We’re proud to announce that Ink & Clues has been ranked #1 Best Print & Play of 2025 by UKBG Review Circle.
The recognition was announced on January 22, 2026, as part of UKBG Review Circle’s ranking of the best Print & Play games from 2025. Rather than recognizing a single Ink & Clues case, the award recognizes the Ink & Clues collection as a whole.
For us, that makes the recognition particularly meaningful. Ink & Clues was created around a simple idea: give players the materials from a fictional criminal investigation and let them work out what happened for themselves.
No character needs to be performed. Nobody has to know the solution beforehand. You open the case and become the investigators.
Who is UKBG Review Circle?
UKBG Review Circle is a board game review community that reviews and highlights tabletop games, including Print & Play releases.
For its 2025 Print & Play ranking, UKBG Review Circle selected ten games and collections for its final list.
Ink & Clues took the top position.
The Best Print & Play Games of 2025
The top five in UKBG Review Circle's 2025 ranking were:
- Ink & Clues
- Paw by Paw – Teetotum Game Studios
- Starfront Scouting Academy – Shiny Pigeon Games
- Vacations to Greek Islands – Teetotum Game Studios
- Hyperdrive Odyssey – Microdot
Being placed first among a group of independent Print & Play games is something we're incredibly proud of.
It is also important to clarify what the ranking represents: UKBG Review Circle ranked Ink & Clues as a collection, rather than selecting one individual murder mystery as the winner.
What is Ink & Clues?
Ink & Clues creates downloadable murder mystery investigations that can be played at home.
Instead of playing a character at a traditional murder mystery party, you take the role of an investigator. Each fictional case contains materials connected to the crime, including police reports, interviews, photographs and other evidence.
Your job is to work out which information matters.
You might discover that a suspect's statement doesn't fit the timeline, find a detail in a photograph that changes your interpretation of an interview or realize that someone has been lying for a reason you hadn't considered.
Eventually, you need to decide what happened and support your conclusion using the evidence you've examined.
Why murder mysteries work so well as Print & Play games
Print & Play is particularly well suited to this type of investigation because much of the game world can exist within the documents themselves.
A police report doesn't need a board or miniature to work. Neither does a witness statement, a photograph, a map or an email between two suspects.
Once printed, those documents become physical evidence that can be spread across a table, compared and reorganized as the investigation develops.
At the same time, printing isn't required for Ink & Clues cases. The documents can also be examined on screen, allowing players to choose how they want to investigate.
Designed around investigation rather than roleplay
There are many different types of murder mystery games, and Ink & Clues occupies a specific part of that genre.
These aren't traditional murder mystery parties where every guest receives a character and spends the evening acting out a role. Instead, everyone can investigate the same case.
That means there are no required costumes, nobody has to perform a character and no game master needs to know the solution before everyone else.
The focus is on the investigation itself: reading, comparing information, discussing theories and deciding which explanation best fits the evidence.
Play alone, as a couple or with friends
The same structure also makes the cases flexible when it comes to group size.
Ink & Clues investigations are designed for 1–6 players. You can work through a case by yourself, investigate together as a couple or bring a smaller group around the table and compare theories.
An individual case generally takes around 1.5–2 hours, although the exact time naturally depends on how quickly you work through the evidence and how much time you spend debating your suspects.
You can play entirely on screen, print the case files or combine the two approaches.
What the award means to Ink & Clues
When Ink & Clues was created, the goal wasn't simply to turn a series of puzzles into downloadable files.
We wanted the documents themselves to create the investigation.
Players should have to read a suspect's statement carefully, compare it with other information and decide for themselves whether something doesn't add up. The solution should be something they can reason towards rather than information that suddenly appears after the game is over.
Being ranked #1 Best Print & Play of 2025 by UKBG Review Circle is therefore a recognition we're extremely proud to have received.
And because the recognition was given to Ink & Clues as a whole, it represents the collection rather than one particular case.
Try the #1 Best Print & Play of 2025
If you enjoy mysteries where you get to examine the evidence and reach your own conclusion, you can explore the available cases at Ink & Clues.
Each game gives you a new fictional investigation with its own suspects, evidence and mystery to unravel.
If you'd rather have several cases ready to solve, the Complete Game Bundle includes multiple investigations plus an exclusive bonus, with approximately 12–15 hours of total playtime.
The only question left is whether you can solve them.
