After the announcement earlier today that the diorama-style adventure game The Almost Gone is heading to mobile, what are the odds we’d hear about a SECOND diorama-style game? Well I don’t know what the odds are but that’s exactly what has happened as today Studio Cypher announced Diorama Detective, a very clever game about solving mysteries that utilizes augmented reality in a really neat way. Have you ever seen a detective show or perhaps a courtroom scene where a crime is being recreated with little dolls and a little diorama of the crime scene? Well that’s what you’ll be doing in Diorama Detective. You can recreate the crime scenes and explore them from every angle using your mobile device and its AR abilities as a viewfinder. You’ll be able to “explore strange angles and out-of-sight areas and capture photos for evidence" and then piece together all the clues on a bulletin board like that Charlie Day Pepe Silvia meme. Check out the trailer for Diorama Detective.

In all there will be four mysteries to solve in Diorama Detective, and unlike many of the gritty television shows based on solving crimes, Studio Cypher really wanted to create something that was lighthearted and family-friendly. So expect to solve the mystery of who is sabotaging the local magician rather than who is behind that quadruple homicide. I think it looks rather cute myself and I’m actually interested in checking out an AR game that uses the technology in an interesting way rather than the “Here’s the game, but projected into the real world!" gimmick that most AR games use. Look for Diorama Detective when it arrives on iOS next Thursday, August 8th for $3.99.