Telling Lies (Image credit: Half Mermaid) Set in an abandoned American town in the 1990s, you play as a journalist investigating a series of murders, and you really have to use your mind, intuitively piecing clues together, to get any kind of resolution out of it. Many games on this list are really good at simulating being a detective, but cult favourite The Painscreek Killings is one of the few where you actually have to be one. It's a spiralling conspiratorial thriller, and throws in enough twists and surprises to keep things interesting. In the dystopian Orwell (what else would it be with a title like that) you’re a government agent who’s been given permission to pry into people’s personal lives, digging through private chats, emails, and social media profiles to pin crimes against the state on them.

Rather than solving a murder, you're covering one up, and helping Veronica get away with the crime is incredibly satisfying. Cleverly, it's a detective game in reverse. This is the devilish premise of Overboard, a superb interactive fiction game from Inkle, the studio behind 80 Days. Veronica Villensey has murdered her husband in cold blood, and you're going to help her get away with it. And piecing together the story really makes you feel like a detective. This unique freeform structure, combined with understated and believable police interview clips, makes it a bold narrative experiment. In this stylish FMV adventure you take a non-linear path through a mystery by searching a fragmented archive of video clips-and the story becomes clearer with each one uncovered. This is another entry that isn't strictly a detective game, but has the feel of one. And eventually his story becomes entwined with another, very different playable character. In a rainy Blade Runner-inspired urban setting, it follows cop Azriel Odin as he searches for his missing brother. This cyberpunk adventure is set in the far future, taking place on a distant planet in the Gemini system. Its combination of 3D environments and live-action FMV is extremely 1990s. Murphy, a booze-soaked PI down on his luck, suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of a doomsday cult. With its sleazy jazz soundtrack, gritty monologues, and trenchcoat-wearing hero, Under a Killing Moon is unashamedly an homage to film noir-but set in San Francisco in the future of 2042. Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon (Image credit: Access Software)

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