7 Detective Games on Steam (October 2026) | Indie games with 90%+ Positive Reviews

Rather than questioning living suspects, Return of the Obra Dinn has you investigate in first person as an insurance inspector, using the Memento Mortem watch to revisit moments of death.

After a brief conversation, you inspect a frozen scene and compare what you heard with people’s appearance and positions.

The book organises the crew manifest and chronology, letting you combine names, occupations and origins with clues in the scenes to narrow down identities.

Entering identities and fates requires deciding not just what a scene shows, but whose fate it explains and how.

Fates are confirmed in groups, so being sure of a theory is not the same as having the book confirm it.

You choose whether to spend your investigation time on a new death scene or revisit a scene to test an existing theory.

Reviews describe investigation that goes beyond connecting small details to reconsidering identities or causes of death the player had felt sure about.

Reviews describe both organising information as memories unfold and opening scenes before assembling an account, making the order of investigation a meaningful choice.

Grouped confirmation is praised for allowing tests of narrowed candidates, but also criticised for making a mistaken premise hard to locate; deciding what to recheck while confirmation is pending becomes important.

This single-player mystery visual novel follows Ema and the witch candidates imprisoned in a remote mansion.

When a murder interrupts their shared life, you gather evidence and testimony around the mansion and seek the culprit in a Witch Trial.

The in-game witch encyclopedia (魔女図鑑) collects character information, evidence and maps; you consult these clues to identify contradictions in the discussion.

Unlike a mystery governed only by ordinary criminal methods, it also asks what each girl’s magic makes possible and how those abilities fit the testimony.

During a Witch Trial, statements advance automatically. Selecting a suspicious line opens a screen where you can consider a rebuttal.

Progress reveals new perspectives on the story, so solving cases also changes your understanding of the girls and their prison.

Reviewers enjoy questioning whether a girl's stated ability is the whole truth, but also question how the game reveals assumptions and reaches conclusions. Testing a claim about magic is different from working around a condition you were never given.

Reviews welcome the low cost of trial mistakes for keeping the story moving, but also say it encourages trying every option. Whether you want to keep reading or work out why an answer is right changes how that system feels.

A reviewer describes identifying a culprit yet not wanting her executed, making it useful to distinguish the appeal of learning characters’ histories and relationships from the satisfaction of working out the motive for a crime yourself.

Readers describe later developments changing their view of earlier scenes and characters. That suits readers who like keeping track of their first impressions. Reviews also say that collecting missed illustrations takes work because there is no chapter select.

This single-player detective adventure follows an investigator travelling along China’s Yangtze River to uncover the truth behind his brother’s death.

You investigate scenes, collect evidence and question suspects, then use the clues to expose contradictions in their testimony.

In confrontations labelled DEBATE, possessing evidence is only the beginning: you must decide which claim it undermines.

The GLOSSARY's Facts and Knowledge sections let you read about investigative terms and historical context.

The tutorial begins with straightforward controls and simple cases before gradually introducing more complex situations.

Rather than ending with the identification of a culprit in a single case, the journey continues to other places along the Yangtze, linking local investigations to the larger goal of uncovering the brother’s death.

Collecting evidence and debating its meaning call for different kinds of attention: reviews contrast the calmer investigation with confrontations that ask you to interpret a clue and identify a weakness in someone’s account.

Reviewers describe using hints for direction without revealing the answer. Part of the appeal depends on whether you first work out where your theory clashes with the evidence or go straight to the solution.

Reading the knowledge sections is not the same as being given an answer: reviewers describe pausing their progress to explore historical or investigative terminology as a way to better understand the setting of a case.

After finishing, Chapter Select lets you return for missed achievements. Reviewers report missing requirements even with a guide, so revisiting is about checking overlooked conditions rather than discovering the truth for the first time.

Rather than identifying a murderer, this single-player deduction game asks you to identify blood relatives on a family tree after a plane crash kills key family members and triggers an inheritance.

Using a simulated old computer and its in-game SpiderSearch engine, among other research tools, you find photographs, books and articles whose contents lead to further investigation.

On the family tree, you match names, occupations and photographs, deciding where each person belongs among the relationships.

Correct entries narrow the remaining possibilities, but evidence becomes harder to find as you progress, requiring you to connect the material you have gathered in new ways.

The included Roottreemania continues the research after the main story, following further family connections on a new tree.

The investigation goes beyond reading each document: reviews value extracting names or bibliographic details as search terms, then comparing sources until a previously puzzling fragment helps identify someone.

Rather than simply filling blanks in order, you decide whether to narrow the candidates from established relationships or seek corroboration through another search; reviews describe revising deductions by comparing photographs, names and occupations.

