Best Detective Games With Evidence Boards

The best detective games with evidence boards let you pin clues, connect leads and build your own picture of what happened, rather than following a single scripted path. Strong picks include:

• Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments: a deduction board where you link clues to form conclusions.
• Paradise Killer: gather evidence freely and decide when your case is strong enough.
• Shadows of Doubt: pin photos, documents and connections on a corkboard in a procedurally generated city.
• The Case of the Golden Idol: fill in blanks from gathered evidence to reconstruct events.
• Disco Elysium – The Final Cut: your thought cabinet acts as a board of internal theories and ideas.
• Scene Investigators: examine crime scenes and answer structured questions from your observations.

Key takeaways

• Evidence boards turn investigation into an active process where you decide what connects and what matters.
• The best implementations let you reach wrong conclusions, not just right ones.
• Formats range from literal corkboards to abstract deduction grids and thought cabinets.
• Most games on this list have no combat, keeping the focus on reasoning.
• Murder Book, an upcoming interrogation game, features an evidence board that links suspect statements and contradictions.

What makes an evidence board work in a detective game?

An evidence board gives the player a workspace. Instead of the game telling you what matters, you arrange the pieces yourself. The best versions share a few qualities: they let you make connections the game has not suggested, they allow wrong theories as well as right ones, and they give you a reason to return and reorganise as new information arrives.

The games below each handle this differently. Some use a literal pinboard; others use a deduction grid, a thought system or a structured answer sheet. What they have in common is that reasoning happens on the board, not just in cutscenes.

Which detective games have the best evidence boards?

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (Frogwares, 2014) gives you a deduction board for each of its six cases. You link clues to form possible conclusions, and the game lets you pick the wrong suspect or deliver the wrong moral judgement. The board is where reasoning happens: connect two pieces of evidence and a new deduction unlocks. It rewards attention to detail across crime scene investigation, questioning and laboratory analysis.

Best for: players who want structured deduction with moral choices.

Paradise Killer

Paradise Killer (Kaizen Game Works, Fellow Traveller, 2020) sets its investigation on an open-world island. You gather evidence and interrogate suspects freely, building a case at your own pace. Your evidence log tracks what you have found, and the game does not tell you when you have enough. At the trial, you present your argument, and the outcome depends on what you collected and how you connect it.

Best for: players who want freedom to build and argue their own theory. If you enjoy open investigation, see also games where you build a case against a suspect.

Shadows of Doubt

Shadows of Doubt (ColePowered Games, Fireshine Games, 2024) puts you in a procedurally generated noir city. Its evidence board is a literal corkboard where you pin photos, documents, addresses and connections. You drag strings between clues to track suspects, link alibis and map timelines. Because cases are generated rather than scripted, the board is essential: there is no walkthrough to follow, and every case plays out differently.

Best for: players who want a sandbox investigation with a hands-on corkboard.

The Case of the Golden Idol

The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games, Playstack, 2022) presents 12 frozen crime scenes. You examine each scene, collect key words and names, then fill in blanks on a structured deduction screen to explain who did what and why. The system works like an evidence board turned into a puzzle: you have all the pieces, and the challenge is arranging them correctly.

Best for: players who enjoy logic puzzles built from observation. For a similar approach, see games about analysing evidence.

Disco Elysium – The Final Cut

Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, 2019; The Final Cut, 2021) does not have a corkboard, but its Thought Cabinet functions as an internal evidence board. You internalise ideas and theories, each one changing how your detective thinks and what dialogue options appear. Twenty-four internal skills comment on evidence, people and situations. The board here is your detective's mind, shaped by what you choose to think about.

Best for: players who want investigation through dialogue and internal reasoning.

Scene Investigators

Scene Investigators (EQ Studios, 2023) gives you eight reconstructed crime scenes. You examine each one freely, then answer a set of structured questions about what happened. Your answers are graded, and the game tells you what you got right and wrong. It is the closest any game comes to treating the player as a real forensic trainee working from physical evidence.

Best for: players who want to test their observation skills against a structured answer sheet.

How do evidence boards compare across these games?

What about games with timeline boards?

Some detective games focus less on pinning clues and more on placing events in order. Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018) asks you to identify every crew member and how they died by exploring frozen moments in time. Your logbook tracks fates, and the game confirms correct answers in groups of three. It is not a corkboard, but it serves the same purpose: organising what you know so you can fill in what you do not.

The Operator (Bureau 81, 2024) takes a different approach. As an agency operator, you use databases, photo analysers and video tools to help field agents. Your desktop is the board, and the challenge is knowing which tool to use and what to look for. See best detective games on Steam for more options.

Why do evidence boards make detective games better?

Evidence boards shift the work from the game to the player. Instead of choosing dialogue options and watching the story react, you have to decide what matters, what connects and what a piece of evidence actually means. The best boards also let you be wrong, which raises the stakes. If you enjoy games where your investigation choices have consequences, an evidence board is usually part of the design.

They also create a satisfying arc. Early in a case, the board is sparse and confusing. By the end, connections appear and gaps close. That progression, from confusion to clarity, is what makes investigation feel like investigation.

Is there an upcoming detective game with an evidence board?

Murder Book: The Art of Interrogation is an upcoming narrative interrogation game from Gungrounds, an independent studio founded in 2016 in Zagreb, Croatia. Development materials show an evidence board that links suspect statements, such as "I NEVER met her!" and "I had no idea", connecting them to contradictions like a fabricated description of a gun. The board is where you piece together what does not add up.

Murder Book also features an in-game casebook listing behaviours such as Stonewalling, Stress Response, Avoidance and Fabrication. Rather than exploring crime scenes, you read people and connect what they say to what you already know. Cases are designed for focused 5–10-minute sessions. It is in development for PC (Steam) and mobile, with release currently planned for the end of Q2 2027. For more on how it works, see how Murder Book turns interrogation into gameplay.

Sources

1. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments on Steam
2. Paradise Killer on Steam
3. Shadows of Doubt on Steam
4. The Case of the Golden Idol on Steam
5. Disco Elysium – The Final Cut on Steam
6. Scene Investigators on Steam
7. Return of the Obra Dinn on Steam
8. The Operator on Steam
9. Gungrounds, Murder Book fact sheet