The Darkside Detective (2017)

Played through three of the cases (out of six, or nine depending on if the bonus ones unlock for free). It's funny and charming, and has some nice atmosphere, but also there's not a lot going on here. Like, it's similar to Joe Richardson's games in many ways, but I just am not finding it as interesting because everything's a bit too cute and seen-it-before. The graphics are a microcosm of the whole game - they're cute and charming but there's not a lot of character to them and I'm a little bored of that aesthetic now. Also, some minor irritants like putting a mini-game in each episode (fucking tile-sliding puzzle again) and a fair amount of backtracking once the levels get a little larger. Unless it makes any major missteps, I suspect my final verdict will be 'it's a nice idle-point-and-clicker to play one 20-minute episode of per day to chill out and get a few chuckles but that's as far as it goes'. 

Okay, finished the main six cases and tried one of the bonus ones. Them being labelled bonus gives me a nice excuse to not bother with them, but I suspect I actually would have given up at this point if not even earlier if there had just been 9 main cases. It really is just a case of walking through each scene, clicking the interact button on every object, and then looking at the handful of items you've ended up with in your inventory and which one needs to be applied to which obstacle. There is the occasional slightly more complicated puzzle, but mostly 'complexity' is added by increasing the number of screens/objects rather than puzzle layers. Combined with the single-click interface, paucity of dialogue trees, and lack of animations, it all makes it feel very mechanical and unimmersive. The more elements you strip away from adventure games, the more the inner workings are laid bare and it all feels like rote grinding. FPSes and what have you can afford to just say 'collect the colour-coded keys for the colour-coded doors'; adventures can't, because they don't have another central gameplay element to rely on (no matter how many of them try with dreadful minigames!). And the animations thing is another big thing that adventures get wrong - I know that it can be a budget/skill challenge to include them, but they're a big part of the immersion and reward system, and it's better to have crappy walk cycles and special one-off anims than it is to fade down and up every time something happens and to have your character standing stock still the entire game not even walking into a scene as it opens.

(I'm always glad that we made TGP, because it combines with BTDT to make a game that starts off with pretty simple structure and puzzles and then unfurls into something more complex. But as simple as it is, BTDT still has the verbs, the dialogue trees, the animations, all the dressing that pulls you into the game.)

Rating: charming, but overly-simplistic