Best Narrative Crime Games

The best narrative crime games put the story of a crime first and let your choices, interpretations and loyalties shape how it unfolds. You are not always the detective. Strong picks:

• Late Shift: make timed choices during a London heist in a live-action thriller.
• Telling Lies: uncover secrets in a stolen database of recorded video calls.
• Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You: profile suspects in a series of terror attacks as a surveillance researcher.
• Beholder: spy on your tenants for the regime.
• Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure: a noir investigation where wrong conclusions stay wrong.
• Pentiment: investigate murders in 16th-century Bavaria through conversation.
• Overboard!: play the killer and talk your way out of it.

Coming later, Murder Book is an upcoming narrative interrogation game about the stories suspects tell and the gaps inside them.

Key takeaways

• Narrative crime games care more about consequences and character than about puzzles or action.
• Your role varies: investigator, criminal, informant or someone caught in the middle.
• Some picks, such as Lacuna, let a wrong conclusion stand instead of offering a retry.
• Surveillance games such as Orwell and Beholder turn "investigation" into a moral question.
• Murder Book is an upcoming game where the story of the crime comes out through interrogation.

What is a narrative crime game?

A narrative crime game is a story-led game in which a crime drives the plot, and the player's decisions, rather than reflexes or combat, carry the experience forward. Some are detective stories. Others let you commit the crime, watch it from the outside, or report on your neighbours to a regime that defines what counts as a crime.

That makes this list different from our Best Detective Games on Steam, which is organised by investigation style. Here the question is simpler: which games tell the most engaging crime stories, and give you a meaningful part in them?

Best narrative crime games at a glance

Late Shift

Late Shift (CtrlMovie, published by Wales Interactive, 2017) is a full-motion video crime thriller set around a heist in London. The film never pauses for you: choices are timed, and they branch the story. Steam lists more than 180 decision points and seven endings.

It is a crime story rather than an investigation: you make decisions inside the crime instead of working it out afterwards.

Best for: players who want an interactive crime film with real branching. See also Best Choice-Based Crime Games.

Telling Lies

Telling Lies (Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid, Annapurna Interactive, 2019) gives you a stolen NSA database of secretly recorded video conversations. You type words to search, then watch the clips where those words are spoken. The story is assembled in whatever order your searches reveal it, so two players can piece the story together in very different ways.

Best for: players who like to assemble a story themselves. See Games Like Telling Lies.

Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You

Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You (Osmotic Studios, Daedalic Entertainment, 2016) casts you as a researcher for a government surveillance programme after a series of terror attacks. You search web pages, social media, chats, emails and private files to build profiles of suspects, then decide which pieces of information are passed to the security forces.

The tension comes from that last step: you are the one choosing what gets seen, and a fact taken out of context can mislead.

Best for: players interested in how evidence, bias and power interact.

Beholder

Beholder (Alawar Stargaze, Warm Lamp Games; published by Alawar, 2016) makes you a landlord installed by the state. You bug apartments, search belongings, profile tenants and decide whether to report them. Steam notes that the game has several endings.

This is surveillance and moral choice more than detective work. The "crimes" are whatever the regime says they are, and the game asks you to weigh whether to inform on the people around you.

Best for: players who want a crime story told from inside an unjust system.

Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure

Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure (DigiTales Interactive, 2021) follows CDI agent Neil Conrad through a noir investigation. You question people, collect evidence and make deductions. According to Steam, wrong answers are not undone: the story continues on the basis of what you concluded, and it branches towards multiple endings.

That design makes every conclusion feel like a narrative commitment rather than a puzzle you can retry.

Best for: players who want their mistakes to become part of the story.

Pentiment

Pentiment (Obsidian Entertainment, Xbox Game Studios, 2022) is set in 16th-century Bavaria. As the artist Andreas Maler, you investigate murders through conversation and the choices you make about whom to believe.

Best for: players who want a historical crime story told through conversation. See Games Like Pentiment.

Overboard!

Overboard! (inkle, 2021) is a reverse whodunnit. You play the killer aboard a cruise ship, with eight in-game hours to steer conversations and evidence away from yourself. Steam says a single play-through lasts about 30–45 minutes, and it adds that achieving the perfect crime run "will take a lot longer".

Best for: players who want to experience a crime story from the other side.

What separates a narrative crime game from a detective game?

The two overlap, but the emphasis is different:

• Detective games ask you to find the answer. Success usually means identifying the culprit or explaining what happened.
• Narrative crime games ask what you will do with what you know. Success might mean protecting someone, surviving, getting away with it or simply understanding the people involved.

Many of the best games sit in between. Lacuna is an investigation, but it lets a wrong conclusion stand and carries on. Pentiment asks you to decide whom to believe. Orwell and Beholder give you the tools of an investigator and then question whether you should use them.

If you want to explore how games handle characters who cannot be trusted, see Mystery Games With Unreliable Narrators.

How do you pick a narrative crime game?

• You want a film you can steer: Late Shift.
• You want to dig through fragments: Telling Lies.
• You want moral pressure: Orwell or Beholder.
• You want an investigation where conclusions stick: Lacuna.
• You want history and conversation: Pentiment.
• You have less than an hour: Overboard!

Is there an upcoming narrative crime game built around interrogation?

Murder Book: The Art of Interrogation is an upcoming narrative-driven interrogation game from Gungrounds, an independent studio in Zagreb, Croatia. Its story comes out through interrogation: what suspects say, and just as importantly, what they avoid saying.

The game is inspired by real police footage and psychological interviews. Players examine unreliable stories: accounts with narrative gaps, sudden changes in behaviour, avoidance and contradictions. Development screenshots show an evidence board linking fragments of testimony, such as a suspect's "I NEVER met her!" set against other statements, and a branching case map with multiple endings. Cases are designed for focused 5–10-minute sessions.

Murder Book is in development for PC (Steam) and mobile, with release currently planned for the end of Q2 2027. Read What Is Murder Book? for an overview.

Sources

1. Late Shift on Steam
2. Late Shift, Wales Interactive
3. Telling Lies on Steam
4. Telling Lies, Annapurna Interactive
5. Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You on Steam
6. Orwell on the App Store
7. Beholder on Steam
8. Beholder, Alawar
9. Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure on Steam
10. Lacuna on the App Store
11. Pentiment official website
12. Pentiment on Steam
13. Overboard! on Steam
14. Overboard!, inkle
15. Murder Book press sheet, Gungrounds