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Where cultists crawl, where demons dwell, where the occult… occults? *ahem* That's where you’ll find Detective Francis McQueen, the lead investigator of the criminally underfunded Darkside Division. When evil darkens the doorsteps of Twin Lakes City – hell, even when it just loiters around shop fronts or hangs out in shady alleyways – he’s there, ready to investigate the cases that nobody else will.
He is The Darkside Detective.
The Darkside Detective is a micro-adventure game with a distinct art style and charm. It’s being developed for PC & Mac, and consists of a series of humorous bite-size investigations into the occult and extraordinary. It features:
- 6 cases, each more spooky than the last
- Music from Ben Prunty, the audiomancer behind gems such as FTL and Gravity Ghost
- At least three jokes
- Cutting edge, high definition pixels
- One free curse-removal, up to and including mid-level witch hexes
so yeah, i played the first case. it's really short and more of a tutorial case that have you learn the basics of gameplay. it is really a small game so far. i finished the tutorial case around 15 minutes while eating dinner. on the content side, the first case is only like a dozen screens worth with 2-4 click able objects each and at least 1 characters to talk too. dialogue wise, each characters have 3 to 4 lines of inquiry, and some extra ones when when you uncover new facts. in the first game, we got around 6 items whose use are obvious and pretty simple. like keys to open door, lighter to combine with lantern to light it, etc. you use items by drag and dropping items to each other in your inventory or objects or people in the map. the game's tutorial prompt said the main character can "wear" an item although it isn't demonstrable in the tutorial level. the core is pretty good and simple i guess, it works well and feels good. i hope the puzzles, items and dialogue gets more complex later.
oh yeah, there is no manual save, and there seems only 1 auto save slot which got overwritten each screen transition.
now we get into the story, writing, and setting.
first talk about setting:
it take place in modern time, your typical urban fantasy (think blackwell) and you're a detective specializing in the occult. the protagonist so far doesnt have special powers like rosa and geralt. he's (so far) just a regular guy with knowledge of the occult. urban fantasy detective noir has always been my weak spot, so personally, i like the setting.
the story and writing:
it doesn't really take itself seriously, but i think it is ok. it's not great per se, but not terrible and the humor are imo funny (depending on your taste on humor, if you dislike self aware jabs and 4th wall breaking comments, it will probably turn you off. on the bright side, none of this really feel intrusive or out of the pace like thimbleweed park did with it's cosntant penetrating of the 4th wall with ron gilbert's hungry giant dick)
continuing on to the story, the first case is about a missing 7 years old girl. she was reported missing and no witnesses ever saw her or anyone suspicious entered or exit the house, so they called you to deal with the matter. the first character you saw is this beat, uniformed officer called dooley. he will be your partner in this case and will follow you to almost every screens in the case. depending on your humor taste again, you will like him or will find him annoying. his adorable obliviousness, bluntness and naivete will be the source of humor in the first case, along with your character cliche wisecracking comments. i personally like him. reminded me of detective gumshoe from ace attorney. for example of humor, i will provide some screenshots:
[and then your character responded with disbelief and shrug, i miss that dialogue and too lazy to go back and get one]
he responded with:
you continued on the investigations, and i found out there are optional puzzles that you can do, and it seems do nothing to change the outcome or progress of the story, but you get more context and an achievement to boot. weepee!
there are also optional items interaction, like this dialogue when you use a blacklight marker on the self portrait of the home owner :
which is always a good thing however little.
now we get into the spoilery part (i am tagging it, but it is still a 15 minutes episode so feel free to open:
basically we got a missing girl. the first witness you got is the dad, which is as typically asshole as they can get. don't really care about the girl, spent nights in "belle's busty booty botique" and just sat there as his girl was still missing out there. you investigate stuff, meet the mom, who was crying non stop ask her stuff and got no answer, and meet the nanny, which is predictably a suspect. so far the mom is out of the question because she seems genuinely care for the kid, so it is between the nanny and the dad.
you asked the nanny stuff, the usual stuff till you investigate the attic and found a portal drawn in blacklight marker. after solving some little obvious puzzle you oepened the portal and found the girl in this parallel world with the same structure, but in different hue (think the upside down from stranger things)
the culprit finally shown themselves up, (which is the nanny) revealed her motives and you defeat her by solving another very simple and obvious puzzle combining inventory items with stuff. later you question where she found the occult book, which i hope lead to some over arching plot on later cases.
overall, the first case is really short and too easy, although it has interesting potential if they would up the scale and complexity. i believe that's really is the tutorial case, because of this screen:
basically when you start the game, both the first and the second file are accessible, which led to the belief that malice in wonderland is some kind of ultra short tutorial and was made to be as simple as possible.
will be continuing later this night (or not, i am so tired atm) but at least with this you get the gist.
overall, i think it's really good, while on the simpler side, it has surprising potential if they upped the ante in later cases.
