Whenever I hear about a “best-reviewed” game, I don’t always immediately feel that I just have to play the game or even give it a try. However, after repeatedly seeing news about SFB Games’ fourth installment in its Detective Grimoire series, The Mermaid Mask, making waves as one of this year’s top-scoring games, I finally took the plunge and… downloaded the free demo on Steam. Sure, it’s not the same as actually purchasing the full game and getting a glimpse at everything it has to offer, but you can’t blame me for wanting to try this game before I buy it, even if it is getting such high praise. Well, as it turns out, after playing the demo, I’m convinced I need more of The Mermaid Mask in my life, despite never having played a Detective Grimoire game in my life.
And perhaps you’re like me in that regard. I’m familiar enough with the industry to know that Detective Grimoire has always been a highly well-received franchise since its Flash debut in 2007—a year when I happened to be taking an Adobe Flash class in college, I might add. But although I’ve known about Detective Grimoire‘s success for years, I have never felt this inclined to give the series a try. Don’t get me wrong, I can get down with a good point-and-click adventure game, but they generally occupy the bottom of the priority list. Now, after recently spending some time with The Mermaid Mask‘s hilarious demo on Steam, I’m now committed to finishing this entry and then making my way back through the other acclaimed installments, fully devoted to becoming a fan.
The Mermaid Mask Truly Is One of Those Games You Just Need to Play—And It’s Funny, Too
For anyone else coming into The Mermaid Mask without much experience with the series, Detective Grimoire actually goes all the way back to 2007, when SFB Games—then known as The Super Flash Bros.—released the original Detective Grimoire as a Flash game on sites like Armor Games, Newgrounds, and Kongregate. SFB Games has since referred to that first game as more of a prototype for what the series would eventually become, with 2014’s Detective Grimoire essentially establishing the formula that has carried the point-and-click murder mystery franchise forward ever since, followed by Tangle Tower in 2019 and now The Mermaid Mask.
Put the consoles in the correct order.
The Mermaid Mask, which launched on July 16, 2026 for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Switch 2, takes Detective Grimoire and his partner Sally aboard a bizarre submarine where Captain Magnus Mortuga has somehow been murdered inside a locked room. There’s no murder weapon to be found—only an ancient, barnacle-covered cauldron sitting near the body, and considering Mortuga was apparently rumored to be everything from a vampire to an immortal time traveler, that is really only the beginning of how strange the whole thing gets. It’s a fantastic setup for a murder mystery, but apparently the game itself delivers on it too.
After recently spending some time with The Mermaid Mask‘s hilarious demo on Steam, I’m now committed to finishing this entry and then making my way back through the other acclaimed installments, fully devoted to becoming a fan.
As for how The Mermaid Mask actually plays, much of its loop revolves around exploring the submarine room by room, questioning its eccentric cast of characters, and clicking around the environment for anything that might help move the investigation forward. Clues and suspicious objects can be examined more closely, puzzles regularly break up the conversations and exploration, and new information gradually opens up additional dialogue options and avenues of investigation. It’s a fairly traditional point-and-click structure at heart, but The Mermaid Mask makes the process feel far more involved by encouraging curiosity at almost every turn. Even something that has absolutely nothing to do with solving Captain Mortuga’s murder can still be worth checking out, whether it leads to a funny exchange, a small bit of character development, or simply another strange detail about the submarine and the people living aboard it.
It’s also more than worth mentioning that The Mermaid Mask is currently sitting at an Overwhelmingly Positive 99% rating on Steam, with more than 1,600 English-language reviews counted at the time of writing, while critics have been almost as enthusiastic across the board. It currently holds an 88 average on OpenCritic, where 100% of critics recommend it, and it ranks in the site’s 98th percentile, and strong reviews have followed the game regardless of which platform critics played it on. So, while I might have needed the demo to finally convince me that all this praise wasn’t just another case of a critically acclaimed game that wasn’t necessarily for me, the numbers certainly weren’t lying.
