The Darkside Detective — Review

If I were to tell you to imagine a game where you were Detective McQueen — ace Detective who deals only in occult investigations, what would you imagine?
Perhaps a dark, survival horror game, where you head into creep infested areas, fending off your inevitable insanity?
Or maybe something like the Batman games — where you hunt through cities, kicking ass and solving crime, your cape crackling behind you in the wind…
The Darkside Detective, by Spooky Doorway, would go for the third option, not listed above — an amusing point and click adventure about Detective Francis McQueen and his dim-witted partner Officer Dooley. It’s a fun afternoon’s worth of game, with some really lovely pixel art and a great soundtrack by Ben Prunty. The Darkside Detective’s main concern, is making you smile. Each line seems to contain a joke or a reference, creating a rapid fire pace that is often the main driving force of the game, when the puzzles fall short.

You have six individual cases to solve, which remain mostly unconnected (apart from some recurring characters and the occasional callback). Each case has its own premise, though often involves “The Darkside” — a world running parallel to ours where ghosts and monsters are the norm, and solid humans are seen as disgusting. The Darkside is usually the reason behind most of the cases (unsurprisingly) and each case centres around a central conundrum — in one you hunt down someone’s missing daughter, in another you work out what is behind the spooky goings on in a library.
The game’s success (or unsuccess) rests on the strength of these premises. Thankfully each one was memorable and enjoyable, offering fun interactions and story threads, creating moments in which the game truly excels — my favourite case was one based in McQueen’s station, where the jokes came from his interaction with his employees, one line causing me to laugh out loud. Its safe to say that The Darkside Detective is a funny game, its humour reaches some brilliant peaks. Its also stuffed to the brim with puns, which is always a good thing.

Whilst its writing, presentation and music are excellent, the rest of the game falls into point-and-click adventure tropes. Whilst The Darkside Detective is a homage to old school games of similar humour, it dilutes them a little too much. Puzzles are, for the most part, simply going from room to room, grabbing all the props and then going to its obvious conclusion. On top of this, it also employs typical ‘game’ puzzles — a tile slide puzzle, a water pipe puzzle being two examples.
It feels like whilst the rest of the game had a brilliant time with the premise, the puzzles didn’t do much with them, apart from thematic settings, which is a real shame. Coming back to the case in the office, one of the reasons this was my favourite case was because it was the most wide ranging. Instead of having one or two items in my inventory, I had to juggle multiple, giving the game an opportunity to make me feel clever, rather than simply going through the steps. This case also fell prey to the classic problem of point-and-click games — unable to find a specific thing to click on and having to eventually resort to going through room by room until you discover the innocuous missing interaction.

However, don’t let this deter you from The Darkside Detective. It’s still a lot of fun to play, giving you a good few hours of laughs and smiles. I’m not a particularly big horror fan, but I still found lots to love within its nostalgic references.

The soundtrack is also excellent — Ben Prunty has done a brilliant job. Its synths pulse in and out as Prunty employs his signature rhythmical style. The soundtrack goes hand in hand with the art style — pixel art with some ambient colours mixed in, giving it a brilliantly old school feel, whilst maintaining a modern crispness.
If you have a spare afternoon, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give The Darkside Detective a shot — even if its puzzles are a tad simple, it’ll definitely make you smile.
The Darkside Detective is out on July 27th. Pick it up on Steam.
In the spirit of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by playertwopr.