Thanks for the write-up Hobo. If you do play a bit more, please share your thoughts. Curious too if the difficulty starts to curve up a bit. This does actually seem like something I would actually like.
i am playing the second case now. so far it is alot more complex than the first one. there's just new layers to the story and mechanics. there are thrice the characters you can talk to and probably double the screen. more items too and the puzzles are still a bit on the easier side, but not as obvious as the first one.
the humor is still spot on for me, the more i play it, the more the main character's banters with his partner feel like phoenix and maya's banters from the ace attorney games. they just work so well together.
and the music is GOOD damn, ben prunty really did it.
finished case 2 or should i say the real first case. overall, yess it is twice the complexity in term of investigations, dialogue and puzzles. it took roughtly one hour for me. it's good, really good. still easy as heck, but the game got charm and really curious of how this go in the later ones.
finished the game. it doesn't get more complex than the 3rd case sadly, but overall the game is fun. pretty much if you expect puzzles and challenge, don't buy it. if you want a casual playing over the weekend, and good-well written jokes and likeable characters and lots of laughs, go for it.
i wrote a steam review if you wanna check it out:
The Darkside Detective is a neat little semi-adventure game. given the game's scale and probably budget, it produced a result that blew my expectation. the gameplay itself is simple, it consist of dragging objects to objects, people or background. the puzzles itself are all relatively simple and easy to figure out. all things considered, you can barely call this a proper adventure game, but that's where game game's lacking ended.
the story and dialogue itself is fun, we play as detective McQueen with his partner the adorably foolish dooley and they solve occult cases together, from kidnapped child to a zombie outbreak. all dialogue and interaction are comedically done well. every single jokes, dooley's ignorant and plain stupid comments and his conspiracy paranoia are hilarious, along with detective's McQueen's wisecracks and jabs. these two characters works so well together. they got the right chemistry and interaction. the duo are the highlight of the game. other characters exist, but without all the development the duo got, but they still serve for a fun extras of the story, some reccuring characters are still memorable and fun to talk to.
overall, if you ask is this a good adventure game? probably no. the inventory are sparse, and the interaction you got can be limited, there are no real challenge to the game itself and definitely don't really make you wrack your brain over a puzzle.
but if you ask is this a fun game? YES! the puzzles served its purpose not as a challenge, but as a context and delivery device for the hilarious joke. i think the game is really funny and that's where the greatness lies. every single lines are funny and well written, they don't take itself too seriously without being too intrusive and forced.
despite the absurdness, everything fell in place, no jokes ever feel forced, and they feel kinda relatively natural for such a wacky adventure.
the music is GOOD. Ben Prunty did a great job composing moody-spooky tunes-yet-not-too-gloomy that fits the overall theme of the game. the game itself probably worth it if you like moody ambient music.
overall, my impression of this game is "go ahead if you want a quality laughs and fun, but don't if you expect challenging puzzles and complex interactions"
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Necroing this out of left field since I was looking up a thread for this game the other day and I watched the video you linked. Been watching more of his reviews over the last few days and been enjoying 'em, that's the kind of Youtube crap I get a kick out of. Someone really passionate in their area of expertise and posting videos where they're seemingly just having a good time talking about whatever it is they love. I can't fist you but I wanted to say thanks regardless since that's been entertaining.
i am playing the second case now. so far it is alot more complex than the first one. there's just new layers to the story and mechanics. there are thrice the characters you can talk to and probably double the screen. more items too and the puzzles are still a bit on the easier side, but not as obvious as the first one.
I actually didn't notice that much difference between the first case and the rest. All of them took around 20-30 minutes for me.
I'm a little disappointed to be honest. Feels very much like Uavowed, just funnier and with shorter episodes.
Since I like the detective theme, I tried the first game a week or two ago. Very good pixel art and animations, very good music. Incline adventure game feature where you don't have to slowly walk from room to room; just single click the door and you're standing in the next area.
As a game, it's fine I guess. I usually hate mind reading adventure games but this one is generally so easy it doesn't matter. There are still some real idiot moments like "put mold on swimming cap to disguise yourself as the guard's best friend" or "rub steel wool on a car battery with your bare hands to light a candle" which get tiresome. I finally gave up on one of the bonus cases where the challenge is "make this guy move, with no hints as to how, somewhere in this 20 room dungeon you've already searched twice is the correct item to do it". I could just walkthrough it but I didn't bother because ...
I didn't find the writing that great. The humor is good enough for bullshitting over beers with friends, but not really more than that and there's no range to it, just variations on understated reactions to spooky phenomena. Funny - just not "I want to read more of these jokes for 8 hours" funny.
on steam you got 10% discount (on top of launch discount) if you have the first game. i already got it but probably won't play after i finish coldsteel 4
