GameWatcher selects some game demo highlights in the Steam Detective Fest.
The Steam Detective Fest celebrates sleuthing in all its forms. Digital deduction, crime-solving capers, and ink-black investigations abound as we get discounts on the greatest examples of the sub-genre and demos for interesting new detective games coming to us in the near future.
We thought we’d take a look at what’s out there, and put across our case for some highlights among the many demos featured.
Steam Detective Fest Demo Highlights
Here are GameWatcher’s pick of demos for new and upcoming detective-themed games in the Steam Detective Fest. Some demos will only be available until the fest finishes on January 19, so try as many as you can before then!
The Enigma Cases
The co-op social experience has been thriving on PC in recent times, so solving crimes with your pals in Red Axe Games’ The Enigma Cases seems like it could be another winner.
Players will visit a variety of crime scenes, look for all the evidence they can find, and then decide what the outcome should be. There will be all sorts of investigating to do, too, with forensics, interrogations, and video evidence among the things you can collectively sort through to solve the crimes.
The Early Access release is due around Q2 2026.
The Granny Detective Society
The most famous silver-haired sleuth of all time is inarguably Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, so it’s surprising that there aren’t more games based around an elderly female investigator.
Well, Team Empreintes’s The Granny Detective Society looks to (sort of) remedy that with a curious retired anthropomorphic mouse named Madeleine, who gets embroiled in neighborhood mysteries from the comfort of her office window.
The full game will be released in 2026.
Obsidian Moon
If there’s a kind of detective game I like most, it’s probably horror-themed ones, but throw in some noir as well and you have my full attention.
Lost Cabinet Games’ Obsidian Moon blends just those things in its text-based detective adventure that’s drenched in 1930s noir and cosmic horror dread.
The game sees players investigating 10 murder cases that are tied to a larger plot involving a sinister cult. Using 1930s tools, the cases can be examined via forensics, interrogation, criminal records, and more.
There’s no set release date at this time.
The Occultist
Yes, more occult-based investigations for you in the first-person narrative thriller The Occultist from Daloar and Daedalic Entertainment.
In The Occultist, we play as paranormal investigator Alan Rebels, who travels to the seemingly abandoned GodStone island in Britain insearch of his father. There he’ll come up against all manner of occult madness and encounter supernatural entities.
The Occultist is out in 2026.
The Big Hollow: 1982
Back to the more grounded, and unpleasant, world of serial killings, Krams Design is bringing a compact crime solver to the table this year with The Big Hollow: 1982.
In the demo, you get to play the first hour as Desmond, a student of criminal profiling at the FBI who must help solve a criminal case in a small community in the American South.
The developer describes it as a mixture of The Case of the Golden Idol and The Silence of the Lambs. The demo certainly has some of that flavour.
Dance, Dance Detective!
Not all detective games have to be po-faced, grim murder mysteries. So a detective game with a goofy premise is wholly welcome.
Enter Blue Tango Street’s Dance, Dance Detective! In this pixel art game, players are put into the dance shoes of an undercover sleuth posing as a dance teacher on a cruise ship that is filled with a wide array of daffy murder suspects.
The idea is that by creating specific choreographies, protagonist detective Dan Burning can deduce the murderer’s identity on the dance floor, as they waltz, tango, and cha-cha on the high seas.
The demo is a proof of concept, but it’s a very good one for establishing the style and tone of what could be a wonderfully daft adventure. Naturally, that means this is a way off from being a full game.
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