Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers, in which you solve some crimes related to a voodoo cult. This game is good by itself but it left an extra mark on me because I was used to sillier games, GK was quite mature and serious compared to what I'd played before.

The first crime adventure I remember to have played is the interactive thriller Golden Gate Killer.
It is one of the few games that deals with a real-life homicide case, namely the murder of Colvin McCright:
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/man-convicted-of-killing-his-father-in-1972-trying-to-exonerate-himself/
In the 1st part of the game your task is to investigate the crime scene; in the 2nd part you have to interrogate
the suspects and bring the guilty one to justice.

The last one I solved was Kona where driving about in truck in the snow was the most memorable part. It's a pity it didn't have the physics of something like Snowrunner but it did a good job of a snowy atmosphere.


Do people ever actually solve the cases in videogames when even the dialog in most games is a case of ask predetermined questions where the interactivity is the order you can ask them instead of an intelligent conversation system.

I live between the bright shimmering golden sun of long-gone orange groves and the pitch blackness that brings the stars out to play. Amnesiac dream factories churn out product while the star-struck flood the streets from Nowheresville. "Maybe I can be a star?" But stay too long -- or veer off the palm-lined Hollywood avenues into the alleyways -- and the desperation, grift, and corruption comes into dead black focus.

Cities gain identities from food, buildings, and industry, but ask London (Whitechapel) of Jack The Ripper or San Francisco of the Zodiac Killer, and nothing creates an civic identity -- an indelible bloody badge of dishonor -- moreso than death... and lots of it. Los Angeles is no different.

This is where the Werewolf did his killing -- the City of Angels.

To those out of "the know" or beyond the periphery of the gameplay map of LA Noire, the Werewolf is the murderer of Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia, and potentially implicated in a number of related killings in late 1940's Los Angeles. The game LA Noire weaves fact, theory, and legend of the Werewolf -- and his taunting of law enforcement -- through multiple playable cases -- a veritable cat-and-mouse -- and comes to a definitive conclusion regarding the Black Dahlia's murder. While LA Noire's conclusion is liberally applied fiction laced with a dash of fact for taste... it is baked so well --

-- that I visited many of the buildings and locations approximated in the game (yes, many are approximations of real world locations), full-well knowing LA Noire's killer was a work of imagination and not that of police work and meticulous, back-breaking collection of cold, hard fact.

Maybe LA Noire's Werewolf "case" is the perfect mirror of Hollywoodland -- bloody fact mixed with fiction delivered as a "big screen" (or game) reality that's better than real life? Ah, Tinseltown. The curtain may be falling on celluloid, but the digital dream factories line Ocean Avenue and the coast -- working overtime just a little further West.

After playing LA Noire -- so enthralled by the unsolved mystery -- I spent many tireless days in the libraries and many sleepless nights at the computer researching the Werewolf killings... and in fact wrote a novel incorporating much of what I found and theorized -- gently tweaking and twisting just as Hollywood would do it, of course.

postcript: I do not want to leave readers with the impression LA Noire is a game solely about the Werewolf / Black Dahlia murders. While they grow in importance as the game develops (beginning with promotion to the homicide desk), this is not a Black Dahlia game. But after a playingthrough, oh how I wish it was.

Investigating the "murder" of Wrath in Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

There was a murder in the local diner. Every day occurrence in the big city the victim was stabbed in the restroom. There is a difference thou, motive is unclear and the killer bleed before the attack. It is up to you to solve who and why committed the crime.

A Sherlock Holmes game where a man was killed with a harpoon, pinned to the wall of a fishing hut.

Could it have been the Young Man who tried to break in through the locked doors of the crime scene twice?

Could it be the Gardner the wife says they don't have, who she was cheating on the victim with?

Who ever did it had to have had great strength to toss the harpoon through the victim and into the wall, as evidenced by my tests of throwing a harpoon through a pig corpse at the butchers.
The victim was very strong, and use to be a fisherman. A very bad sort of person, you would not wish to encounter. His knife on the ground, perhaps his failed attempt to defend himself. Two glass of alcohol and other evidenced showed that he knew his murderer.

There seem to have been something taken from the crime scene, as evidenced by a dust free spot on a otherwise dusty shelf. A notebook was found partially in the blood, evidently by the blood on it, dropped into the blood after the victim was killed. Also an engraved pouch was found at the scene.