Reviews describe tools that flag undiscovered clues and a duck that gives increasingly revealing hints. These help you rethink where to reread or how to approach a clue; you choose how much help to take before going back to your own reasoning.

In Roottreemania, reviews describe rereading familiar material for a new purpose. The expanding relationships appeal to players, but reviews also note a different burden from the main game: not knowing which old sources to revisit can lead to tiring, repeated searches.

This single-player deduction game uses a system called 声探 in the Japanese store description to listen to past crime scenes, identify speakers and uncover what happened.

The investigation screen presents a building’s floor plan from above; rather than controlling a participant, you move your listening position and follow nearby conversations.

Names spoken aloud and relationships revealed in conversation help you label the voices and answer the case questions shown on screen.

While following one person, you cannot hear a simultaneous conversation in another room. Rewind and follow someone else to check the same moment from another perspective.

The playback bar at the bottom lets you return to earlier moments and replay the audio as often as needed to reach a conclusion.

Progress centres on picking clues from accessible conversations and reconstructing relationships across time, rather than finding keys to unlock rooms.

Following one person lets you trace their actions, but finding out what happened elsewhere at the same moment takes another listen. Reviewers describe picking up events they missed the first time by following someone else.

Reviews welcome playback-position controls and notes attached to moments, but also ask for a freer notebook for relationships. Choosing which moment to revisit is a separate job from organising what the conversations tell you.

Even reviewers who found the base game mostly about collecting spoken information enjoy comparing narrative layers and relationships in the extra episodes. Steam DLC has no Japanese support: The Lethal Script supports English and Simplified Chinese, while the other additions support Simplified Chinese only.

Being able to replay a line is not the same as being able to understand it: reviews describe difficulty checking information in dialect-heavy or unsubtitled conversations, and the Steam language table lists audio support for the base game without listing dialogue subtitle support.

This single-player CRPG follows either Thomas, a reporter imprisoned on false charges, or Bob, an undercover agent, as they investigate a conspiracy within a prison.

You investigate inmates and facilities, gather clues through conversation and information trading, and look for places and tools that could enable an escape.

Within limited time, you choose between directly searching for clues or escape routes and spending time on relationships or skills to prepare for later actions.

You learn skills, collect equipment and craft tools, developing abilities suited to approaches such as force, stealth or persuasion.

Thomas’s New Eden Mode and Bob’s White Mode include the Groundhog Badge. At bedtime on the final day, using it repeats that day; declining takes the story toward its ending.

Rather than presenting a sequence of isolated riddles to answer, it links gathering evidence and investigating a conspiracy with exploration, relationships and character growth.

Reviewers enjoy planning work and socialising around time, stamina and inventory to prepare for the day's investigation. The challenge is matching available time slots to resources, not rushing at the keyboard.

Skills and equipment influence checks and the efficiency of daily activities, while relationships can unlock skills, creating a choice between advancing escape preparations now and investing time in abilities that make later actions easier.

Deadline complaints depend on the mode. In Thomas’s New Eden Mode and Bob’s White Mode, the current Groundhog Badge lets you repeat the final day. The official announcement does not say it restores individual events missed earlier.

The free official Game Modifier Toolkit can adjust resources, dice checks and action time, but using its features disables achievements for that save, making an easier retry a separate choice from pursuing achievements.

You play a detective investigating a murder in a district of Revachol in this single-player RPG.

Explore the streets, examine people and objects, and choose questions or actions in conversations while following the central investigation and side cases.

Skills do more than support checks: they interject as inner voices with information and interpretations, so developing different abilities also changes what catches your detective’s attention.

Internalizing Thoughts acquired through conversations and other encounters in the Thought Cabinet can unlock effects or new topics. Skill points used to open slots or forget Thoughts could instead improve skills.

The Final Cut includes full English voice acting and quests exploring political positions, while your expressed attitudes help shape the detective you play.

Rather than just finding the right combination of evidence, you also shape how your detective engages with the world through the abilities you build and the responses you choose.

Reviews praise skill builds for changing the information and responses available even when talking to the same person. Choosing skills is about your detective's view of people, not just passing the next check.

The Thought Cabinet asks you to spend time internalizing Thoughts before their full effects are known. You must also decide whether to improve skills or spend skill points on slots and replacing Thoughts.

One reviewer enjoys the unexpected scenes caused by failed checks but wishes for a limited number of rerolls at important moments. Whether you chase success or accept failure as part of your detective’s story shapes how you play.

Reviews value talking about the residents and city beyond the case, but also describe tiring of long side threads. Consider whether you want to understand only the culprit or the people who live here too.