Chinatown Detective Agency is an enjoyable pixel art game made by an indie studio. The main idea of the game is for the player to use real world knowledge to solve cases, and puzzles. I needed to go on Google to find stuff, and to search for content online.
It has inspiration from some of the puzzle solving as experienced in some of the older Carmen Sandiego games. The serene soundtrack is fun to listen to while play and is on point. I appreciate the fact that I was able to buy a plane ticket, in game, and have to arrive at the airport 3 hours in advance for international flights. Also to mention is that I use the metro in the city, with the subway doors opening close, with authentic sounds. While at the office, I paid monthly rent bills, and then have to expand the office when I hire someone as an employee. That was interesting. Then I find out in one moment, the main character gets dosed by a potential hire so she can escape; that made me laugh.
The voice acting is satisfactory. I find it interesting that the main character’s voice actor is from Singapore but elects on an American accent that is on point. Despite that, there are moments where she reverts to Sinaporean accent due to stress. It lapses for a moment and I thought that was interestingly funny. Still, bravo to her amazing work.
The cypberpunk system is quite nice. Futuristic feel with the fantastical feeling.
The storyline is quite well written.. Three separate storylines diverage after the introductory three cases, where it throws the player into dealing with distinct classes of society. For example, I can do stamp delivery with Tiger Lily, go find some corporate thefts with Rupert, or find a murder mystery with Kenveer Iyer, all three of which lead down separate paths. That was honestly interesting.
The game exceptionally deserves credit for those aforementioned positives.
Now, are there any negatives? There are two things I wish was explored more. The save system could be a bit easier to save and load. It seems if I save with one sidekick, it can easily overwrite other saves. Which was not great. Also the second, I've occasionally encountered a bug where, the game on pc, if you click several times rapidly, the player loses control of Adira, and to regain control is to shut down the game and relaunch it.
Some extra thoughts.
The potential for DLC is great. I would love to see some extra missions or so. However, that is not possible since General Interactive Co's Kickstarter did not reach its fundraising goal. Oh well.
The pricing is alright at $24.99 USD for the game. Feels like the game has enough content and effort for that price. A mission or two more is good enough to justify that high of a price.
The pixel artstyle flies high for some people but I imagine it would capture a small chunk of people. And that’s fine. I enjoyed the game overall and think I may engage in a second playthrough, someday
verdict:
Score: 100%
recommendation: yes
Achievements: 15 hours
Replay value. Partial yes for achievements.