The Young Man who we arrested after the second break in attempt (we ambushed him) was after that notebook. A young man in once expensive but now patched clothing had a gold ring on him, engraved on the inside. It the ring of a Banker who's bank had gone bankrupt, destroying the livelihood of half the families in the area. Said Banker had run off on a yacht, never to be seen again. The son of that Banker was the Young Man.

Young Man says his father had thought if he could buy some time, he could pay back the debters and save the bank. His Banker father had taken a bunch of valuable bonds and other securities, leaving a list of what he had taken with him with his wife, the Young Mans mother. Young assumed his father and all his possessions had been lost to a shipwreck. Young noticed that amazingly some of those old bonds had shown up again on the market, originating from Victims household So Young was determined to learn more of what happened, and that he claimed, was why he was trying to break in. That notebook had information about the cargo of the yacht, among which was the valuable bonds and securities

Upon further investigation it was the Gardener who had cashed those bonds, on the market, the victims wife cheating on him with said Gardner. A prime suspect? I was not so sure. Gardner has spoken of the victim having met up with a old Sailing Buddy.

Street informants tell me the Sailing Buddy was often seen in a local pub challenging people to arm wrestling, betting on the victor. I disguised myself as a fishermen and used my smarts (when to push and when to hold) and strength to win against Sailing Buddy. I then paid for the drink of Sailing with the money I earned from him, earning his good will and loosening his lips as I encouraged Sailing to talk about his good old days. I also put the pouch on my body in clear view to see if Sailing would recognized it.

Sailing Buddy talked about witnessing a murder. The murder of Banker by "Victim", who was the captain of the ship Banker was on, thus knew of it's cargo. Sailing also recognized his pouch and identified it as his. I told Sailing Buddy I knew of a captain Ahab of the ship Pequod was looking for more sailors.

So the next day Sailing shows up at 221B Baker Street looking for work. and meets me instead. I confront Sailing about what happened. Sailing admits to killing "Victim", but only in self defense. Sailing was blackmailing "Victim", well trying to, Sailing was barely surviving financially and wanted a small portion of the money "Victim" had murdered for. Sailing had barely uttered the blackmail before "Victim" had rushed at sailing with a knife.

I knew Sailing's story to be true. I decided (the game let's you decide how you want to handle it) there was no need for him to go to jail. I told Sailing, that if he returned most of the securities, only keeping a small amount for himself to disappear, I would not turn him over to the police. When Lestrade asked who the culprit was, I said it was a dead sailor who's corpse is currently in the morgue.

P.S. I had posted earlier, but didn't give it much effort not realizing we would be judged. (I only looked at the first post of the thread) I am unsure whether all the responses are going to be collected at once at the deadline or added to some sheet by someone as people reply to the thread. If it's the latter, please replace any previous entry of mine with this one.

P.S.S. I love evolving character games like Disco Elysium!

For me the best crime story in a videogame is The Wolf Among Us. In the game you are Bigby Wolf, formerly the Big Bad Wolf, is the Sheriff of Fabletown, a hidden community of fairytale characters located in 1980s New York City, you must investigate the murder of a Fable, soon everyting goes grown and you have to pursue a serial murder, interacting with several Fables in the Big Apple, to find it the guilty and stop it once and for all, you will have to take several decisions that changes some clue points of the game, a really good game and I hope we have a sequel soon.

My most memorable case came from Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

Down on my luck, I was looking for the topic of my next book when a newspaper report of the so-called voodoo murders caught my eye.

The police believed them to be nothing more than mob revenge killings, but I knew there was more to it. With the help of my assistant, research revealed that belief in voodoo still flourished in New Orleans and the voodoo elements of the murders was authentic.

What shocked me was the deeply personal element of the case. Not only did I discover my shadowhunter ancestors, dedicated to fighting dark practices, but the evil behind the voodoo murders was linked to a talisman belonging to my family, the loss of which caused the downfall of our fortune. The joy of meeting my great uncle, who's life work was to fight dark practices, soon turned to tragedy, when he sacrificed himself to recover the powerful heirloom.

While I was still morning my great-uncle's loss, tragedy was compounded by the kidnapping of my assistant, Grace.
With ominous drumbeats, presaging greater ills, my destiny is clear. I will be true to my heritage. I will fight Evil. I will save Grace. I will defeat the powers behind the voodoo murders.

Wahoo!

Good luck, everyone!