Gumshoe Detective Agency: The First Case

This was a gigantic disappointment. Gumshoe Detective Agency is clearly inspired by The Roottrees are Dead but fails to understand many of the aspects that makes it actually umm..... good. So lets go through them. First U.I, the roottrees has a plain text editor notes app that allows you to copy any text into it and I believe in the remaster search through highlighting making it easy to search for items that have differcult spellings. It also would occasionally prompt you if you were on the right track but were missing something. for instance in the tutorial of roottrees one of the first puzzles is finding out a characters actually first name. Putting in there given name gives you a hint instead. This game to the best of my knowledge does not have a notes app despite the instructions clearly referencing one. If it does exist I apoligize. There were several times were this became frustrating as I would have to search things multiple times do to slight spelling errors. wow copy and paste would help there. Of the various pages you had to unlock through a password several of them required you to login every single time. which was annoying and janky especially because it was not consistant. Some puzzles like the shape one seemed incomplete or at least the logic was not as tight as the game designer assumed it was. Maybe thats player error on my part but I'm usually pretty good at those kinds of logic games. One of the amazing things about The Roottrees is its expansiveness not only do you have this giant corkboard to discover but the number of prompts you can type in are well staggering. The first time I played it I spent the first 20 minutes reading around an ad campaign for a chocolate bar and sitcoms from the 80s and you would think that this is just pointless fluff but no. The way the game is written and designed these seemingly disparate details do fit into the mix. They are relavant you just don't have the context yet. In Gumshoe there is a lot left on the table. Somethings can be searched up like the 'white gull cafe' and yet others can't what is relavant to the story and what isn't honestly feels kinda arbitrary and I didn't feel good exploring. The whole mystery in general is quite linear, very short, and not particular clever. This isn't a game where you really have to think about the mystery. Its a lot more like I was taking a Lexile Quiz at the end for reading comprehension. Which as a Roottree-lIke is not a good thing. The ending segments of these games should take time to figure out. another inspired game 'a case of fraud' (2025) does this well. is the story as deep as roottrees ... no. but it took pondering the evidence it felt like an actually puzzle that I had to break down and consider. This game does not require that. It gives you a few soft ball puzzles to solve, (here I mean literally one of them is a slider puzzle), writes the barest bones of a story and calls it a day. It feels really cheap from the graphics to the story to the art assets, which they have not listed as A.I Generated and I know that can be a bit of a witch hunt but the paintings that are used as character portraits in this game are done in a style thats popular in generative AI models. I'm not trying to be a 'wokescold' or something but as a consumer I would like to make an informed choice when I buy a product and something like that gives me pause. I'm not going to buy a game if I suspect its using AI assets and so it benefits the developer if there upfront and transparent about ther artistic process. especially if an asset feels incongruent with the rest of the artistic direction of the game. Overall this game is way overprice for what you get, which is a bare bones story and maybe 1.5 hours of gameplay if were being generious. It lacks a lot of the actually puzzle mechanics that makes the genre enjoyable and the narrative itself lacks the conplexity that more story-driven players can enjoy. There are not deep character here but there is a cute dog. They bring him up a lot. Also this is a nitpick but the game is inconsistant on the name of the main character. In different sources he is listed as either Chris or Michael Karadec and no you can't look up either of those names.

While I did enjoy this game, with just over 90 minutes of playtime and no replay value, the list price is just too high. It's unfortunate timing for Gumshoe Detective Agency that The Roottrees Are Dead released this year with top-notch UI, hours more content, and inside jokes that rewarded searching the wildest tangents. I hope this developer continues to work on this concept and expand their skills because I do believe the audience for this type of game exists and is hungry for more.

