the city? Even better! The world of Disco Elysium is your morally ambiguous oyster.

With a revolutionary interactive dialogue system and an open world filled with people who all have their own personalities, Disco Elysium almost feels less like a gritty noir mystery and more like a choose-your-own-adventure on what kind of detective, and person, you want to be.

It’s chaotic, it’s hilarious, and it’s completely unlike anything else you’ll play in the genre.

2 Return of the Obra Dinn

A Maritime Mystery

I remember when this game was first announced, I was legit frothing at the mouth, full-on rabies rampaging over wanting to play this game. It combined my incredibly specific love for maritime ghost stories with the nostalgic, point-and-click play styles of my childhood; it was the most unique, enchanting game I’d yet encountered in my young adult life, and I had to have it.

Now, having played it, I can safely say that it not only met but far exceeded all of my expectations. Getting to play the role of a detective on a long-lost ghost ship was like living out my wildest childhood dreams, and going by the thousands of positive reviews online, it seems like I was not the only one.

In Return of the Obra Dinn, you play the role of an insurance investigator (yes, really) whose job it is to find out exactly what happened to the washed-up and abandoned Obra Dinn ship, which had been declared lost at sea for the better part of a decade.

Stepping onto the ghost ship’s slimy decks feels like stepping into the past, and you’ll need to utilize all of your detective skills if you want to figure out what happened to her crew.

By using your “Memento Mortem”, a pocket watch with the ability to visually recreate a person’s death at the moment it occurred, you’ll be able to piece together the fates of the crew bit by bit.

Discovering what happened to the Obra Dinn’s ill-fated passengers may not turn out quite as you expected, however, and you’ll soon find yourself regretting ever having stepped onto her creaky, crumbling deck.

If you want to play a detective game that will literally sit at the forefront of your mind long after you’ve finished it, then Return of the Obra Dinn should absolutely be at the top of your wishlist.

1 Murders on the Yangtze River

If Clue Was an RPG

If Ace Attorney met Clue and had a baby with it, then you’d get something pretty darn close to Murders on the Yangtze River. Though it isn’t all that long, Murders on the Yangtze River will easily be one of the most tricky, puzzling detective games that you’ll play in a long time.

This game will literally have you feeling like Sherlock Holmes himself as you take on the role of John Shen, a traveling detective capable of taking on even the most confounding cases. With your trusty and optimistic assistant Frankie by your side, there’s no mystery that you can’t solve!

Murders on the Yangtze River will take you on a journey through 20th century China, solving mysteries and uncovering conspiracies left and right.

While solving a series of intriguing yet grisly cases along the Yangtze River, you’ll need to comb ghastly crime scenes for clues, engage in heated debates with potential murder suspects, and find any and all contradictions within witness testimonies to unravel the truth.

This game’s developers claim that gamers of “any skill level” can play their game, but I think we could all use a little bit of whatever they’re smoking because that could not be farther from the truth.

This game is beyond tricky; it legitimately sometimes feels like the game is purposefully tripping you up just to make it harder.

If you want to really put your detective skills to the test, then Murders on the Yangyze River will be your ultimate challenge.