Last updated on December 1st, 2025 at 07:02 am
Criminal Case: Mysteries – Puzzle Game Review
Criminal Case: Mysteries is a Puzzle/Adventure game from Pretty Simple, first launched in 21st February 2018.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 5,613+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Criminal Case: Mysteries Stand Out
Go back to the 19th century and solve a series of murders in this captivating hidden object adventure game. Investigate crime scenes for clues, bring suspects in for questioning and analyze evidence to catch the killers. Are you ready to prove your detective skills?
FEATURES:
• Investigate crime scenes in a city from another epoch
• Examine clues and analyze samples to look for evidence
• Interrogate witnesses and suspects
• Bring the killer to justice
• Works on iPhone 4S and above and on all iPads
• iPod Touch 4th generation devices are currently not supported
PLEASE NOTE – Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past! is completely free to play, however some game items can also be purchased for real money. If you don't want to use this feature, please disable in-app purchases in your device's settings.
Under our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, you must be at least 13 years old to play or download Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past!
Terms of Use: http://www.prettysimplegames.com/terms-of-use
Privacy Policy: http://www.prettysimplegames.com/privacy-policy
Pizza is a weekly subscription service that allows you to increase your energy bar to 170 and enjoy an advertising free experience. Pizza costs 2.99 USD/week (or local equivalent) and will be charged on your iTunes Account after the 3 days free trial and when the subscription renews weekly.
Subscription will renew automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Criminal Case: Mysteries is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 28th August 2025
Recent improvements include:
This update includes routine maintenance to help keep the app running properly with latest system updates and on latest devices.
Download & Availability
Criminal Case: Mysteries is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Criminal Case: Mysteries on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Intriguing and witty. Fun stories with surprising outcomes. We enjoy hidden object games and these are quite nice. The graphics are well done. We highly recommend this game.
Would rather have a paid version than have to endure those awful commercials.
We have been playing some of the Criminal Case games for years, even back to BF (Before Facebook) on our Space. Enjoyed all the ones Ive tried. Being retired and with some disabilities, it has become one of our favorite ways to keep our mind sharp. Thanks for all the different kinds of Criminal Case games. Keep up the great varieties.
The game is engrossing with well thought out stories and plot lines that collectively form a cohesive story arc. The characters are diverse, multicultural, and have backstories sufficient to make each individual unique, which adds to the delight of the game and keeps it from being one dimensional. One can easily alter the main character to reflect their own appearance, which permits putting themselves into the game. In addition to large number of cases to solve, there is also the various shenanigans and personal events from the main characters police force coworkers. If we had but one negative issue, it would be where the game took clear liberties with the technologies and police investigate tools, many of which did not exist in the era in which the game is set. However, we largely let that go as we see that they are used to make the game more interesting as both immersing the player in the case investigations as as side plots. It is a well done game, and for ourselves, the only true bad thing about it will be completing it.
Criminal case is one of the best games we ever played.The deaths,the characters and stories are amazing!5 star rating.
We love all versions of criminal case and we love the storylines cudos to the developers for making such an excellent game series.
Our screen will not open the game today! Its stuck on the black screen just as we are about to find out who killed the train robber in Coyote GORGE! We think its the ours owner!!! Please unfreeze our screen.
Have enjoyed them. One of our mind sharping exercises finding the objects. The only negative is that each scene takes anywhere from 16 to 26 seconds and the very repetitive adds take up to 30 seconds & appear almost always after we clear the sceneseeing those same adds over & over makes us ever want to pick those games to play. Please reduce the time between adds.
Please please fix fb connection thing we wish we were exaggerating but we cant go 10 seconds in the game without it asking us to connect to Facebook.. Which we do not have. Even if we did, when you click continue it takes you to a page that says the app cant connect to Facebook anyway!!! Please fix this as we love this game but its literally quite impossible to play, when a prompt keeps interrupting your time challenges!! And lets be honest the game is too simple to have this issue. Please fix it. We used to spend money on food packs etc bc you already can only play about 5-6 rounds due to energy, but now we wouldnt dare waste our money bc of the interruptions.
It wont let us login with Facebook it says that the app is not active but Im able to login with all the other apps with Facebook.
It keeps not letting us use Facebook for the past week which means Im not getting our login bonuses. We sent something to help desk but it wont go thru. Very frustrating that they make it so you cant get assistance. Especially since we paid for the no ads and have played all of their games.
Its a fun game with a flashback story. We do wish the developers would make more of the criminal cases.
OK so let us just start off by saying that we LOVE this game and am pretty much addicted to playing it. We just have 1 big problem with the game tho the wait Times for the labs are insanely long and can sometimes be up to a day! Also there is a lot of blood and it can get pretty gross at Times. But anyway playing this game has Actually helped our anxiety a lot and Im so glad we got this gem of a game!!! Thanks for reading.
