GameWatcher selects some sport demo highlights within the Steam Detective Fest.
The Steam Detective Fest celebrates sleuthing in all its types. Digital deduction, crime-solving capers, and ink-black investigations abound as we get reductions on the best examples of the sub-genre and demos for attention-grabbing new detective video games coming to us within the close to future.
We thought we’d check out what’s on the market, and put throughout our case for some highlights among the many many demos featured.
Steam Detective Fest Demo Highlights
Listed below are GameWatcher’s decide of demos for brand new and upcoming detective-themed video games within the Steam Detective Fest. Some demos will solely be out there till the fest finishes on January 19, so strive as many as you may earlier than then!
The Enigma Instances
The co-op social expertise has been thriving on PC in latest instances, so fixing crimes together with your buddies in Purple Axe Video games’ The Enigma Instances looks like it may very well be one other winner.
Gamers will go to a wide range of crime scenes, search for all of the proof they will discover, after which resolve what the end result must be. There might be all kinds of investigating to do, too, with forensics, interrogations, and video proof among the many issues you may collectively kind by way of to resolve the crimes.
The Early Entry launch is due round Q2 2026.
The Granny Detective Society
Probably the most well-known silver-haired sleuth of all time is inarguably Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, so it’s shocking that there aren’t extra video games based mostly round an aged feminine investigator.
Nicely, Workforce Empreintes’s The Granny Detective Society appears to (kind of) treatment that with a curious retired anthropomorphic mouse named Madeleine, who will get embroiled in neighborhood mysteries from the consolation of her workplace window.
The total sport might be launched in 2026.
Obsidian Moon
If there’s a type of detective sport I like most, it’s most likely horror-themed ones, however throw in some noir as properly and you’ve got my full consideration.
Misplaced Cupboard Video games’ Obsidian Moon blends simply these issues in its text-based detective journey that’s drenched in Thirties noir and cosmic horror dread.
The sport sees gamers investigating 10 homicide instances which might be tied to a bigger plot involving a sinister cult. Utilizing Thirties instruments, the instances will be examined through forensics, interrogation, legal data, and extra.
There’s no set launch date at the moment.
The Occultist
Sure, extra occult-based investigations for you within the first-person narrative thriller The Occultist from Daloar and Daedalic Leisure.
In The Occultist, we play as paranormal investigator Alan Rebels, who travels to the seemingly deserted GodStone island in Britain insearch of his father. There he’ll come up towards all method of occult insanity and encounter supernatural entities.
The Occultist is out in 2026.
The Massive Hole: 1982
Again to the extra grounded, and ugly, world of serial killings, Krams Design is bringing a compact crime solver to the desk this yr with The Massive Hole: 1982.
Within the demo, you get to play the primary hour as Desmond, a pupil of legal profiling on the FBI who should assist resolve a legal case in a small neighborhood within the American South.
The developer describes it as a mix of The Case of the Golden Idol and The Silence of the Lambs. The demo definitely has a few of that flavour.
Dance, Dance Detective!
Not all detective video games need to be po-faced, grim homicide mysteries. So a detective sport with a goofy premise is wholly welcome.
Enter Blue Tango Road’s Dance, Dance Detective! On this pixel artwork sport, gamers are put into the dance sneakers of an undercover sleuth posing as a dance instructor on a cruise ship that’s crammed with a wide selection of daffy homicide suspects.
The concept is that by creating particular choreographies, protagonist detective Dan Burning can deduce the assassin’s identification on the dance flooring, as they waltz, tango, and cha-cha on the excessive seas.
The demo is a proof of idea, nevertheless it’s an excellent one for establishing the model and tone of what may very well be a splendidly daft journey. Naturally, meaning it is a method off from being a full sport.
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