Epic Games Store mobile brings in The Darkside Detective as this week's freebie
Explore Twin Lakes’ strangest mysteries
- The Darkside Detective is free until December 11th
- The comedy-horror point-and-click adventure brings Twin Lakes' bizarre case files to mobile
- Ben Prunty’s atmospheric soundtrack makes the whole experience better
The Darkside Detective is having a moment on mobile again, and this time it’s courtesy of the Epic Games Store. From now until December 11th, you can grab the popular mystery adventure for free through the Epic mobile app. Android users worldwide get access, and iOS players in the EU can jump in too. Not bad if you like your mysteries with a side of unhinged.
It all goes down in Twin Lakes, a rather unsuspecting-looking place. It may look ordinary at first glance, but the moment you dig a little deeper, the cracks start to show. The place is absolutely crawling with weirdness, and most residents just prefer not to ask questions for some reason.
That’s where Detective Francis McQueen steps in. He leads the Darkside Division – an outfit with more responsibility than budget - with Officer Patrick Dooley at his side, taking on problems that no other department is willing to claim.
The structure is classic point-and-click, but the humour is what carries it. Cases swing from cultists and cursed libraries to sewer tentacles with lunch plans of their own. The writing riffs constantly on horror tropes, detective clichés, and pop culture without ever feeling smug about it.
And Ben Prunty’s soundtrack - yes, the same composer behind FTL, Into the Breach, Celeste, and Subnautica - gives Twin Lakes an eerie-but-charming pulse that pairs perfectly with the pixel art.
Season One comes bundled here, which includes a full set of cases that escalate from odd to “I probably shouldn’t have clicked that” in record time. It’s a compact, funny, extremely tappable detective series, and it plays beautifully on mobile thanks to its simple interface and bite-sized pacing.
If this freebie has you in the mood to solve even more mysteries, our list of the best detective games on iOS has plenty of investigations waiting for you.
