Room for Murder Daily › Blog › Games Like Murdoku — 8 Murder Sudoku and Deduction Games to Play Next
Games Like Murdoku — 8 Murder Sudoku and Deduction Games to Play Next
Finished your murder sudoku book and want more? Here are eight games and puzzle books with the same "place the suspects, find the killer" itch — free daily puzzles, printable case files and video games.
- Free and daily: Room for Murder Daily — a new floor-plan murder sudoku every day, with a lying killer on Sundays.
- More books: the Room for Murder puzzle book (80 cases) and Murdle-style logic grid books.
- Bigger cases: printable case files where you eliminate hundreds of suspects with a dozen clues.
- On a screen: deduction video games such as Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol.
If you've worked through a murder sudoku book — Manuel Garand's Murdoku popularised the format — you know the feeling: a floor plan, a few statements, and a click when the last suspect lands and the killer is suddenly obvious. Here is where to find that feeling again, from free daily puzzles to longer cases. We make two of these, so we've marked them; the rest we simply enjoy.
1. Room for Murder Daily (free, every day)
Our own free daily game, so take the ranking with a grain of salt. Every morning there's a new floor plan: place the suspects one per row and column, then name the person who was alone with the victim. Monday is gentle, Saturday is a 7×7 with merged rooms, and on Sundays the killer lies. Hints, a check button, a leaderboard and a spoiler-free share badge are built in.
Room for Murder Daily
A new floor-plan murder mystery every morning: place the suspects, find who was alone with the victim. No sign-up, works on phones.
Play today's case2. The Room for Murder book
Eighty printable floor-plan cases in five chapters, from cottages to a nine-suspect café, ending in a lying-killer finale. Good if you want to solve on paper with a pencil — or print a case for a friend.
Room for Murder
80 floor-plan murder mysteries in five chapters, from cosy cottages to a lying-killer finale — the book behind this site.
Solo or together
See it on Etsy3. Murdle-style logic grid books
G. T. Karber's Murdle books use the classic logic grid — who, with what, where — wrapped in short mysteries. Less spatial than a murder sudoku, more about cross-referencing tables. If you like the "aha" of the last deduction, they scratch the same itch.
4. Classic logic grid puzzle magazines
Newsstand logic-puzzle magazines have printed grid puzzles for decades. No murder, usually, but the same elimination muscles — and a huge supply.
5. Printable detective case files
Case files scale the idea up: instead of six suspects you get hundreds of records — coats in a cloakroom, riders on a ghost train, pieces of luggage in a baggage car — and a dozen clues. Each clue removes a chunk until one record survives. Ours come with checkpoints after every clue, so you always know you're on track.
The Cloakroom Killer
Christmas Eve 1929: 800 coats, 12 clues and one killer. A logic-elimination puzzle for a cosy evening.
1–4 solvers
See it on Etsy6. Picture-elimination puzzles
A cousin of the case file where the records are drawings: Polaroids of costumed skaters, pies on a contest table, cabinet cards at a séance. You read the pictures — hat, collar, what someone carries — and cross out everyone who breaks a clue.
The Costume Contest Killer
Halloween 1986 at a roller rink: find the killer on a wall of 360 drawn Polaroids.
1–4 solvers
See it on Etsy7. Return of the Obra Dinn (video game)
Lucas Pope's deduction game asks you to work out the name and fate of every crew member on a ghost ship from frozen moments in time. It is much longer than a puzzle book and one of the most admired deduction games ever made.
8. The Case of the Golden Idol (video game)
Each scene is a frozen crime: you collect words and names and fill in what happened, who did it and why. A great pick if you liked the "assemble the story" part of a murder sudoku.
How to choose
| If you liked… | Try |
|---|---|
| The floor plan and the one-per-row rule | Room for Murder Daily, the Room for Murder book |
| Cross-referencing clues in a table | Murdle-style logic grid books |
| A long evening on one case | Printable case files |
| Reading drawings closely | Picture-elimination puzzles |
| A big story on a screen | Obra Dinn, Golden Idol |
Questions people ask
What is a game like Murdoku?
Any logic puzzle where you place suspects on a map using their statements and then deduce the killer from where everyone ends up. The closest match is a floor-plan "murder sudoku" with the one-per-row-and-column rule.
Is there a free daily murder sudoku?
Yes. Room for Murder Daily publishes a new floor-plan murder sudoku every day at roomformurder.com. It is free, needs no account and works on phones; past cases stay playable in the archive.
Are murder sudoku puzzles good for beginners?
Yes, if they start small. 4×4 and 5×5 plans teach the rules in a few minutes; most collections then grow to 7×7 or 9×9 plans with more suspects and trickier statements.
Keep reading
- Daily Puzzle Games Like Wordle — for Logic Lovers
- Free Printable Logic Puzzles for Adults (Murder Mystery Edition)
- Games Like Murdle — Murder Mystery Logic Puzzles to Play Next
We make the games mentioned in this guide — that's why we know them well. Links to Etsy go to our own shop, Midnight Motive.
Murdoku, Murdle, Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol are trademarks of their respective owners. Room for Murder is an independent game by Midnight Motive and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. We mention them only to describe the kind of puzzle each one is.