9 Games Like Simulacra for Android and iPhone

Games like Simulacra are found-phone stories: you pick up a device that was never meant for you and rebuild what happened from its messages, photos, notes and browser history. Below are nine games in that vein for Android and iPhone, with the platforms they run on and the details that decide whether one of them fits your evening.

What makes Simulacra special

Simulacra arrived in 2017 from Kaigan Games and became a reference point for what PC Gamer later described as the found-phone genre. You do not control a character; you control a phone. The screen is the whole game — the gallery, the dating app, the chat threads, the voicemails — and every answer hides in the interface rather than in a cutscene.

That design choice is why so many later titles look like it. Instead of a menu, you scroll. Instead of picking dialogue options, you reply to people who are already texting you. Simulacra is available on Google Play, the App Store and Steam, and its Wikipedia entry covers how the studio built the fictional interface.

The 9 games, one by one

1. Simulacra 2

The first sequel keeps the simulated-phone interface and moves it to a different case. You work through a phone connected to a death that is still being explained, unlocking apps as you go, and the way you reply changes how the story closes. It is on Android and iPhone.

2. Simulacra 3

The third entry returns to the same idea with a slower, more unsettling tone and a smaller cast. It is a full sequel rather than a remaster, and it assumes you already understand how these fictional phones work. It released for Android and iPhone.

3. Sara is Missing

This one came before Simulacra and shares its creator and its central trick: a phone, an assistant program called IRIS, and a person who cannot answer for herself. You search the device for anything that explains what happened, and the game reacts to how you behave rather than how quickly you read. It is iOS only.

4. A Normal Lost Phone

A quieter take on the format from Accidental Queens. You find Sam’s phone on the night of their birthday and learn who Sam is by reading texts, emails and a dating app, with no inventory puzzles and no timer. It is one of the earliest examples of a game that simply trusts you to read carefully, and our list of games like A Normal Lost Phone follows where the idea went after it.

5. Duskwood

Everbyte’s chat thriller puts the whole story inside a messaging app. A stranger adds you to a group chat, a young woman is missing from a small town, and the cast keeps talking to you in something close to real time. It has the strongest continuing cast of the nine and the clearest case structure.

6. An Elmwood Trail

A text-based interactive story that gives you a phone, a contacts list and a reason to keep tapping. The pace is slower than Duskwood and the puzzles are lighter, which makes it a comfortable entry point if this is your first found-phone game.

7. Not Your Phone: Mystery

A newer iOS release that builds its cases around ordinary relationships rather than large conspiracies. Each episode hands you somebody’s device and asks you to work out what the owner was hiding, usually from the people closest to them.

8. Peek a Phone - Detective Game

An Android option that strings several short cases together into one fake-phone interface. It is the lightest of the group, with episodes you can finish in a single sitting, and a reasonable place to test the format before committing to something longer.

9. MicroMacro: Downtown Detective

The mobile adaptation of the MicroMacro board game, where you zoom into a crowded illustrated city and follow characters across time. It is not phone fiction at all: it shares the pleasure of finding a clue with your eyes rather than the pleasure of opening an inbox.

Comparison table

Game	Platform	Price	Spanish	Offline
Simulacra (reference)	iOS, Android, PC	Paid	Yes	Yes
Simulacra 2	iOS, Android	Free	Yes	Yes
Simulacra 3	iOS, Android	Free	Yes	Yes
Sara is Missing	iOS	Paid	Partial	Yes
A Normal Lost Phone	iOS, Android, PC	Paid	Yes	Yes
Duskwood	iOS, Android	Free	Yes	Yes
An Elmwood Trail	iOS, Android	Free	Yes	Yes
Not Your Phone: Mystery	iOS	Free	No	Yes
Peek a Phone - Detective Game	Android	Free	Partial	Partial
MicroMacro: Downtown Detective	Android	Paid	Partial	Yes

Store listings change over time, so treat “free”, “paid” and “partial” as categories rather than fixed promises and check the current page before you install.

Games like Simulacra with a Spanish translation

Spanish support matters if you play on a phone set to Spanish, and the group is uneven. Simulacra, A Normal Lost Phone, Duskwood and An Elmwood Trail were translated around release, and their Spanish text reads like a localisation rather than an afterthought; the two Simulacra sequels also include it. Two entries do not: Not Your Phone: Mystery ships in English only, and Peek a Phone - Detective Game offers translations that vary from case to case. Sara is Missing and MicroMacro: Downtown Detective sit somewhere in between, so open the language list on their store pages before you buy. If you want the wider picture of how these titles relate, our overview of phone investigation games explains where the format sits between chat stories and visual novels.

How Secreta fits in

Secreta is a story game about a couple, not about a crime: someone suspects their partner is lying and hands you a copy of their partner’s phone, and you answer fifteen questions per case using only what the device shows. It is fiction written for the game, and it is not a phone-monitoring app — nothing is read, copied or watched from a real device. If you came here from Simulacra because you enjoy reading somebody else’s messages, Secreta offers the same habit with an emotional rather than a criminal case, and our comparison of games about infidelity and suspicion shows where it sits next to the others. It plays offline, needs no account and is free up to question 9 of every case.