Detective Dotson

This is not a detective game. It's a masala game (shallow entertainment game). You just grind basic mini games for money and buy clues with that money. The clues are quite direct and there isn't much to deduce while assembling them.

اللعبة بسيطة وما فيها تحقيق فعلي، والألغاز سطحية جدًا إذا كنت تبحث عن لعبة تحقيق حقيقية لا تشتريها ، أما إذا تبغى تجربة خفيفة جربها ، أغلب وقتك تجري تسوي مقايضة ، تجمع فلوس من الميني جيمز و تشتري الأدلة 🏆⭐2\5 (3 ساعات )

動画では日本語表示になっているのが謎ですがゲーム本編は日本語に対応していません。 最後までプレイしましたが事件は解決せず続編を示唆するだけの尻切れトンボ状態です。 期待していたシナリオの3割ぐらいかな、といったところで終了。 続きがDLコンテンツで徐々に追加されるのかと待っていたのですが、 音沙汰がないままSwitch版が出てしまったのでまさかのこの状態で完結なのかもしれません。 そしてどうやらSwitch版では日本語に対応しているっぽい。 よく言えばインド人特有のおおらかさを感じられるゲームでした。 インド愛と、細かいことはいいんだよ！と能天気に言える心のゆとりがないとちょっと厳しいかも。 私はゲームとしての稚拙さダメさも含めてインドを楽しめたのでオススメとしておきます。

[h1][b] TLDR: Gorgeous art and culturally rich music can't rescue a detective game where the "mystery solving" devolves into grinding minigames for currency while a rough translation muddles what little story exists. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Art style ➕Good cultural representation [h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1] 🔹I found it ironic that there is no Hindi language option 🔹The 3 or 4 different minigames can be fun at first….until you have to grind them for hours to get currency [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Rough English translation ➖UI is rough to navigate with simple buttons, like mouse scrolling ➖Disjointed narrative ➖Bugs with translation - case 2 incorrect (?) ➖Does not save certain tasks after quitting (trades) ➖Gameplay = grind for money [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world takes place on a 2D side-scrolling plane. There are many buildings (areas) to enter, but exploration isn’t very good, as there doesn’t seem to be many secrets to find or any hidden areas, it’s very linear. The big draw of the game world seems to be the cultural aspect. The game appears faithful to Indian culture. Aside from that though, it’s a basic 2D sidescroller. I found the narrative to be disjointed and hard to track. Perhaps it's due to a rough English translation. The narrative has you collecting information from things like “Who colored the dog purple” all the way to “Who killed my dad” with connections between all four cases. The escalation in crimes appears poorly conveyed through the story and I found myself largely apathetic. The dialog isn’t great and is mostly just a few words and a couple of sentences per character. I found it hard to track due to somewhat broken English. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] For a game that bills itself as a detective or mystery game, I found the mechanics to be misleading at best and terribly implemented at worst. The main gameplay loop revolves around playing minigames to accumulate money, using that money for items, then using the items on specific people to gain information to then use in the case. The cases themselves are very simple with things like “This person is missing” where you have to fill in the person and the “Is” part. There are a bunch of clues as well as nouns to fill up a mapping. I think if the game was focused on the clue board, it would be decent, but the grinding for money and trading really sours the experience. The difficulty is unbalanced and ranges from ridiculously easy to where you can use hints to literally fill in the clues, to ridiculously hard like when you’re trying to actually find the clues and have no idea where to go, who to talk to, or what item to get. There aren’t many guides either online, so good luck if you get stuck. [h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] This is the BEST part about the game. The art style is beautifully vibrant and diverse. The graphics, while pixelated, are crisp and shift between a PS3/PS4-era fidelity, depending on what you are looking at. The game cleverly combines the front and backgrounds into a great landscape that I really enjoyed looking at. If this category was graphics only, I would give this an 8. The game runs fine, but there are quite a lot of bugs though. I noticed some issues with translation and even one of the mysteries I swear got an option mixed up/bugged. The UI is cumbersome and unresponsive, simple things like scrolling, which you often do, don’t work that well. I found it a chore to navigate menus, see items, and even things like saving has your progress (item tracker) get wiped when you load in. 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [7/10] [/b] [/h1] Good music. I enjoyed the culturally appropriate music. There is voice acting and ironically it sounded okay, considering how poor the text translations where, I expected the voice acting to be either non-existent or terrible, but I was wrong on both accounts. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [2/10] [/b] [/h1] Poor, I can’t see replaying this except for achievements. It’s a linear mystery game, so those don’t have much replay value. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Detective Dotson (DD) is a detective game that incorporates elements of side-scrolling and minigames into its gameplay along with a heavy dose of culture from India. Unfortunately, apart from the music and art style, I felt that the game was severely lacking in all aspects. The detective and mystery parts of the game were a big letdown. Upon first inspection, you have a deduction board, which is always a good sign for good detective games. Then as you dig deeper you understand the method by which you gain clues to fill up the board, is anything but a mystery. Somehow, the gameplay loop devolves into playing minigames for currency that you then use for items to then use for clues. That’s a rather simplistic view, but just know that there seems to be only 4 types of minigames, and they get quickly repetitive. Furthermore, the act of trading items for clues gets tiresome when you’re trying to locate the specific NPC that needs the items with no map or direction. It’s just a pain. As if the loop isn’t bad enough, the deductions themselves are handled in a way that isn’t fun. Firstly, the translation isn’t the best, the English is rough, which leads to not understanding the plot very well. Secondly, due to rough translations, I had to rely on the overly-generous hint system, which just literally and immediately tells you the answer. You can beat the entire game by picking up trash to accumulate hints and then just solve the case with zero thought other than playing repetitive minigames. Lastly, even if you can get past one and two, the deductions are based on assembling an order of events based on the rough English to come to a conclusion, It's simply just not very exciting in the performance or the outcome. To try to finish on a positive note, it does seem like a lot of passion went into this game. There’s even a YouTube video that accompanies it! By far the best part of the game is the cultural aspects - the artwork and the music. Overall, I cannot recommend this game due to a myriad of issues. [h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] $15 base price is way too much. I would suggest under $3 if you must buy. You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

