10 Best Detective Board Games In 2023
Dominique Orona
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You’ll be pleased to know you can finally be the detective you’ve always dreamt of on the tabletop. Here are the 10 best detective board games that won’t disappoint.
10. Mysterium, $43+
In Mysterium, one player plays as the amnesiac ghost that tries to project visions of its murder onto a group of psychic mediums. The mediums must interpret these visions to uncover the crime correctly. It’s an excellent cooperative experience and a highly strategic one at that.
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9. Betrayal at House on the Hill, $41
Betrayal is a little bit of everything. True to horror tropes, players control one of the various characters who decide that wandering around a haunted house in the middle of the night is a good idea.
As players explore the mansion, they’ll open new rooms and eventually trigger phase 2 of the game, called the Haunt. The Haunt is when the game completely changes, and you can theoretically face down every horror stereotype known, like zombies, vampires, or creepy children.
8. Clue: Classic Detective Game, $22
There are games out there that do the whodunit runaround better, but there’s a reason that Clue is a classic. You must guess the correct room, murderer, and weapon to win the game; it isn’t easy. It’s simple, fun, and full of nostalgia.
7. Chronicles of Crime, $40
Chronicles of Crime presents an exciting twist to not what you’ll be experiencing but how you’ll experience the game.
After downloading an app, you’ll begin to set up the board using the game’s instructions and notice that there’s not much text to read from the content in the box. That’s because pretty much everything in Chronicles of Crime is handled by your mobile app.
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6. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, $28
Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game has players racing around a city searching for clues. However, in this deduction game, they can also access a companion app to examine pictures and text files in a police database.
While a lot of Detective action plays out through this app, it’s still fundamentally a board game. Players must manage their investigators’ precious time as they travel between locations on a central board. They must be careful not to waste hours following red herrings or risk taking on too much stress by working overtime.
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5. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, $35
Deception Murder in Hong Kong allows players to step into the role of an investigator by giving them the tools to hunt down a killer hidden amongst a bunch of innocents. Taking place in Hong Kong, each player will take turns locating the murder weapon and a key piece of evidence before tying both to the murder.
4. MicroMacro: Crime City, $30+
In MicroMacro: Crime City, you’ll only have one sense to rely on your sight. Using this huge poster-sized map filled with fun and quirky illustrations of cute little characters doing horrifying things to each other, you’ll need to search for clues amongst the visual noise to help you answer questions.
After choosing a case, you’ll pick between two difficulty levels, the beginner or expert mode, each one providing varying difficulty levels.
3. Mortum: Medieval Detective, $38+
Mortum: Medieval Detective is precisely what it says on the box, a sleuthing game set in the Middle Ages. No phone transcripts to read, no fingerprinting powder to use, just good old-fashioned Clue hunting in a world of taverns and horse travel.
2. Detective: City of Angels, $107+
Detective: City of Angels has players’ gumshoes walking the streets of LA during the 1940s, looking to solve several cases inspired by classic noir thrillers.
Although players’ detectives might be chasing the same cases and looking to bring those responsible to justice, they’re also all in it for their glory, making this a competitive crime-cracking experience.
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1. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, $59+
In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you and any number of friends will delve into a complex and well-written mystery through the dangerous streets of Victorian London.
You will be playing as Sherlock’s rag-tag group of street urchins; With every case, you’ll receive a plush A4 book of numbered prompts and illustrations detailing every small detail of the mystery.
Everything is lovingly written in prose to recreate London’s shiny streets and seedy underbelly. However, every prompt you read will require you to spend more time on the case and reduce your final score at the end of each game.