Detectives are an extremely popular book genre

>Detectives are an extremely popular book genre
>They're often centered around a charismatic and/or eccentric crime solving character
>The structure of the books is often similar to a puzzle, some even allow the readers to come to their own conclusion before the resolution
>As a result, they're generally written as a series of short stories

I have no idea why detective games are so few and far between. They seem like a perfect cash cow if done with a bit of planning: just create a crime-solving framework, hire a non-shit writer who can create a logical mystery and you're pretty much all set. Episodic adventure games aren't a new concept but I can only think of LA Noire and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments that actually focus on the mystery solving elements in their gameplay and only Crimes and Punishments is actually good.
I just want a game to really make me think without doing either autistic maths puzzles or braindead QTEs.

Was he autistic?

Yes.

"Is this another mystery for me to be solving mon ame hastings"

yes

I wonder if the Poirot games are any good

He was gay with hastings wasn't he?

I shipped them a lot as a kid.

i think he was just bad with the ladies due to autism, despite wanting the puss

multiple of the show's episodes deal with him having a thing with a lady, but it not going anywhere due to his personality

or maybe it was agatha christie doing the ship in the 30s

Gamers are literally too braindead:
I accidentally stumbled upon a Hitman '16 let's play video, of one of biggest youtubers in my country, and that fucking retard managed to fail and die in a tutorial, that literally spoonfeeds you everything from start to finish as a way of introducing you to all the mechanics.
Normalfags should be somehow removed from gaming, so they don't ruin games with their retardation.
They don't even use adblock on their browsers, and their biggest gaming experience is match-3 or facebook shit, maybe stolen memories of a PS1/NES classic.

The Ace Attorney games are obvious a law procedural, but they do involve a lot of detective work, with talking to people and looking for clues outside of court.

>Watching let's plays in the current year

Detective games are a thing, but they're rare because they have a "niche audience" (lack of action) or low replayability (HIM RIGHT THERE! HE DONE IT).

I loved prof layton on my ds
Didn't like the 3ds games much because they changed how you interact with the world too much imo

Also like ^^ said they have 0 replayablity which is sort of a shame

You might enjoy Ghost Trick. More of a puzzle game than a "detective" game but the story is very mystery-centric.

Police/Detective procedurals are a hard thing to do since you have to make it accessible enough that most people can figure it out but not too easy or hard. It's very niche either way. A shame the Poirot game of last year was like just clicking on objects & doing some puzzles or at least it was until I got Poirot stuck in his appartment, soft-locking the game.

That was the most important element of the post, yes.

bump to respond

>think
sorry mate but this only word make it a risky project and most editor wont even give it a chance
you might just make it yourself that's the easiest way you could get a game like that

Detective themes and motives are just really hard to translate into an enjoyable set of mechanics. It's not impossible, but it is very hard to put them off fluently. I think that to make a good crime solving game, you'd need to combine the dynamic time-driven narrative of Pathologic with actually really well realized adventure elements (which are hard as fuck to invent and balance, there is a reason why adventure games are such a niche genre) with complex choice-and-consequence models, some kind of actually enjoyable social play mechanics: and you'd have to pace all of that well.
It's quite a damn hard thing to pull off. Much, much harder than making a shooter or an RTS.

>That Murder on the Orient Express episode

Contradiction came out I think last year, and it was a really good detective game since the whole thing was based around as the title says, finding inherent contradictions in what people say.

That can happen? Shit.
I started playing it yesterday. It's a shame that your deductions can't lead you down the wrong path like Crimes and Punishments. I am enjoying it although I wish they got Suchet to voice Poirot.

How has no one made a video game of Clue that isn't just the straight up board game in video game form? Clue is the perfect whodunnit.

I think Crimes and Punishment was almost perfect as far as game mechanics go. You go around collecting clues, interrogating people and doing some puzzles which are actually related to what you're doing like chemistry. Everything you gather is then summarized in the deduction menu which has several possible outcomes and accusing a wrong person is possible so you have to figure out the final result yourself, usually through indirect evidence. The cases themselves could have been harder but the foundation was absolutely perfect, in my opinion.
Also spoilers but whatever.

Books and video games are considerably different media. In some cases, this doesn't seem terribly apparent. A lot of these cutscene-laden games could work almost as well as a book. In others, it becomes a vast difference.

