Hello fellow gamers,
I'm looking for an interesting detective or mystery-solving adventure game, but one that shows high re-playability? During my long internet search such a game doesn't seem to exist, 3 games excepted. I have found that some of the detective games like L.A. Noire or the Sherlock Holmes series have some fascinating stories and puzzles to solve but they are all of the genre "play-it-once-and-you-are-done" style game.
I have found 3 bright execptions which are

- Covert Action (Sid Meier, Microprose; spy game with different 'culprits' to chase every time)
- Murder! (Approx 1990; US Gold, Amiga/PC; a classic 3D detective game where the murder is different each time)
- Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion or Cluedo: Murder at Blackwell Grange (1998; which is a boardgame conversion)

I understand that an interesting mystery game which is replayable must not have a consistent story-telling (it's clear that the story cannot be different each time), but some interesting puzzles or game mechanics to solve or play which are different each time despite a broad generic story. The game Murder! here above comes close to that and I wonder if there is a 'modern' version of such a game.

So is there any such mystery game or detective game? Thanks a lot to let me know!

Hi Beatrice, thanks for your tip, the pictures and description on their homepage looks awesome, I'll look further into it.
Cheers,

You try to find your parents and siblings in pirates. Not a riveting mystery, but it is random and you have to follow clues.

Daughter of serpents? It lets you create your character and has some different solutions to puzzles based on that. It's also a fairly short game though.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/daughter-of-serpents

I know Freddi Fish 3 is a children's game, however, it's one of the only point and clicks I would play and it seems to fit what you're looking for but I could be wrong. However, Omensight looks really good. That's definitely one I would eventually try as well.

Blade Runner has some randomization, so that certain characters can either be human or replicant each time you play. There's twelve or thirteen different endings to the game.

Not a mystery/detective game at all but The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past randomizer kinda scratches the same itch as finding certain randomized items allows access to more places which in turn open more places etc. There is a logic behind how the items are distributed, so you can always complete the game. The fun part is that you can break that logic by using some glitches or navigating through a cave (for instance) in the dark which allows you to find more items out of logic. The thing here is that you will then know that item X is locked behind item Y which then limits the places where that item could be.
Found out about this pretty much two weeks ago via the ALTTP Randomizer Spring Tournament. 512 players dueling each other in a 7-week Swiss-style tournament (currently in the sixth week) to make the brackets and then afterwards to determine the winner. It's pretty fun to watch (and to play, I guess :P).

http://vt.alttp.run/

Carmen Sandiego games?

The only one i've actually played was Where in the world is Carmen Saniego which was the CD-ROM version, which meant they had A LOT OF UNUSED SPACE so they added in a bunch of voice acting in (Because what else do you do with 400MB of space? Beyond FMV's...)

Hey guys, thank you all very much for your tips and kind inputs, I sure will go look for it.
I realize that what I'm asking is a rare beast to say at least, also the specific genre of such a game is hard to delimit exactly, perhaps it's a mix of adventure, action, arcade etc.
On GOG I just discover that there are very specific sub-genres not listed in the main 'genres' you can chose from. In this case it's very helpful for me to browse the 'Mystery-detective' genre and looking for 'Real-time' adventure games which are few between, but increased chance to meet what I want.

Of course I will look deeper in your suggested titles as well, thanks again !

XenonS

Of course there's also Cluedo, but it's Cluedo. A bit light, plot-wise.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/794800/ClueCluedo_The_Classic_Mystery_Game/

I'm just going off the top of my head here but "Midnight Rescue" might qualify. I remember some of the puzzles being randomized each playthrough. This was a learning game for kids and an old one too, I played it in 1993.

As I understand it, the puzzle solutions Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park depend on which group of characters you choose to play with, which adds to replayability.

I get what you are looking for, random procedural detective mystery! And I love these sort of games too, but they are rare as mighty hell.

Here's one that I found:
Noir Syndrome

One on GOG, but I'm unsure of it's procedural mechanical value:
The Sexy Brutale

This one has some interesting and pretty challenging mindsweeper style mechanics. I believe there is a separate random procedural mode. I played this a long time back, when I got it from another portal.
Betrapped

I hope you enjoy these!

I agree, and concerning other detective games with a few different endings, consider Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive or Ripper too, for instance.