Not much of a gamer, but we got a brand new iPad Pro a year ago and we enjoy playing on it while watching TV at night. We enjoy the crime scenes and storyline. One small thing though – we noticed after a recent update that ads starting popping up during gameplay instead of after the scene has completed. We hope theres a fix soon.
But card shark, instead of card sharp.
So fun and is so adventurous and full of character.
Same controls as the oh cc but we like the names like frank vogel and mrs stanbery anyways love the game.
This game involes a lot of mystery and its a must have to those who love murder mystery stories, but it takes so long on the analyzation, but its worth the play. Give it a try sometime.
We enjoy play the game everyday. A great way to enjoy the day.
We love Criminal Cases: Mysteries Of The Past, it makes us actually feel like Im actually solving a murder. We love our partnership with Maddie and Issac, they feel like real people. Its like being a part of Midsomar Murders. We also love the subplot of Mr. Alastor. We cant wait for the next chapter in this franchise! :) :) :).
We've had criminal case since we were 12, all except Travel in Time are our favorite.
So, we were bored so we got this app, we were excited. And it was sooooo fun! Yes, there was some ads, but most games have them, and plus, they need ads! So we dont get why some people complain about ads when games have to have them. Anyway, great job on this game! We will continue to play! Bye.
Love this game. We just finished the Supernatural Series and loved it too. Mysteries was there in the beginning and has lots of levels . Sorry to have finished 2 out of the three we have played. Love the format , the characters and the story lines. Get this game,.
We have all of the Criminal Case games, they are a great pass time for us as a senior citizen and a recent widow. We enjoy the hidden objects as well as solving the cases. Our hats off the creators of these games. We recommend all of them lots of fun and a great pastime as well. Darlene Plumlee.
We have played this game for years, does it have ads, yes, and yes sometimes they are a pain in the butt. That being said, this in our opinion is a great game, we love all the characters and their storylines, have our favorite cases and characters. This game is part hidden object, part collect evidence, solving cases, arrest the killers. We have played entirely without spending real money. It takes place in a time way before any technology, it has funky automobiles, you collect stars, normally it takes 20 energy to play, but there are happy hours where it only takes 5 or 15, you collect cards that are useful, and each time you investigate your partner sends you energy or cards. It is a great game! We are now on case 57 and there are 60 in all, we just know we are never going to find a game we have loved so much.
We love playing this game. Some of the ads drive us crazy. Trying to exit them is a mystery in itself.
We love this game!!!! Our fave version of this! Spoiler Im so sad Harriet Patrick died.
Absolutely loved everything this game but, only rated it 4 stars. Every time we level up, we should get all 110 energy points, no matter how much energy we have stored! Also, 30 plus hours for anything in the lab is ridiculous.
We have played most of the Criminal Case games over 5+ years. Im on Mysteries now and had been enjoying first 3 levels. However for the last 6 days we have been unable to get any free coins and only twice free 20 point energy. Some days on the single point for the pet section we only can get 1 point. What gives.
Entertaining, but too many glitches. Ads pop up during timed play, the spin the wheel feature doesnt work, but keeps popping up for you to use it. We understand ads help support the game, but how about they pop up when youre not in the middle of play.
As you can probably guess, we like the game a lot BUT they literally play a very long informational ad every few minutes or after you complete a task. THE ADS ARE VERY DEPRESSING HEALTH TOPICS. You have the option to pay $7.99 to opt out of SOME OF THE ADS which is not a very good deal. Why would we pay such a price to only get rid of some ads and not all of them. We used to play this game daily but now we only play once or twice a week because the ads are annoying.
We actually love the game and therefore decided to buy it – but as soon as we did the option of bingeing on ads to get energy stopped and that kinda took the fun out of it for us. Did the same mistake in Save the world versions. Other versions we decided not to buy and there we can still watch ads and collect energy so those versions are more fun even if you have to watch endless ads between plays.
This game is our favorite of all the Criminal Case games with interesting storylines and characters. You do have to wait for analysis a long time on things but so do actual police officials and if you get a pet in the shop and keep it fed chances are it finds extra points, coins or energy. However recently we have encountered issues with the game not synching properly across our devices. We play it on the PC, Android and iOS. We are on case 53 and we lost progress in chapter 3 due to sync error. Also we canceled the weekly pizza subscription and it shows we still have it.
As good as this game is the amount of ads they show up your face is insanely annoying, we have to go on flight mood or ill be forced to see ads every minute of the game. It's not worth is, it doesnt used to be like this. Dont download it.
Phone games are supposed to be a fun distraction and this game fits that bill except a long ad plays after every other search. Its intrusive and takes away the fun. It also makes us less apt to watch ads for extra energy which we used to do frequently, but no more. Thinking about deleting the app because of it.
