The best detective games on PC in 2022

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. Broken Sword is a wonderfully testing point and click adventure series, taking polite murder and intrigue to the romantic and idyllic cobbled streets of Paris and beyond.

In this iridescent noir setting where all our childhood fantasies live together in the grimy, crime-infested Fabletown, located in a modern day Manhattan. You take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf, Detective Bigby. In this episodic mystery from Telltale Games 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.

This first-person exploration game 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 its Twin Peaks and Village of the Damned influences on its sleeve, as you analyse 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 explore the isolated valley in its entirety, allowing you to explore every nook and cranny, and delve deep into the secrets of Red Creek and what really happened to Ethan Carter.

You’ll find tiny clues hidden in the unlikeliest of places, prompting you to regularly venture off the beaten path for more narrative tidbits. Unlike so many other detective games, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter lets you theorise your own conclusion from all of the evidence you unearth.

Managing to make players feel as smart as the world’s greatest detective without granting them too many supernatural abilities is no mean feat. In Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments it’s largely up to you to scour the scene for evidence, piece it all together, and point your finger at the correct culprit.

Holmes’ otherworldly intuition will help you out from time to time, but what makes Crimes and Punishments special is how much freedom you’re allowed to get things wrong. It’s possible to luck out and condemn the right crook, but you’ll often be left wondering if you drew the right conclusions or missed a key piece of evidence as you wrap a case.

While the animations and graphics are a bit wobbly, the performances are solid throughout and each case is steeped in all the mystery and grandeur you’d expect from the novels. It’s not just one of the best detective games, it’s the best Sherlock Holmes game we’ve played in years.

In the seedy underbelly of Ankh Morpork, private investigator Lewton has been hired to investigate a brutal murder in the city and quickly becomes embroiled in a dark and sinister plot. Fans of the Discworld novels will recognise locations and characters in Ankh Morpork, such as The Palace and the City Watch, but unlike the first two Discworld games, Noir takes on an edge of its own, deviating from the usual tone of the series by swapping wizardry and magic for werewolves and jazz bars.

In the world of Grim Fandango, when you die and embark on your journey to the Land of the Dead, you’re assigned a travel agent who determines the mode of transport you take which is determined by how many good deeds you have completed in the Land of the Living. Enter Manny Cavelera, an afterlife travel agent with a jerk of a boss, a smarmy rival, and conspiracy to solve.

Manny’s own 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 humour, and every new chapter is a feast for the eyes as you explore new locales in the afterlife.

In 1940s L.A 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.

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.

In this cyberpunk detective game, you’ll explore the sodden planet Barracus as detective Azriel Odin, stumbling through a rotten world where identities are bought and sold, and people slowly lose their grip on their lives through debt and drug addiction. Azriel’s story is intertwined with that of another playable character, Delta-Six, a man without a memory who wakes up in a bizarre training facility on the other side of the galaxy.