Plenty of games out there allow you to put your detective hat on and get to work on solving some grisly murders, investigating clues and questioning witnesses on what the fine details are behind the murder. However, fantasy and science fiction allow developers to meddle with genre conventions, giving players the ability to investigate their own murder.
Whether it’s due to the presence of ghosts, some kind of fantastical reincarnation from an all-powerful god, or just some good old-fashioned cloning techniques, these games allow players to investigate and even solve their own murder.
Mass Effect’s launch in 2007 immediately catapulted the game into the conversation of the best sci-fi RPGs ever made, so the follow-up release,Mass Effect 2, had to make a big statement in its intro. The answer: blow up Commander Shepard’s ship and have him die in the vacuum of space. Okay, so the actual result is way more exciting than it sounds.
After saving the galaxy from Saren’s threat in the first game, Shep’s taking a victory lap of sorts when the Normandy is assaulted by an unknown threat. This new ship wipes out the Normandy, with Shepard giving his life to save the rest of the crew. Two years later, Shep’s been revived by the radical pro-human group Cerberus, and they’re off to investigate who took him out.
Admittedly,Avowed’smain overarching plot isn’t about solving your own murder, but the first story arc of this Obsidian RPG sees your character, the Envoy, brought down by a poison arrow as soon as they step foot into the city of Paradis in Dawnshore. Depending on the choices you make, that could be a few minutes after you arrive in Dawnshore, or after a few hours because you spent some time exploring Dawnshore top to bottom. Your choice.
Resurrected by a mysterious figure, you find the situation in Paradis has escalated politically, with tensions rising between the recent wave of Aedyran settlers and the refugees and other settlers who have been calling the Living Lands home for years prior. As the Envoy for Aedyr, you’ll quickly have to decide where your loyalties lie.
The mystery of who killed the Envoy is solved by the time you leave Dawnshore, but the rest of the journey through the Living Lands asks you to solve your own resurrection. Specifically, who is the mysterious presence, and what’s their connection to both you and the Living Lands?
8Scapeghost
Most people reading this list will be too young to remember or even know of the existence of Scapeghost. It was a text adventure published by Level 9 Computing all the way back in 1989. This challenging murder mystery had you take on the role of detective Alan Chance, and the game starts with Chance as a ghost watching people leave his own funeral.
You have three nights to solve the mystery behind your murder and save your colleague Sarah, but that’s easier said than done. The game gets extra kudos for it’s title, a witty little play on the term scapegoat.
There are multiple aspects of a murder to solve, and when it comes to Sifu, the ‘who’ part has already been done for you. The game opens with the protagonist’s father being beaten down and murdered by a group of his former proteges, only for the group to then find the protagonist hiding in the cupboard. Death swiftly follows, but thanks to a mysterious amulet, you’re revived not long afterwards.
So the ‘who’ of it all has been solved, and the protagonist spends the rest of the game seeking revenge against the five who wronged them, but Sifu still allows you to investigate the clues and backstory of each member of the group to solve the ‘why’. Knowing who killed you is one thing, but understanding why they did it is another thing entirely.
Being murdered once and having to solve it is a hassle, but Shadow of Memories puts the character of Eike Kusch through the ringer. Not only does the lad die during the game’s prologue, but he also has to die at the end of every one of the game’s chapters, because if you’re not in the right area at the right time, the game will literally end. Sorry about that, Eike.
Luckily, Eike has someone in his corner, that someone being a Djinn-esque figure called Homunculus, who revives Eike, gives him a time-travelling device called the Digipad and tells him to solve his own murder. Travelling through four different time periods, you’ll find clues, make some decisions that ripple through time and ultimately unmask your killer.
If Shadow of Memories sounds familiar to you as a North American, it’s because the version you played is called Shadow of Destiny. It’s the same game, just a standard regional name difference.
Gang violence is dangerous enough in the real world, so in the cyberpunk/fantasy blend world of Shadowrun, gang wars must be reason enough to evacuate an entire city. When you’ve got elves, trolls, humans with cybernetic upgrades, and other mythical creatures all inhabiting the same world, the chaos and conflict are always one step away from kicking off.
In the Shadowrun game for the SNES, the chaos found its way pretty quickly to one Jake Armitage, who was the victim of a gangland shooting, but a mysterious shaman-like character worked some magic before Jake fully died. Soon after, Jake awakens in the morgue with precisely no memories, with the end goal being figuring out who put him on a slab in the first place.
Despite the exciting premise, there aren’t a lot of games about investigating your own death or murder, but that’s where indie flash games come in, with one of the most famous examples being The Dead Case. Released in 2004 on Newgrounds by Zachary Shaffer, The Dead Case is a point-and-click adventure game that challenges players to investigate how they died.
Awakening in your own unfinished grave, you’re an amnesiac ghost who finds that the ghost population in this supposedly sleepy little town is more than you’d expect. Each ghost has unfinished business to take care of, and solving their problems helps you uncover new information about your own death, eventually unmasking the serial killer running amok.
If you feel like playing The Dead Case for yourself,the game is still playable on the Newgrounds website right now.
Another fantasy game that starts with the protagonist awakening on a slab in the mortuary, Planescape: Torment is considered a formative PC RPG, giving players the ability to investigate the mystery via combat, detective work, conversation and more. Set in the titular D&D multiverse, players control The Nameless One, who is an immortal that forgets everything when they’re killed and reincarnated.
Wide awake with no memories, and likely a cold bum thanks to the mortuary slab, The Nameless One encounters a skull called Morte, who notes some tattooed instructions on Nameless’ back. Following said instructions, we learn who killed The Nameless One, how they became immortal in the first place and what happened to the various reincarnations too.
WHERE TO PLAY
Perhaps the most famous example of a game about investigating your own death, Murdered: Soul Suspect opens with the protagonist, Ronan O’Connor, tracking down a serial killer known as The Bell Killer. That’s the good news, but the bad news is that Ronan is quickly thrown out of a window, shot a few times and left to bleed out on the street.
This is when Murdered kicks off properly, with Ronan as a ghost trying to uncover the identity of The Bell Killer so he can reunite with his long-dead wife. You team with a spirit medium, Joy, using your ghostly powers and her connection between you and the world of the living, to find out the secrets of this serial killer running rampant in Salem. Yes, it’s set in Salem. That might be a clue.
Perhaps the most ridiculous example of this oddly specific genre niche, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is one of Capcom’s most odd yet enjoyable experiences. Playing as a recently deceased ghost called Sissel, you find that you have the powers of the dead, which allow you to travel back four minutes before someone’s death and change the outcome entirely.
Immediately, Sissel uses this power to save someone from assassination, with the game then following various characters getting murdered, usually via some overly elaborate method that requires quick thinking and puzzle solving to overcome. Eventually, you come to learn who killed you, and why there’s a conspiracy of people out to commit murder.