We dont think you let players have enough icons you get up to 200 icons and it cuts you off. And whats with some of the ads where you watch a double ad and you only get 20 energy icons where as you watch a single ad and get 20 icons, the double ads are two different ads dont you think thats a little unfair as far as getting energy icons, there should be a better way than that. If you watch a double ad it should be 40 energy icons not 20, its only fair.
Ads have been increased to the point it is difficult to get continuity while trying to play. It was good in the past but now.
Anything that forces you to go onto Facebook in order to proceed is not deserving of even one star.
We play this game with completion in mind. We play every chapter 3 times to max it and get as many sticker packs as possible but the sticker book is impossible to complete! First, before we ever moved on to chapter 2 we played chapter 1 three times and got about 12-15 sticker packs with star trade ins and rewards, but the amount of doubles you get is ridiculous. We regularly open packs, even still and Ill get 5 doubles. And needing 100 doubles for a free pack is pretty ridiculous in our opinion. Second, the album glitches so much that Ive lost over half the stickers that Ive earned!! Ive completed full pages and than came back to only having 2 out of the 9needed for the page!!! How is this possible if buying packs is an option? You buy the pack, open it but only keep half of what you paid for because it bugs out and you lose the stickers how had?! Blatant theft.
We seem to have an earlier version, Mysteries of the Past. This is by far the best of the Criminal Cases. Much better characters than the others and the overall Steampunk aura of the stories is great. These are the things we look for, at least. Also, when you play the game with the absolute minimum of the in app purchases, the pace of very much resembles the time frames of actual investigations.
The ads are a bit excessive and the storyline can be a bit repetitive. However, the art is absolutely beautiful as well as the design. Though it is in the past they still managed to be incredibly inclusive. They included POC in big positions such as working for the police force. Women were not simply housewives and they had pretty important roles yet they still added womens issues as well. They even included a lesbian character, we ourselves am a member of that community and once we saw that we started crying. Im not too far into the game but we think Its a fun and promising game.
Ive been playing criminal cases for several years. But this has a glitch. When we open the app, It freezes for about 7 to 15 minutes. And then opens up.
Great game we love the stories. We play the first criminal case and love that one too.
Entertaining & good for the brain.
We love this game. It takes place in times where photos were black and white and where there were no cars or billboards. There were funky looking cars and lots of old timey technology and no modern technology. This game takes place in the past and you put a lot of effort into it. Making money is hard when no one likes ads or pay to win games but it seems like you added a bit too much effort. But theres no such thing as too much effort or too much fun. But energy. 20 energy to investigate a crime scene and you need stars to do everything. In this game you dont need stars to go on to the next chapter of an investigation. Please make investigating crime scenes cost lest energy and make energy more common. We would like a game that is like this one but takes place a thousand years in the future instead of a thousand years ago. A 3020 game would be great. And what we mean by 3020 game is a game that takes place in 3020. It would have LOTS of technology, crime scenes with advanced technology, and lots of it. And the clothes would look something that uses technology to be made and look like something you would never wear in 2020. If you would make a game like that we would love it! We wont care how long it takes even if it takes a year we will be patient. The only thing that will matter is if it is a great game.
This game is part of our daily routine.
Great game. Keeps us coming back. Thank you so much.
Playing this hidden objects search game serves to strengthen our ability to scan for items, something that was compromised by a minor stroke when we were 30. But Id not be playing the game if it werent loads of fun. The characters are interesting and well fleshed out, and the storyline progresses in a satisfying way. It tickled us that the evil-doers and villains always confess in the end, like on old Scooby Doo episodes! The games artwork is pleasing to the eye; if youre looking for a clock, itll look like a clock (not so in some similar games!). Finally, this is a game where we can go back to past levels and attempt to beat our own times. We enjoy playing other versions of this companys hidden object search games, but this is our favorite.
So, we know we have dogs as pets… Im a cat purrrrson…. So maybe we could add cats and other pets…. Then this game would be PURRRRFECT!! Thanks for reading.
We love this game. We play it all the time and its really fun. There are options for micro transactions but they did a great job making the game fun to play without needing to spend money. The only issue we would say is the stickers glitch sometimes. Suddenly we dont have ones we did before and even once a sticker we knew we had showed as owned when we opened the pack but wasnt in our album after that. Thats a bit annoying to us because we love the sticker album but if thats not something you care about then youll be grand.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.44
- Size: 129.16 MB
- iOS: 15.6 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, ID, IT, JA, KO, PT, RU, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence
- Developer: Pretty Simple
Last updated: 28th August 2025 | Genre: Puzzle, Adventure | Developer: Pretty Simple