Games that involve a lot of text may not be for everyone, but two particular amusements with similar names — “Dear Holmes” and “Dear Reader” — might appeal to book lovers searching for entertaining ways to pass the time. And while both of these endeavors can get brains buzzing, the former uses a popular 19th-century approach to content delivery, while the latter is firmly planted in the 21st century.

DEAR HOLMES is an epistolary mystery experience set around Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal Sherlock Holmes character, now in the American public domain and available for new cases. You sign up for “Dear Holmes” online, but the rest of the game is purely analog in the form of paper letters, sent to you the Victorian way — by post.

The premise is simple: A series of missives addressed to the Great Detective arrive in your mailbox every week or so, asking for help with an emerging case. The sender could be a Conan Doyle regular like Inspector Lestrade or Tobias Gregson, or someone unfamiliar. The first dispatch sets up the scenario by outlining the known details of a crime or conundrum, with observations about suspects and events.

Over the next month, new letters arrive with additional clues. By scrutinizing the dispatches, you get the chance to solve the mystery yourself — before Sherlock finally replies with his own deductions in the concluding letter: As in Conan Doyle’s original stories, Mr. Holmes gets the last word in this format, too.

“Dear Holmes” was created by Michael Sitver, a Sherlock fan. Sitver’s company, Letterjoy (which mails re-creations of historic letters from notables like Clara Barton and George S. Patton to subscribers), teamed up with MX Publishing (a business devoted to new Sherlock Holmes-themed content) to start crafting the mysteries-by-mail in 2018.

The Holmes letters, usually running several pages, arrive in your mailbox on thick, cream-colored paper with matching envelopes. Depending on the fictional sender, the contents may be composed in a typeface that resembles the fluid scratching of a metal fountain-pen nib or the worn serif font of a turn-of-the-century typewriter.

For those who remember the glory days of personal correspondence by snail mail, the tactile sensation of opening and poring over a long letter may put your mind right into the unfolding story. It’s not quite “Method reading,” but it definitely sets the mood. More than a dozen “Dear Holmes” mysteries have been produced so far and, even if Dr. Watson’s perspective is missing, they admirably echo Sir Arthur’s style and tone.

Subscriptions to “Dear Holmes” start at about $50 for three months of Sherlock’s mail, and a new mystery starts each month. The timing of each new installment depends on the postal system, which adds an additional touch of authenticity and anticipation to the whole experience. It does offer the hope of something in the mailbox besides bills and junk mail. (While it may be a wobbly time for paper-based deliveries because of coronavirus concerns, the United States Postal Service cites several health agencies that the Covid-19 virus cannot be spread by mail. Still, if you’re worried, let the letters sit for a few days after delivery.)

If instant gratification is more in order and you have an Apple device, consider the inventive DEAR READER, which bills itself as “a game of literary wordplay.” Designed by Local No. 12, the nimble app presents you with page after page of animated puzzles to solve — all crafted from the texts of classic novels and poems.

When a passage of a selected book appears onscreen, you’re challenged to swap words into the proper order, unscramble anagrams, rearrange phrases and perform other tasks so you can advance through the narrative. It’s an interactive way to do an extremely close reading of the work. As you plow through the puzzles and reassemble the text, you end up consuming sections of the original book as well.

When you successfully complete a challenge, you also earn “Ink,” which is the “Dear Reader” in-game currency. Your acquired Ink can be spent on hints if you’re stuck on a particularly hard puzzle, or you can use it to acquire new books to play within the game. Chipper background music and other sound effects accompany the gameplay, but you can turn them off in the app’s settings if it feels as though you’re trying to read “Dubliners” at the bar in a Dave & Buster’s video arcade.

While “Dear Reader” currently isn’t available for Android phones or desktop computers, it can be played on many Apple devices, including an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV. However, to play the game, you must subscribe to the Apple Arcade, the company’s video-game service that costs $5 a month. (A free one-month trial is available if you want to dabble before deciding whether your credit card really needs another recurring charge.)

At the moment, “Dear Reader” has more than 75 works you can play, which (like Sherlock Holmes) have all aged out of United States copyright. The game’s titles rotate in and out of availability, so you have new books to decipher at different times. Along with the usual public-domain fare like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the “Dear Reader” game content also includes works one may not have muddled through as a teenager, like Claude McKay’s poems in “Harlem Shadows” and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s feminist-utopia fantasy, “Sultana’s Dream.”

And for some avid players, that may be the biggest prize from both “Dear Holmes” and “Dear Reader”: something new to explore.