There will always be games that manage to completely eclipse any other on their release date, leaving smaller titles fighting in their shadow to be seen by the hordes of gamers opening their wallets. On September 4, 2025, that game is Hollow Knight: Silksong, but there’s another game releasing today that has far more of my attention: Casebook 1899. 

Casebook 1899: The Leipzig Murders is a point-and-click adventure developed by Homo Narrans Studio, and while other developers have delayed their games’ release dates to give themselves a fighting chance at even being seen amid the Silksong fog, Casebook 1899 refused to budge.

A classic murder mystery

In Casebook 1899, you play as Detective Inspector Joseph Kreiser, and it’s your job to investigate suspicious deaths within the city of Leipzig at the turn of the century. You need to get to the bottom of each case by talking to witnesses, gathering evidence, and piecing together clues that, at first, may not make much sense. 

But that’s the nature of point-and-clicks for the most part. Clues and items in your inventory that sit there uselessly until the perfect moment when they suddenly become useful, despite you having forgotten you had them in the first place. Casebook 1899 takes things a step further by requiring you to combine clues as well as items to get to the bottom of things, but it is the perfect feature for this classic series of who-dunnits. 

Casebook 1899 is fully voice-acted in German, regardless of which language you choose to actually play in (German, English, or Italian), which really helps with the immersion, dragging you into the mindset of DI Kreiser as he explores the city and cracks the four cases that make up the full game. 

Humor and design brighten the darkness

Let’s face it, investigating murders is never going to result in a particularly happy-go-lucky storyline, but Casebook 1899 has random moments of humor that are both unexpected but highly welcome. One of the first moments comes before you’ve even managed to leave your office, when a Patrolman comes to knock on your door, requiring your detective services on a case. 

You have four dialogue choices at this point, each one being a guess as to the case you’re being invited to investigate, and one of them is that lions have somehow, inexplicably, escaped from the local zoo. Perhaps this is funny purely because of the dark undertones of the plot at large, or maybe it’s just objectively funny, but it made me smile, and that’s always a good thing.

The pixel art is gorgeous, and really does a fantastic job of showing a bustling, industrial city at the tail end of the 19th century. You can see the fashions and influences everywhere you look, with the cases reflecting the time period as well. The first involves one of the first ever automobiles to enter the city. Despite the darkness surrounding each death and investigation, the city itself is vibrant and alive. 

Every crime is introduced by DI Kreiser beginning to tell the tale to the blind owner of his lodging house, and those scenes are set up like a stage play, with the spotlight shifting depending on who is talking, and parts of the backdrop coming into view at regular intervals. It’s beautiful.

Casebook 1899: The Leipzig Murders will be available to purchase and play through Steam on September 4, 2025. If you’re a fan of the point-and-click genre, then this is an absolute must-play title.