The Darkside Detective

The developers put a lot of heart into this game. After the credits it says "The Darkside Detective will return... if we sell enough copies." I want to see more of Twin Lakes City! Just buy it already you wont regret it! I laughed so much while playing this little gem! The story and the conversations are hilarious, it has such a good scence of humor. Yeah, It's pretty short and not realy difficult..... but I had a blast playing it. It's worth playing. I also have to point out that every puzzle and use of item was logic, you don't see this often in advernture games. Get your tinfoil hat and enjoy every second of this game!

Felt short, but took 5 hours anyway because the writing was so funny I clicked on everything. Puzzels are short and simple, but this game is PERFECT for sitting with your newborn one one arm and the mouse in the other hand. - So instead of a movie or a book - try this charming story instead.

Usually when I try to enjoy point and click games I get frustrated with the nonsensical puzzles that are more about trying to combine any two items out there until you find a match rather than having it be a logical solution that can be guessed using logic and common sense. For the majority of The Darkside Detective it actually surprised me by having well thought out puzzles that I enjoyed. Combine that with a good soundtrack and fantastic humour and I can say it is quite possibly one of the best point and click games I have played. It did start to let me down as some of the later cases do exactly what I was hoping to avoid with puzzles that made little sense as well as having to go talk to people I wouldn’t have thought to before it would let me complete a task I knew I had to do. Luckily this did not ruin my overall enjoyment and wasn’t a major portion of the overall game. There isn’t much over arching story but that really wasn’t needed. The characters themselves made up for it and made each case fun. The game itself had a special charm to it. It didn’t take itself too seriously; had great dialogue and some great references to other media. The graphics themselves won’t win any awards but even the game knew to poke fun at that. It ran better on a potato of a computer than it probably should have so it’s not like it wasn’t optimized. If you can’t wow with visuals then at least run well and it did for the most part. I played the game on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any spelling errors. The game auto saves at various points. A manual save system would have been nice but luckily the cases aren’t long enough and the save points too far apart to cause me any issues. There is just one graphics option. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The game for the most part ran at my refresh rate of 75 FPS but could drop down to the 20’s for a few seconds at a time. This wasn’t overly bothersome given the point and click nature of the game and was expected on my system.

How much you’ll enjoy ‘The Darkside Detective’ will depend on your preferences in humour. ‘TDD’ is full of puns, self-referential laughs, and middlebrow jokes that more likely amuse than offend. The game doesn’t take itself seriously, and is generally silly despite the earnestness with which our main protagonist, Detective McQueen, investigates the paranormal activities in his city. I find ‘TDD’ delightful. It’s an undemanding adventure game doesn’t have any dead ends, and with puzzles that merely tickle your brain. Because of that, I find it to be a really good palate cleanser of a game to play between bigger, longer, and more challenging (e.g. AAA) titles. I managed to complete the game’s 6 main episodes and 3 bonus cases in about 4 to 5 hours. The friendly banter between Detective McQueen and his sidekick Officer Dooley, and their good natured intent to solve cases (or actually in Dooley’s case, not to do any work) make ‘TDD’ very charming and palatable. This traditional point-and-click adventure game will appeal to many gamers, especially those who appreciate dad jokes. It’s well-made enough that it that got me looking forward to its upcoming sequel.

Some people call this "easy" and it is. I think good Point-and-Click involves tightly bounded scenarios, because they mostly involve clicking on things and combining things, and when you're frustrated, you don't want the possibility set to get impossibly large. Darkside Detectives fits all of that: the puzzle solutions are quite sensible and the game itself is tightly bounded, so it's pretty well designed. The mini-games are pretty perfunctory, so you're mostly playing for the story, and that's fun too. I finished the whole (main) game in about 3 hours, but some of that the game was idling, so I'd clock it at about 2.5 hours. There's bonus content, so I wouldn't be surprised to hit 4, maybe 5 hours. It's quite short. Sometimes, that's a good thing, and in this case it was. I bought it for about $5, and I don't feel like I wasted my money. It's listed price is closer to $15, but I wouldn't pay that price for it. It's quite a decent, light point-and-click. If you enjoy the genre or you want to dabble, I definitely recommend it!