Best Mystery & Detective Games for iPhone

You're investigating the disappearance of an engineer and his wife. The trail leads to a dollhouse in their attic — one that turns out to be far more than it appears. Fireproof Studios built a tactile puzzle masterpiece where every drawer, lever, and hidden mechanism feels satisfying to manipulate.

Detective Grimoire and his assistant Sally are investigating a murder at a twisted mansion called Tangle Tower. Every character is beautifully animated, fully voiced, and hiding something. SFB Games crafted a proper whodunit with hand-drawn art that looks like nothing else on the App Store.

You're a secret agent tracking down the villain Ruby La Rouge in her retro-futuristic hideout. It's five chapters of escape-room puzzles wrapped in a slick 1960s spy aesthetic — think Bond gadgets and hidden passages, all rendered in gorgeous geometric art. First chapter is free; the rest are worth paying for.

You're sitting at an old police database terminal, watching video clips of a woman being interviewed about her missing husband. You can search for words, pull up clips out of order, and slowly piece together what actually happened. It's one of those rare games that invents its own genre and sticks the landing.

Sam Barlow's follow-up to Her Story goes bigger and stranger — you're sifting through stolen NSA surveillance footage involving four interconnected characters, searching one side of phone conversations to reconstruct what happened. It's messier than Her Story and harder to parse, but when it clicks, it really clicks.