Murdered: Soul Suspect is a third-person adventure game with minor action and stealth elements set in Salem, Massachusetts (USA). The game follows detective Ronan O'Connor, a former convict who joins the force after bettering his life. His story begins with his death, as he's thrown out of a window and killed by the Bell Killer. However, instead of passing away, he turns into a ghost and meets his long-dead wife Julia, who tells him he's between worlds due to an unresolved issue in his life. The investigation needs to be done in a linear way, starting with Ronan's own crime scene. He must collect clues to move on to new locations and progress through the story. Each location has clues to discover, but only the crucial ones are needed. To advance, he answers questions about the scene in puzzle form, built up through the clues.
Despite the freedom of movement, Ronan can't interact with the environment directly. He has powers that allow him to influence people, eavesdrop on conversations, possess people, and peek into environments. Possessing people doesn't offer direct control but provides control over their senses and mind-reading. There are side missions where Ronan helps a fellow ghost move on by answering questions through gathering clues.
Joy, a little teen medium, explains the world to Ronan and often acts as his sarcastic sidekick. They work together in stealth sections, where Ronan needs to distract people using his presence and poltergeist actions to clear the way. Other segments are provided through encounters with demons, which O'Connor can defeat by sneaking up from behind and performing a combination of keys and buttons.
Ronan learns new abilities throughout the game, such as teleportation, telekinesis, and picking up memory residue that introduces memories he can visit to find clues for the investigation. There are 242 optional collectibles to collect: nine sets of artifacts and eight sets of ghost stories.