The Mermaid Mask Is Engaging, Immersive, and Hilarious
The fact that The Mermaid Mask‘s demo was enough to convince me to buy the full game should say something, at least, about its quality, especially considering this is my first romp in the series. Upon launching the demo, the first thing that immediately stuck out to me was the immersive atmosphere the game so effortlessly created. Detective games like The Mermaid Mask are arguably at their best when they envelop everything in a dark, mysterious, foreboding atmosphere. With their gameplay generally being simple enough, despite any puzzle complexity they might have, these games need to sell their world even more, and The Mermaid Mask had no problem doing that.
But its gameplay still carried a lot of the experience for me in spite of that sentiment. Detective games I’ve played in the past have a bad habit of signposting too much. It’s the infamous “yellow paint” that games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have succumbed to and fallen prey to controversy for, where it’s almost too clear what you’re supposed to click on. The Mermaid Mask, however, wants me to click on pretty much everything, if not just to hear the dialogue exchanges between characters and make that feeling of discovery all that more fulfilling. I rarely knew the “right” object or character to click on, and that made the game better, in my opinion.
The fact that The Mermaid Mask‘s demo was enough to convince me to buy the full game should say something, at least, about its quality, especially considering this is my first romp in the series.
That’s not to say that I was just randomly clicking on things in each room. The game’s presentation is executed brilliantly, to the point where important objects are conspicuous enough to avoid looking like it’s forced. There were several times while playing the demo where clicking on an object or area would trigger the same lines of dialogue I had heard when clicking something else before, but that also helped me learn what the game wanted from me. In the end, that whole journey ended up feeling worth the effort because I felt like I was actually growing alongside the demo’s steady movement toward its conclusion.
Plus, The Mermaid Mask is hilarious, so I never minded when dialogue was repeated. The best line of comparison I can draw is to Portal 2, which I (and I know many others) consider to be one of the funniest games ever made. Of course, humor is subjective, so not everyone is going to find this funny, but the reason I’m willing to praise The Mermaid Mask‘s comedic side is because this isn’t Borderlands-style comedy we’re talking about here, where it feels put-on, exaggerated, and sometimes, almost too much. Rather, The Mermaid Mask is at its funniest when it’s clearly not even trying to be, where it’s not so much what is being said but how it’s being said that makes it funny. Delivery is, after all, the most important part of comedy.
The game’s presentation is executed brilliantly, to the point where important objects are conspicuous enough to avoid looking like it’s forced.
Which brings me to the vocal performances of The Mermaid Mask‘s characters as well, which are absolutely top-notch. There’s nothing quite like some bad acting to just rip you out of an experience, especially one that hinges so much on immersion, but thankfully, The Mermaid Mask avoids that pitfall. Some games just make you want to skip all the voiced dialogue, but this one actually kept my finger off the mouse while characters were talking because I actually wanted to hear it rather than just read it. And that’s precisely why its humor works, too. If the performances were off, the comedy likely would be as well.
Do Yourself a Favor and at Least Download The Mermaid Mask’s Demo
At the end of the day, I’m still not going to tell anyone they need to go spend money on a game just because it has great reviews, especially when taste is always going to be subjective. What I will say, though, is that The Mermaid Mask has one of the easiest possible barriers to entry right now because its demo costs absolutely nothing, and after playing it myself, I genuinely think anyone even remotely interested in detective games, point-and-click adventures, or just games with sharp writing should at least give it a shot. I went into it expecting to spend a little time satisfying my curiosity and then move on, but I came away wanting to know more about the case, more about these characters, and, perhaps most surprisingly, more about a series I’ve somehow managed to ignore for nearly two decades.
That might be the biggest compliment I can give The Mermaid Mask after only playing its demo. More than just convincing me that the praise surrounding this particular game might actually be deserved, it made me interested in Detective Grimoire as a whole. Between the atmosphere, the investigative loop, the performances, and a sense of humor that had me laughing far more often than I ever expected, there was enough here to turn what was supposed to be a quick test drive into the beginning of a new obsession. Whether the full game ultimately lives up to everything its demo promised me remains to be seen, but I already know one thing for sure: the next time I hear that a Detective Grimoire game is one of the best-reviewed games of the year, I’m probably not going to need nearly as much convincing.
- Released
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July 16, 2026
- ESRB
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T for Teen // Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
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SFB Games
- Publisher(s)
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SFB Games