Beautiful art style but the poor gameplay and weak story make it hard to recommend.

Not recommended.. The game itself is quite repetitive.. Trying to get money, buy items to get hints for the story.... In the meantime the game crashes a little often, not giving the reward or background crashing which makes me exit the game and load again. When you load again, the required item status is all reset, sometimes my item list as well. So you'll have to go around the whole town to see which mission I'll have to accomplish. After three loops of <Getting Mission -> Getting all the items -> Bug -> Reload -> Getting all the missions again>, I just decided to quit playing. The little detail of throwing garbage is something that I don't understand why it exists. It's somewhat disturbing to proceed with the story, without any reason or fun. Bargaining for items is quite annoying too. There are many details of the game that are not amusing nor related to the story, but are just there to take your time with repetitive tasks. Sooooo, sorry this game is not for me.

I just finished Detective Dotson, and I really enjoyed the story. I like the art-style, it's really unique and visually amazing — it instantly stood out to me. The game feels like a side scroller, but with its own charm. I especially liked the feature where you can buy and sell items to earn money, and even bribe people for information. That felt very realistic — like something a real detective would do. The disguise mechanic and the ability to hide and gather intel were also great touches. I also loved how well the characters were created and how their stories connected to each other. What I didn’t enjoy as much were the mini-games for finding objects — they became too obvious and repetitive after a while. And even though Dotson has this super-smart AI watch, I ended up doing everything without really using it. It didn’t feel like it had any real impact on the gameplay. I wish the watch had its own dedicated moments or puzzles — scenes where you had to rely on it to move forward. That would’ve made it feel more meaningful. Overall, I really enjoyed playing it and had a good time.

Not much too it. Mini games felt like a chore. Most of the game is just buying items in exchange for info.

I love the representation and portrayal of Indian culture, but this game just felt tedious to me. Art was good though.

Very cute, simple little game. Recommend getting it at a discount price because there's not a lot to do. There isn't really a puzzle or platform element as much as it seems like there should be, but the game does not really hold your hand putting the clues together, so there is an element of needing to pay attention to dialogue to complete each chapter. The movie that accompanies the game on Youtube is a must-watch. It's really cute and adds all of the story context to the game. There is, unfortunately, not a lot to do once you beat all the chapters, nor is the story complete. Hopefully, Part 2 is released in a reasonable amount of time so that players have a reason to continue playing. I am excited for Part 2. The art style is very cute, and I like the calm setting of a town in India. I hope there are more locations and things to do in a future update. There is definitely things that are in the trailer that are not yet in the game, so I hope we get to see that soon.