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A good murder mystery story can captivate anyone. So let’s wake the investigator in us and look at the Best 5 Detective Games in 2025.
The best detective or thriller games make you put on your tinfoil hat and create theories in your head throughout. They challenge players to use their critical thinking skills to solve the mystery the game presents. So that is the criteria we used while picking the games on this list. Every single title here will offer you a unique story that will make you want to open a Sherlock Holmes book again or look at life differently. Additionally, the tragic stories in this genre connect with gamers in a way that other genres seldom do, and that is why it is so popular across all mediums.
5 Best Detective Games You Can Try In 2025
We all get a newfound desire to solve crime in a trench coat after watching a David Fincher movie or listening to a true crime podcast. If you are a gamer and you felt that way too, we got you. After looking at a lot of different titles, we have picked five games that will have you constantly thinking over clues, interrogating suspects, and putting your power of deduction to the test.
5. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
Creating a game where players can put themselves in the shoes of the greatest detective and the smartest person in the world can be a difficult task. However, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments does see some success in that regard, and that too without the help of any otherworldly abilities. The developers trust the players and give them the freedom to look for clues, collect evidence, and connect all the dots.
Of course, Sherlock’s own mind will help you out sometimes, but the possibility of making mistakes is the aspect that makes the game truly compelling. Since the game won’t tell you if you are going in the right direction or if you caught the right culprit, you will often find yourself wondering about the cases even after they are closed. Now, we must admit that the graphics aren’t the best. However, we can safely say that it is the best Sherlock Holmes game out there.
4. The Wolf Among Us
The Wolf Among Us’s setting already makes it one of the most interesting games in the genre. It is a world full of characters from the stories we have heard in our childhood. It is vibrant and fantastical but also very noir at the same time. In the game, you play as the Big Bad Wolf himself, Bigby. Your job is to keep the good folks of Fabletown safe and catch the criminals that roam the lands.
The story will take you on a murder mystery case, where you will be investigating the murders of fairy tale characters. It is an episodic thriller and a classic Telltale game, so the core gameplay involves making choices that will lead you closer to the murderer, and they also affect the outcome of the story. However, you won’t be looking at numerous case files, and your investigative skills will be mostly required for the conversations you will have with the other characters.
3. L.A. Noire
Rockstar Games takes you to 1940s Los Angeles in L.A. Noire, where you will be working as a detective in the various divisions of the police department. You will be playing as Cole Phelps, climbing the ranks while questioning your morals and the world around you along the way. The game is quite detailed when it comes to the police work that you will have to do.
You will be looking at corpses and clues at the crime scene, going over your suspect lists multiple times, questioning witnesses, and following your leads until you catch a suspect or two. After you get a suspect, you will be able to interrogate them. But how the interrogation will go is entirely up to you, and if you mess up, you will have to live with that. Or you can just reload a save file. In true noir fashion, there will be a lot of twists and turns and wrongly convicted people. We won’t give too much away, but all we can say is L.A. Noire is a game for every gamer who enjoys a heartless world full of crime and vice.
2. Return of Obra Dinn
Many would consider Return of the Obra Dinn one of the best detective games and one of the best indie games ever made. After the ship Obra Dinn reaches shore without any living person on it, your job as an insurance inquisitor is to find out what happened to the ship’s crew and passengers. You will have to inspect and investigate every death on the ship, and the only tool you will have is a pocket watch.
The game is quite simple, and in that simplicity lies its charm. You will have to spend hours gathering clues and piecing every bit of evidence and loose thread together until you uncover exactly what caused the disaster on the dead ship. In other games, you usually have to work on a recent murder or go after someone who’s actively committing crimes. However, Obra Dinn flips the script altogether and presents you with the premise of solving a cold case. So scour through every corner of the uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing rooms of the Obra Dinn to make sense of the ghastly deaths.
1. Heavy Rain
We know that you probably saw it coming, but despite being too obvious, Heavy Rain takes the top place in our five best detective games in 2025. It is arguably the best crime thriller story ever written in video games and remains a fan favorite after all these years. It marked Quantic Dream as one of the best developers in the narrative-driven video game genre.
In the game, you play the protagonist, Ethan Mars, who lost two of his sons. One died in an accident, but the other was taken by the Origami Killer. Initially, the game becomes a story against time, where you must go through excruciating trials to find Ethan’s son before something tragic befalls him. Heavy Rain is so effective because the events of the game almost feel real, or it feels like it could happen to anyone in our own world. Additionally, it has a few different endings depending on your actions. So it is safe to say that any new player will play the game more than once.
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