The problem with a detective book and a detective game is what they require from the audience. In order for a detective book to be successful, it only needs to convince the audience that the protagonist's deduction is plausible. The book can allow readers to determine their own conclusion to the mystery, or keep them in suspense to keep them guessing, but none of this is required for someone to read or even enjoy the book. The only thing that the author needs is for the reader to believe that the protagonist could reach the given conclusion with the evidence they have gained up to that point.

In order for a detective game to be successful, it requires the audience themselves to solve the mystery. That is, if the player ends up stumped, then the game cannot progress. While in a detective story, and stupid situation and any stupid solution can work in the end, with a detective game, you are required to spend much more effort to both ensure that the solution is sensible but that other potential solutions can be successfully eliminated. Not doing so ends up with the Carmen Sandiego situation, where a case (or an entire game) could be made unwinnable partway through simply because of a false lead or false assumption partway through. There are other options, but they generally involve abstracting the situation and throwing random unrelated puzzles into the game (Professor Layton) or they will shove the story forward and only occasionally involve the player in reaching some pre-set conclusions (Phoenix Wright).

You will find some deduction video games out there, but unlike detective novels, these tend to be vastly more difficult to make properly.

Also, lots of detective novels tend to be shit. (if you've read them)

Kara No Shoujo

They have, actually. I played the SNES version a lot as a kid.

>lots of detective novels tend to be shit
Lots of everything tends to be shit.

>Books and video games are considerably different media.

Actually, I disagree. Videogames are the one medium that is able to tell a story in the same way a book does because it has the right length to tell a book-length plot. Even miniseries that adapt books have to have logical beginnings and ends to episodes, but a videogame is unique in that like a book, you can put it down and pick it up at any time you want without disrupting the flow of the narrative.

I haven't played them, and you do make them sound interesting, at least on a game design levels. I've been wrapping my head around the theoretical challenge of making a good detective game for quite some time now. I found it to be one of the most challenging goals when it comes to games, theoretically actually very rich, but also with very little actual commerical perspectives.

I mean it's more of an adventure game but it has a mystery element to it.

Then I think you really should play Crimes and Punishments at the very least. In my point of view, it came really close to the ultimate detective game. Jack the Ripper and Testament also have really solid detective elements but Crimes and Punishments was the one that trimmed the fat and filler without going full retard like Devil's Daughter.

The old Blade Runner game was fun desu.

Was it based on the movie instead of the board game?

Clue for the snes is just the board game with animations.

I've picked up books years after I last read them, and with a bit of skimming, was able to continue where I'd left off.

Although in this case, what I'm saying is that a detective book and a detective game are asking two fundamentally different things from the audience. A detective book is asking the audience to believe that a fictional character can solve the case and realistically come to the desired conclusion. A detective game is asking the audience to solve the case and come to that conclusion themselves.

The book can be a lot sloppier in how it presents the puzzle, because all we need is a somewhat reasonable explanation (even after the fact) for why red herrings didn't work. The character can claim experience, or luck, or even some outside knowledge for hitting upon the correct conclusion. The game requires much more focus on the puzzle itself, as otherwise the player can end up wildly off track in creating their own red herrings or following their own incorrect deductions and end up nowhere near the conclusion. It requires a lot more effort to create a video game deductive puzzle than it does a book deductive puzzle, because there will only ever be one way for someone to progress through the book puzzle (the way the author will be guiding the character through it).

While true, I'd say that detective novels are particularly bad - for the above reasons. Detective novels can be lazier with their puzzles and solutions, and as such ARE frequently lazier with their puzzles and solutions. A vast majority of detective novels, far more than Sturgeon's Law, either use some illogic that we are supposed to accept or just jump on the "protagonist was lucky this time" for solving the crime. See anything from Dan Brown to Scooby Doo: these stories are the vast majority, primarily thanks to the genre being so popular.

Sorry, I thought that's what you meant you wanted.

Nah, just the game.

Also, I'm trying to remember the name of a specific deduction game. It's something recent, it's in black-and-white with a Commodore 64-style filter. The plot is that a boat floated into harbor with everyone dead, and you use a stopwatch near a dead body to replay the moment when the person died, and reach a conclusion of what exactly happened on the boat.

It might not be out yet, but it's bothering me that I can't recall the name.