Ghost in the SQL Data Solve Paris with SQL

Every case is a database. You write SQL to search a full year of calls to the Paris Emergency Switchboard: filter the records, join the tables, and narrow thousands of rows down to the one that matters. The early cases walk you through the basics step by step; the later ones hand you only the question and leave the how to you. It stays read-only, so there is nothing to break and no pressure to get it right the first time. If you have never touched a database, the tutorial is genuinely thorough. If you already know SQL, the shipped cases may feel light, and the community cases are where the challenge lives.

This is the part detective fans dream about, and it is done well. You pin your query results, charts and notes to a board, connect the clues with string, and scribble on it with a pen. The interface is clean and pleasant to use, in a pared-back 2D style with a comic book feel. One honest caveat: pinned items can be nudged out of place by accident, so tidy hands help. Even so, watching a tangle of pinned evidence slowly resolve into one connected answer is the quiet pleasure at the heart of the game.

In most detective games a character walks around collecting clues for you. Here you do the collecting yourself, from the records people leave behind: who entered a building and when, who rode which metro line, who called the switchboard and from where. You decide what to look for, pull the data your own way, and reason from what comes back. The cases are proper whodunits set across Paris, from a school fire to a crown stolen from the Musée d'Orsay, and newspapers add follow-up coverage that rounds out each story. It is calm, unhurried work: no timers, no failure states, just you and the evidence.