There is nothing like a good mystery. The story jerks you around and makes you think the wrong things. It then surprises you at the end with some big revelation. It’s difficult to find the good ones, though, especially on Android. Believe it or not, the platform actually has some excellent games in the mystery genre. Here are the best mystery games for Android! We also recommend checking out Her Story as long as you don’t mind the game not having an update in the last four years.
- Ace Attorney (four games)
- Adventure Escape (five games)
- Clue
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- Emulators
- Life is Strange
- The Professor Layton series (four games)
- The Room series (four games)
- Rusty Lake series (13 games)
- The Vigil Files: Case 1
- Lost Phone series (two games)
- Honorable mention: Her Story
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Ace Attorney series (four games)
Price: $15.99-$19.99 each
Ace Attorney is a popular mystery-puzzle visual novel from the Nintendo DS and 3DS. Four of the games are on Android right now, including Spirit of Justice, Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (linked at the button), Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, and Ace Attorney Investigations. All of these play a similar way. You start a new case, collect evidence, and use the evidence in court to win. Each one has its own little mechanics as well. For instance, Ace Attorney Investigations lets you combine clues to create new clues. These are pure console ports with the full game included in each title. They are rather expensive, but there are no in-app purchases or ads to ruin the experience.
Adventure Escape (five games)
Price: Free to play
The Adventure Escape series by Haiku Games is a popular series of mystery games. Each game in the series has a story line and players have to solve puzzles to progress through the story. The game includes mystery, puzzle, and escape room mechanics. The games are classic point-and-click adventure style games where you find stuff and use it later on different puzzles. The games are entirely free to play but you can buy hints if you really want to. The Escape the Mansion series by GAMEBORN is also pretty good.
Clue
Price: $3.99 with in-app purchases
Clue is the mobile launch of the classic Clue board game. It plays basically the same. You move around the board to assemble clues and find out who the killer is, where the murder took place, and with what implement of destruction. Players get clipboards just like the real game. It has its ups and downs, but it’s generally a solid play. At the time of this writing, the game is having some issues with its multiplayer functionality so beware of that.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Price: $17.99
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a thriller-mystery visual novel. It’s also one of the best in its genre on any platform. You start as a student in a government-sponsored academy with some other students. The only way to graduate is to murder a fellow classmate and completely get away with it. Players find clues and figure out the killer in the game’s court. This is the anniversary edition on top of being a port from the PSP version so you get a little bit of extra content as well. It’s super expensive, but there are no in-app purchases or ads to mess things up.
Emulators
Price: Free / Varies
There were a bunch of classic mystery games on older consoles. You can play them with the use of emulators. Some ideas includes Mario is Missing on SNES, Scooby Doo Mystery on SEGA Genesis, Myst on PlayStation, Time Hollow on the Nintendo 3DS, and many others. Emulators are relatively easy to use as long as you can procure your own game files. All of them have things like save and load states (bypassing the in-game save systems), touch controls, and most of them have support for external game controllers. We have John NESS (SNES and NES) linked at the button or you can check out the best emulators for Android here.
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Life is Strange (two games)
Price: Free / Up to $8.99 (each)
Life is Strange is an adventure-puzzle game from Square Enix. You play as Max Caulfield, a girl with the ability to rewind time in short bursts to change minor things. You use the ability to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. The mechanics are actually pretty good with decent graphics and a fun story. The dialog can get a little verbose, but hey nobody’s perfect. The game is a premium game but you can start it for free. Square Enix also has the prequel available on mobile as well.
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The Professor Layton series
Price: $9.99-$15.99 each
The Professor Layton series is a popular and excellent mystery series from the Nintendo DS. Luckily, LEVEL-5 is porting the games to mobile for play there. There are four games available right now, including Diabolical Box, Curious Village, Mystery Journey, and Pandora’s Box (although we couldn’t download Pandora’s Box, check your device compatibility first). The games follow a similar story. Professor Layton embarks on a journey to tackle various mysteries. The series was insanely popular on the Nintendo DS and we hope it gains popularity here too because it’s really good. The games range from $9.99 to $15.99 each but have no in-app purchases or ads.
The Room (four games)
Price: $0.99-$4.99 each
The Room was one of the first great mystery games on mobile. The game traps the player in a room and you must deconstruct the puzzles to escape. The first game was fairly basic but the developers added a bit of a story as the series continued. Later games also added in features like cloud saving and achievements. The series is best known for its insanely good graphics, clever puzzles, and arcane story. This is one of the great mobile franchises of all time. Of course we recommend it to people.
Rusty Lake and Cube Escape (several games)
Price: Free / Up to $3.49 each
Rusty Lake is a developer on Google Play and basically all of their games fall under the mystery banner. Cube Escape is a series of puzzle-mystery games with escape room mechanics and there are ten games in that series. Additionally, there is the hallmark Rusty Lake series with three games. Finally, the developer also has Samsara Room which is similar to Cube Escape but it has its own thing. All of these games use point-and-click adventure mechanics to move around and engage with the game world. The Rusty Lake series has a lot more story than Cube Escape, but you really can’t go wrong with any of these titles. They’re excellent mystery games.
The Vigil Files: Case 1
Price: $2.99
The Vigil Files: Case 1 is an interesting text-based mystery game. Players receive emails and texts and make actions based on them. You also have to examine actual websites to discover clues and the game has a bit of hacking as well. It’s definitely something a little bit different in the genre and it reminds us heavily of the Lost Phone games from Dear Villagers (another excellent mystery series, by the way). The text based style may leave those wanting good graphics wanting more, but the story is good and the concept is neat.Â
Thank you for reading! Try these too:
If we missed any great mystery games for Android, tell us about them in the comments. You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!