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10 Games Like Murdle
Murdle — G.T. Karber's free daily mystery at murdle.com and its bestselling book series — turned "solve one murder a day" into a habit for a lot of people. But it lives on the web and on paper: there's no official Murdle app, the daily is one puzzle and done, and sooner or later you want more cases, a different mechanic, or something that works offline.
Here are ten worthy suspects, ranked. One honesty note before we begin: the #1 pick is our own game, and we say so right there in the entry. Everything else is ranked on how well it serves a Murdle fan, and every factual claim about a third-party game (platform, price, mechanics) reflects what its own store page or website says as of July 2026.
The list
1. Cozy Culprits — the daily murder-deduction ritual, as a real app
Full disclosure: we make this one. With that on the table, here's the case for the ranking: of everything on this list, Cozy Culprits is the only one built from the ground up as a daily murder-deduction app — not a website, not a level-pack with a daily bolted on — with a mathematical guarantee that every case has exactly one solution, so you never face a forced guess.
The mechanic is deliberately different from Murdle's elimination grid: each case is a floor plan, and you place the suspects so no two share a row or column, furniture blocks cells, walls block adjacency, and every written clue fits. The suspect who ends up in the victim's room is the murderer. (Full rules: how to play murder sudoku.)
- Platform: iPhone (free, no account needed, fully offline)
- Price: free with ads (never mid-puzzle); one-time $3.49 removes them — no subscription
- The daily: a new case at midnight in Easy (5×5), Medium (6×6) and Hard (7×7) — the same board for every player worldwide, with streaks, per-difficulty leaderboards, a weekly Game Center league, and a spoiler-free share card with your solve time
- Beyond the daily: a campaign of cases from Rookie to Mastermind, 16 recurring suspects, an interactive tutorial, hints that point to an overlooked clue but never reveal the killer, 30 languages
- Who it's for: Murdle fans who want the daily ritual native on their phone — and anyone who prefers placing suspects on a map to ticking a grid
2. Clues by Sam — the deduction purist's daily
A free daily browser puzzle by Finnish designer Johannes Ahvenniemi. Each day you get a building full of residents and must work out, one by one, who's innocent and who's a criminal, using clues the residents themselves give you. Its killer feature is that the game only accepts moves you can actually prove — guessing simply doesn't work, which makes it one of the fairest deduction games anywhere. Free with no ads; optional paid puzzle packs support the developer.
- Platform: web (cluesbysam.com) · Price: free; optional paid packs · Who it's for: players who loved Murdle's logic but want deeper, chainier deductions
3. Murdle itself — the web daily and the books
Obvious but worth stating: if you found Murdle through the books, the free daily at murdle.com is waiting for you every day — and if you only play the web daily, the book series (published by St. Martin's Press) is hundreds more hand-crafted cases, including a junior line for kids. Paper is also the genre's best offline mode: no battery, no updates, satisfying pencil work.
- Platform: web + paperback/hardcover · Price: daily is free; books are paid · Who it's for: completionists and gift-givers
4. Enigmic: Crime Puzzle Cases — the big case library
A mobile deduction game where each case gives you a board, suspects, and clues, and you mark and eliminate possibilities until everyone's position is proven — closer to Murdle's elimination feel than most apps manage. Its strength is volume: the library spans many hundreds of cases organized into seasons, so it's a binge format rather than a daily ritual.
- Platform: iOS and Android · Price: free with in-app purchases · Who it's for: players who burn through one daily puzzle and want fifty more
5. Mystery-o-matic — the open-source daily whodunit
A charming free web daily where you deduce who killed, with what, and when — reconstructing a timeline from suspects' statements. Puzzles are procedurally generated (the project is open source), and there's a harder mode where the killer can lie, which meaningfully changes how you weigh testimony. Reading fewer clues earns a better detective rank.
- Platform: web (mystery-o-matic.com) · Price: free · Who it's for: solvers who want timelines and alibis instead of grids
6. Cross Logic — casual picture-grid riddles
A slick, level-based mobile game of illustrated logic riddles: read the clues, cross off the impossible portraits, tap the answer. It's lighter than anything above — less murder, more brain-teaser — but it nails the cross-things-off dopamine and is easy to play in one hand.
- Platform: iOS and Android · Price: free to download · Who it's for: casual players and commute sessions
7. Logic Grid Puzzles (Egghead Games) — the classic, digitized
Murdle's mechanic is a murder-flavored version of the classic logic grid puzzle, and this is the cleanest straight digitization of the classic: proper ternary grids from cozy 3×4 up to large 4×7, with multi-level undo, an auto-X option and smart hints. It starts with 100 free puzzles; more volumes are paid, with an optional subscription for the full vault.
- Platform: iOS and Android · Price: free starter set; paid volumes / optional subscription · Who it's for: purists who want the underlying puzzle form, minus the theming
8. Murder-sudoku casebook apps — the placement-puzzle cousins
Cozy Culprits isn't the only game exploring the "sudoku meets whodunit" placement idea — searching the stores for murder sudoku surfaces a small cluster of casebook-style apps (GridNoir Murder Sudoku on iOS and Crimedoku on Android among them) that package hundreds of themed cases into level packs. Quality and monetization vary title to title, so check recent reviews — but if you love the placement mechanic and want alternate takes on it, this niche is quietly growing.
- Platform: varies (iOS / Android) · Price: varies · Who it's for: placement-puzzle fans exploring beyond one game
9. The wider daily-deduction web scene
Beyond murder, the post-Wordle ecosystem is full of free once-a-day deduction games — geography guessers, movie-frame identifications, chess puzzles, word ladders — that pair beautifully with a morning murder. If your real addiction is the daily format itself, rotating two or three dailies keeps each one fresh. We dig into why the format works in our daily murder mystery guide.
- Platform: web · Price: almost always free · Who it's for: ritualists building a morning puzzle stack
10. Books and printables — the analog stack
Beyond Murdle's own volumes, bookstores carry decades of logic-grid puzzle collections and magazines, and the web has plenty of printable logic puzzles for rainy weekends. Paper is unbeatable for kids, travel, and anyone trying to spend less time on a screen while keeping the deduction habit.
- Platform: paper · Price: varies; printables often free · Who it's for: screen-free solvers and gifts
At a glance
| # | Game | Platform | Price model | Daily puzzle? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cozy Culprits (ours) | iPhone | Free · $3.49 one-time removes ads | Yes — 3 difficulties |
| 2 | Clues by Sam | Web | Free · optional paid packs | Yes |
| 3 | Murdle (web + books) | Web / paper | Daily free · books paid | Yes |
| 4 | Enigmic: Crime Puzzle Cases | iOS / Android | Free with IAP | Library-first |
| 5 | Mystery-o-matic | Web | Free | Yes |
| 6 | Cross Logic | iOS / Android | Free to download | Level-based |
| 7 | Logic Grid Puzzles (Egghead) | iOS / Android | Free start · paid volumes | Library-first |
| 8 | Murder-sudoku casebook apps | Varies | Varies | Varies |
| 9 | Daily-deduction web games | Web | Mostly free | Yes |
| 10 | Books & printables | Paper | Varies | No |