The latest of Steam’s creative weekly sales has just gone live, and this time it’s a Detective Fest. But rather than become entangled in red string as you try to pin all the available games to your enormous pinboard, we’ve inspected the selection through our microscope, whittled down the suspects, and then performed yet another detective cliche, to select the most suspicious(ly good) games for you to interrogate.
Investigative games have become a rather big deal in recent years, with many indie titles having broken through to the mainstream to enormous success. And, so of course, you’ve got the likes of Blue Prince and Rise of the Golden Idol in the sale, alongside less recent classics like Return of the Obra Dinn and Disco Elysium. But you already know about all of those, so where’s the good in my suggesting those? Nope, let’s dive a little deeper with a selection of games that won’t be appearing at the top of all the store’s lists.
You know who was making amazing family-tree-like detective games long before The Roottrees Are Dead? Owlskip. Titles like Riley & Rochelle, Family, and Rivals were years ahead on the format, and definitely deserve to be discovered in light of Roottrees‘ breakout success. Anything else is frankly unfair. The Ratline is the latest from the studio, due out in March, once again asking you to piece together a mystery from an array of clues and documents. This time things are set in 1971 and have you hunt down Nazi fugitives after the murder of a priest, and who doesn’t need a little Nazi hunting just now? There’s a demo out for Detective Fest.
There’s also a demo for the upcoming Surradia: An Art Retrospective, a detective game about investigating the disappearance of three magical artists who vanished during World War II. That means scouring photographs, reading letters, and of course paying close attention to artworks, all found in a museum, as you try to unpick the mystery. There’s no official release date for the game yet, but the demo’s here right now.
This is a tremendous trailer! You’re Cleo, working for world-renowned detective Maya Lynch, learning the ropes in this unbelievably lovely-looking game. There’s a demo out for Detective Fest, which features Cleo’s first three cases, with the full game due later.
Mansion of a Million Monsters takes a decidedly different approach to the detective genre, combining its investigative ways with dungeon-crawling action. It has the vibes of one of those classic Amiga games that everyone still raves about today. The developers say they’ll hopefully have a demo up for this one in the next day or so.
This detective sim is based on all the right names, like Phoenix Wright and Danganronpa. Set in the year 780 Quattuoris 32nd (which I cannot find on my calendar), this is the tale of the daughter of investigative journalist Frederick Emery. Her father is found dead, a staged suicide, and she sets out to disprove the police’s claims. It’s to be five episodes long, with the first now playable via a free demo. Also, later this week developers Arboreal Interactive hopes to update with another free chapter, Chapter 0.
The Murder Is Game Over series of pixel point-n-clickers started in 2022, and Murder Otaku is already the fourth! It came out toward the end of last year, and if you click with its tale of solving the murder of a J-pop singer at an anime convention, that means you’ve now got another three games that are sure things. You can pick up the whole lot in the Cleo’s Complete Casefile bundle, on Steam or Itch.
of the Devil is a six-part episodic detective game inspired by the likes of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa. Its first free episode was released last year, and two more paid episodes have already been released since then! The game, which features amazing art, is set in the cyberpunk future of 2086 and has you playing a criminal defense attorney. So yeah, grab the first episode for nothing, and then see if you want to pick up the next two, with releases seeming to come nice and quickly.
Australian detective sim Call of the Golden Valley came out last October and still offers a free demo. You play Danielle, an American tourist who arrives in the country to visit a friend, Marisa, only to find she’s gone missing. So you begin investigating the small town, piecing together evidence, and finding out why Golden Valley is the sight of so many disappearing hikers.
Another game you can play right now, Paper Perjury is a visual novel series from Paper Cat Games where new Azure City Police Department clerk Justina Smith begins investigating some peculiar crimes. Case 1 of the game is available as a free demo, and a sixth case is due to be added pretty soon.
A few of the games mentioned above were inspired to some degree by Phoenix Wright, but few wear it on their sleeve so much as Detective Instinct. It looks like it could have come from Capcom, and this is high praise. The mystery adventure is all about trying to track down a woman who disappears from a train, only no one on board but you can remember her. It came out late last year, and is celebrating Detective Fest with a discount and a free demo.
