The genre
Found phone games
A found phone game is a game where you find someone’s phone and go through it. Their messages, photos, emails and apps are the whole story, and you’re the only one reading.
What makes a found phone game
There are no cutscenes and no narrator. The phone is the game. You learn who the owner is from how they text their mother, what they deleted, who they muted and which photo they took at 3 AM. The mystery is always the same at heart: what happened to this person, and who knows more than they’re saying?
It works because a phone is the most private thing most of us own. Reading someone else’s feels wrong, which is exactly why it’s gripping.
The games that shaped the genre
If you’re looking for games like A Normal Lost Phone or games like Duskwood, these are the names you’ll keep running into:
Sara Is Missing (2016)
A short horror game on a missing woman’s phone. One of the first to make the whole screen the story.
A Normal Lost Phone (2017)
A narrative game by Accidental Queens about a teenager whose phone you find. Quiet, personal and focused on identity rather than crime.
Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story (2017)
The follow-up from the same studio: a woman has disappeared and her phone holds the reason.
Simulacra (2017)
A horror game on the phone of a missing woman, with video messages and a lot of things going wrong.
Duskwood
An episodic detective story told mostly through a messenger, with mini-games between the chapters.
Last Text: Murder Mysteries
Case-based murder mysteries on found phones. Each case is a different phone and a different crime, and you make one accusation. More below.
Years are the original release. We list other games because they’re good places to start, not because we make them.
Where Last Text fits
Most found phone games are one long story. Last Text is a library of cases, each one a complete mystery you can finish in an evening:
- Every case is a different phone. An engaged architect in Boston, a 78-year-old widower in Ohio, a marine biologist on a tidal island, a line cook in Brooklyn, a newcomer in an outback mining town.
- The phone is alive. Its clock moves on as you read, and new messages keep arriving.
- You make one accusation. Wrong, and the case is over. Right, and you prove it with five questions. The earlier you’re right, the more you score.
- No mini-games in the way. No match-3, no hints to buy, no timers to race. Just reading and thinking.
Case 01 is free on iPhone and Android.Found phone games on iPhone and Android
Last Text is on iPhone and Android, on the App Store and on Google Play. Case 01, The Fiancé, is free from start to finish, so it’s an easy way to find out whether the genre is for you.
Want the murder cases first? See true crime and cold case games, or browse all cases.