The Darkside Detective

I was excited about this game based on the premise: a detective and his quirky sidekick investigate paranormal cases in classic adventure game format. The problem is that this is just a very simple adventure game and deductive reasoning isn't used at any point. Each of the puzzles is simple and all you need to do to finish the game is to make sure and click on everything in every scene. There is never a point in which you try to solve a crime based on information gained during the case. The humor dialogue was funny and the scenes were visually appealing with the pixel art motif. The soundtrack is also well done. Hopefully we will see more from this team, but for now this title's biggest issue is lacking depth.

As of the time of writing, there are nine published episodes in this collection, independently ranging from 2 - 4.5 stars. Overall, Darkside Detective is a charming casual adventure, recommended on sale. The basic mechanics are extremely simple: single click to advance dialogue text or examine, and drag and drop to combine or use. Items are picked up automatically as determined by the game, and as each screen is a generally static set-piece, no walking or movement is required. The graphics are lovingly rendered pixel art with lighting effects, the soundtrack is mostly inoffensive and evocative (you may be tempted to turn down the volume in the shopping mall), and somewhat more than half of the puzzles are logical and streamlined. Each episode should take between 15 minutes and half an hour to play through ... if all goes well. The trouble reviewing this game is that there is a dramatic reduction in quality around episode five, in both writing and puzzle design. The protagonist suffers a jarring shift in character from solid everyman hero surrounded by buffoonish circumstances to a mildly tempered buffoon along for the ride, at the same time as the dialogue turns from charming and knowing self-awareness to hasty juvenile quips. Most frustrating perhaps, is the change in puzzle structure. While the early episodes use the familiar "take whatever's not nailed down" approach and use items as they become relevant, the later episodes don't allow you to take items until specific, often seemingly unrelated, puzzle triggers are met. Other times, you'll "know" that an item is unusable or irrelevant because the description or dialogue text has told you so, but really you were being mislead until such time as another event changed the item's status. This leads to an inordinate amount of trekking back and forth and re-examining objects. Even with the sloppy writing and puzzles, it has its charm (in the art above all), and is worth a couple dollars with an open walkthrough.

Positive aspects: - Excellent soundtrack by Ben Prunty, which adds significantly to the game experience (I would describe the style as a fusion of chiptunes, ambient, 80s synthpop, Stanger Things-ish). - Nice story in self-contained, entertaining episodes. - Lots of pop culture references and easter eggs, especially from the spooky and horror genres. - An interesting attempt to break new ground in the point&click genre. Negative aspects: - The game is too static for a classic 3rd person point&click adventure (you can't move the protagonist, there are no real animations and cut scenes). - I actually love pixel art but the retro look of The Dark Side Detecitce is highly exaggerated (very clunky pseudo-low-res). - Even though some side characters appear repeatedly, there is no overarching plot line, or at least it is far too little developed. - The character development of the protagonist(s) is far too shallow. It is difficult to identify with them. - The humour is also shallow, too adolescent, mostly even childish. Maybe a few giggles but many raised eyebrows and futile searches for funny punchlines. - Despite the great music, there is also no real creepy atmosphere. There are a few chances for that, but they are consistently destroyed by the childish humour or the superficial treatment of the subject. The Dark Side Detective is a nice and harmless entertainment for parents who play the game with their children and want to introduce them to p&c-adventures and a pop-cultural retro-feeling from their own childhood. Also for die-hard adventure fans like me, who buy (almost) every adventure game to keep the genre alive, the game offers a nice entertainment for in between but certainly not much more. But even for those who find the game boring, the great soundtrack by Ben Prunty alone makes it a good deal (assuming you like the style).

If the programmer and the writer is the same person, the game usually has a problem. Which is exactly the case here - while the pixel art is serviceable, and the atmosphere decent, and the soundtrack good, the writing is on par with high school jokes (random pop culture references and puns), and brings the whole game down. If you compare it to Blackwell Series, which costed about as much per episode, it's clearly not competitive quality-wise.

I was hoping for a classic-style point-and-click adventure. The art style seemed to draw inspiration from classic Sierra "Quest" games. Unfortunately, this game was very lacking. The graphics wound up coming off less as stylistic and more as lazy. I think there were only a couple animations in the entire game, even something as simple as a character leaving a room didn't warrant a few extra frames. The characters are very stock and bland, the dialogue is pretty corny (in a bad way), and too many of the jokes seemed way too familiar. There's pretty much no challenge, the plot progression is about as deep as a "choose your own adventure" book that has no losing conditions. While playing, I got distracted a lot (ate dinner and ran to a store while the game stayed on) and still managed to beat all six cases in about three hours. I was probably playing for about two hours, and experienced everything this game has to offer from beginning to end during that time.