Chinatown Detective Agency

It pains me to give this a negative review, but the game is just so unpolished. The concept is great, the story lines are good, but it just falls so flat on its face. - Solutions to puzzles are either easy from an obvious Google or so obtuse to what you think it should be, you'll never get it. Most are very easy. There is also no depth to the puzzles... I was expecting to have to get sucked into a Wikipedia hole, but every answer is just 1 level deep. - Had a game crash, SFX that never went away across cases, and other frustrating bugs. - Money and travel in the game is annoying and a waste of time - Why is half the game voice acted and the other half not?? - Of course, when I hear the city Victoria, I think [spoiler]Seychelles[/spoiler] and not Canada or Australia! Lol. - Every case has 1 or 2 puzzles in it. You finish a case and think, "Wait, that's it?" - Failing a case is really punishing and incredibly frustrating. My issues are the same as all the other negative reviews... and my takeaway: if you play this game, you probably won't hate it. But you will have a frustrating experience fighting the game to try and enjoy yourself with it. And be left with a wonder of what it COULD have been, if it had been properly executed.

I decided to wait with the review until I got all the achievements in the game and discover all possible endings on all paths to see how it would impact my initial reaction to the game. It sadly didn't. At first, I thought of the game to be very enjoyable - I enjoyed the cases, the depth to them initially, the different characters, the settings, as well as some of the initial functions demonstrated only in the demo, so I purchased the game. I quickly went through the already familiar content and started the real game. And it fell flat. The cases are really short and really buggy. Some of them I had to restart over 6 times as Amira would not move from her place and I could not interact with anything at all. The difficulty level was fine, some definitely easier than others but with the usage of external browser (necessary for the game) you're bound to find everything. I think the game is too short for its price - yes, you will play more and spend more time in game if you do different paths and reach the end with a different partner and get different endings but the paths are short and the main storyline starts to feel boring after the nth replay with a different character. I think that the idea was nice but not all functions are polished - such as the wait function or rent (which also bugged many times for me and did not allow me to pay), they feel unnecessary and the time deadlines also only work at certain times, while they make no difference at all at other times. What also felt abandoned as a game part were the voice acting and character drawings - only some characters got a voice and if they did it was not present in all the dialogues, only some, mostly abandoned half throughout the game, and the same with art - some characters have faces, others not at all. And even though those are small cosmetic mistakes, they still really impacted the game experience, as they made it feel unfinished. Overall, I'd prefer the game to be longer and more polished, also having the manual save function available more easily than it is now and for the bugs to stop happening because they really ruin the game experience. I was so excited to play it after the demo but left rather disappointed. It's not bad though, it's just not good.

Many of the bad reviews of this game mention the fact that you have to look things up for real. These people obviously never searched for Carmen Sandiego before. Younglings. Great aesthetic, fun stories and mysteries, and a great cast of characters. If point-and-click mysteries aren't your jam, stay back. If you don't like doing real research, stay back. If you're an old folk like me what with the tinnitus and the joint pains and the constant peeing and you remember searching for Carmen back before we even knew to fear Y2K, drop your cane and dive right in.

It's an interesting game, but the fact that the save function only exists for around 5% of the playable game means that you repeatedly have to replay parts of the game you've already completed. Couple that with the annoying UI and it's just a frustrating game to play. Some of the puzzles were fun but I just couldn't keep going back over stuff I'd already done due to the game/developers not respecting the fact that people have to occasionally turn off their computers.

