Games for People Who Love Radio Drama

In the 2019 app, a vintage radio plays the lost episode of Kat Keene: Investigator, with Sandra McCall as the detective. Turn the dial when the show asks you for a choice, then try tuning between prompts to find parts of the mystery the presenter hasn't mentioned. This is a good place to start if you like the sound of an old detective serial.

Across a short time loop, talk shows and news bulletins keep returning to the same moment. Record a revealing piece of a broadcast and send it to a different station. The performances give each station its own point of view, so hearing one host respond to another's words can change what you understand about both.

As late-night host Forrest Nash, you take calls from people in a small town who can only tell you what they see or hear. You can put a record on while you look around the studio for information, then return to the caller with a decision. The shift from dead air to someone waiting for your answer gives these scenes their tension.

Earplay's updated edition of its spy serial gives you a role in a full-cast audio play. The scene offers a choice and characters respond to the answer you say aloud. If you like hearing a cliffhanger resolve in the next episode, this gives you the extra pleasure of deciding which way the story goes.

Karen Knox voices Alex, a princess trying to find her way through a kingdom that sounds different from the place she thought she knew. Listen to her conversations with the shepherd on the journey and to what her uncle tells her about the past. The cast gives you a sense of the people Alex has to trust while you guide her through the world by ear.

The public radio station France Culture co-produced this adventure about the knight Edward Blake and his daughter Louise. In the desktop edition, Louise’s voice is part of the drama and one of the ways you find your bearings. Listen for where her words come from and what she tells you as she leads her father through the kingdom.

Donnie signs up for a study and ends up driving blindfolded. The speeding traffic is something you have to listen around while a full cast plays out a crime comedy involving mobsters and Donnie's grandmother. If you like radio comedy, listen for the change in tone when a new voice joins his ordeal.

In a dark hospital, a voice on the radio sounds like your best chance of finding the right room. The visual novel is fully voiced, and you can decide whether to trust the voice or mute it and choose a different path. It turns one of radio drama's oldest setups, an unseen person speaking into your ear, into a choice about whom to believe.

Left aboard a spacecraft in the dark, you get your bearings through sounds and a voice performed by Benedict Cumberbatch. The voice gives you someone to hold on to as the ship grows less familiar. It's a compact science fiction story for listeners who like having to imagine what might be waiting on the other side of an airlock.