Despite this game's thumbs up rating, I did not really enjoy it. It is a puzzle-focused point and click adventure game, probably more in the vein of Deja Vu than Lucasarts games. The setting is near future Singapore along with a bunch of global locations for cases. The game predicts the prevalence of things like artificial operators taking over menial and manual labour, drones, surveillance and corporate and governmental greed leading humanity into a dystopia. I like that kind of setting, and I think the game does a good job in highlighting parts that are relevant to the world as it is currently. Certainly, little optional information panels for each location detailing details of various places along with a brief history from the IRL future onwards do a great deal to add to the world building. Plenty of objects and NPCs have option dialogue or descriptions that also hone this world. Good stuff. The gameplay is what I have gripes with though. You'll meet simple matching games made obtuse with nonsense symbols. You'll do this minigame maybe half a dozen times through your playthrough, it becoming easier as you start to recognise and remember the symbols. Other puzzles require actual google searches to solve - looking up facts and information to solve clues and riddles. This ranged from very simple to very obscure. Certain information, for example, was easily within my knowledge-set, but made difficult with nonsensical obfuscation. For example, and here's a puzzle spoiler (for one sentence): One part had me finding a bottle of burgundy red wine - one of my favourites, but the wine shop has all the other wine's labelled except for the burgundy, I believe that breaks EU regulations and and and most bergundy say either that or [i]burgogne[/i] on them. Spoiler over. This is a gripe for sure, and I had a few others, but I'm sure people with other expertises than me will find the same difficulty with other puzzles. I also found the buying plane tickets, and then clicking wait until 3 hours before the flight, then watching the plane go across the map unnecessary and tedious. Graphically, I think that the characters could have had slightly higher fidelity. The portraits used during dialogue were not expressive and didn't show emotion. The normal sprites are retro style, with no detail. I found that forgivable in some games, but here I thought it detracted from the game's emotional impact. I think the devs could have used shaders to add more a dramatic noir and/or cyberpunk feel to the game. The sound design of the game was good, but not stand-outy. Vaguely futuristic beats pulse away during tense scenes or carry you through travel and waiting. Drifting ambient synths drone on during more atmospheric moments. Voice acting was on point - singaporean accents abound lah, though some of it didn't match the final dialogue. I understand - budgeting and alterations. Overall, I think if you enjoy this kind of game, you'll have a whale of a time. But I'll stick with my problem-solving adventure games, rather than puzzley ones.

Good: -serviceable voice acting, particularly the protagonist, thankfully -was somewhat immersed in its story and setting. BGM was appropriate Bad: -I'm used to pixelart point & click adventure games and even this was pretty barebones in terms of world building and interactivity -game mechanics that test your patience - google search to solve puzzles, boarding flights -played open beta version in 2024 to have the save anytime feature (essential to overcome annoyances caused by point above) but it constantly throws up messages about graphics errors that obscure the screen and you have to clear away Ultimately I can't recommend this, even for those specifically looking for a point & click adventure game in a cyberpunk setting (this game is barely that). What little fun and immersion can be had here is adversely affected by the game mechanics mentioned above.

I really loved it. The mechanic that forces you to become a real detective and do the research yourself was right up my alley. It felt like I wasn't just brainlessly consuming lore and pixel hunting objects as with most point-and-click adventures but I actually had to learn stuff and understand information to progress. That's why this game feels special to me. I also liked all the storylines and every ending was touching. The art was beautiful as well, I love pixel art both as a player and as an artist and this one was very well done.

I love the detective / investigation genre so much that I'm usually easily impressed with any game that tells a good detective story and maintains decent intrigue and suspense. And honestly for the first 5-6 hours I played this game, I was enjoying the story and the characters. The actual puzzles felt novel at first because they required you to step outside the game and do actual research online. However, afterwards, these puzzles started to feel more like a hindrance to an interesting story and world that they had built. And I'm not saying these puzzles were particularly difficult, but if the game requires you to step outside it and search for the answers, what's stopping you from just looking at a walk-through to solve the puzzles? Initially I avoided them, but later on it felt like googling "what's the answer to the language puzzle?" was easier than googling "what language are these symbols from?". I am at a point where the mystery is at it's peak but the puzzles have irritated me far to much to proceed. I'll probably push through and finish the game, but a detective story that leaves a sour taste isn't worth the time.

Absolutely love a detective game that demands the player actually put in the legwork to make sense of the clues rather than rub two items together until they fit. Couple that with some great moody pixel art and you've got yourself a success.

It's on a more unusual side of things. A lot of mechanics and stuff thrown at you right away. It's not your usual point and click adventure/detective game and requires some getting used to. My take away is that you are either gonna love it or fight the game to actually enjoy it. If you are looking for a more conventional detective story go try Lacuna. Honestly i got enough anxiety about missing a flight in real life and having the same experience in game of planning ahead not to miss your flight is not something i would have expected from a game