Honestly, softly not recommending this. The feel of hunting down clues and putting together can be satisfying, but the system put together in this game is unpolished enough to make it fall apart for me. The in-game notes system was close to completely unusable, where I could enter text into it but could not select anything on it or even move between the lines. I ended up having to open an external program to keep notes on. This could have been some issue completely on my end somehow because I don't know how that would have gotten past testing, but it was something that impacted my playthrough so I need to bring it up. Adding to that issue, the implementation of the in-game ui is very basic, to the point of being almost counter-intuitive. For example: I have the browser open to a web page, I open the email. The email window completely covers the web browser and cannot be moved. To navigate back to the web browser I can either hit the "x" at the top of the email, or press the web icon in the navigator. Well, you better hope you either hit the "x" or weren't doing anything too important, because if you press it in the navigator it will send you right back to the main search page. Roottrees (which this game directly compares itself to in the about section) had a very polished, very put-together design for its search function, a convenient notes system, and enough extra information to look through that it built up the titular family while simultaneously planting several red herrings for your main quest. This game bills itself as "the first case", but even then it feels almost entirely empty when it comes to information not related directly to the mystery. The computer feels like a stage, a set, for the story, rather than a world you're peaking into to solve the mystery. I commend the devs for what they're aiming for, but I would definitely advise people think about what they want out of the game before they buy.

Great premise, but not in the same league as it's Roottrees inspiration. The game overall was too short for the price point, beatable in under 2 hours. What drew me into purchasing was the 1995 PC aesthetic, but the execution is frustrating. There is no web history in the navigation to be able to jump back to previously entered sites easily; you have to remember each search every time. You can't copy and paste by highlighting and right clicking, although Crtl+C does bypass this. The puzzle games were too safe (think sliding tile puzzles), and the story overall simplistic. The puzzle solutions don't always save so if you need to backtrack, you better have written down your previous answers. I see promise in this series though, with small quality of life improvements to the UI and an expansion in the storytelling (larger cases with more twists and turns).

I solved the Gumshoe Detective Agency's first case, and I'm looking forward to being assigned another! I loved this atmospheric game in the style of Orwell and Roottrees are Dead and was totally immersed in the 1990s internet, the great foley sounds (You've Got Mail and the typing/clicking), and the excellent soundtrack (two thumbs up!). I miss the 1990s internet so much, which this game faithfully recreated and brought me back to things I'd forgotten (the visitor counters, guestbooks, text heavy sites, AMAZING backgrounds). That being said, my main complaint is that the game is too short to justify the $13 price tag. Since it's an indie developer, I'm telling myself it's for a good cause, but I can't help feeling a little disappointed by the price tag after finishing the game in ~1.5 hours. The ending felt a bit abrupt too and I wish there were additional rabbit holes and websites to snoop around in. I liked the game, which is why I didn't want it to end! Still, it's a cozy, immersive, nostalgic, and overall fun game that I very much enjoyed and has all the makings of a perfect franchise that I will continue supporting and playing. GDA is a perfect quick escape from the current world/internet.

As someone that remembers 1995, this game provided some fun nostalgia. There's even a tribute to Altavista, which I enjoyed. I'd forgotten about all the user counts and browser buttons on webpages back then. There are some bugs; midway through, my keyboard input stopped working in either the Browser or the Notepad. I saved and quit and reloaded my game and it worked fine again. The puzzles are somewhat challenging--I didn't struggle much except for the ones related to the disk and shape puzzle. Part of the second one was my own fault; I got pentagon and hexagon confused and then couldn't remember if I'd switched the colors appropriately or not. So I did check the guide for assistance once I got tired. (In my defense, I'm sick.) I liked the variety of puzzle types even though I didn't enjoy those particular puzzles. I also got tired of the sliding puzzle; I'm OK at those in general but don't really enjoy them and the way this one is designed, I struggled to know which white tufts went where, so I had to move things around again after I thought I'd solved it. As mentioned, I did consult a guide for a couple of puzzles and kind of wish there were hints built into the game, like if you emailed your colleagues with the puzzle maybe they could respond with subtle hints. (Not the answers obviously, as the mystery wasn't solved until the end, but if they could give hints like "maybe there's a clue on that website they were chatting about" or, for the shape puzzle, maybe they could work out the color of each shape and feed them to you a line at a time if you email them repeatedly. Anyway, I may be the only one that struggled with those particular puzzles and of course I am sick so maybe wouldn't struggle with them in other circumstances, so it might not be worth the developer's time and effort to create an email hint system. Despite a few challenges with the interface and certain puzzles, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it to those that enjoy this style of game.

I cannot believe how short this game is i am not impressed and wish there were more levels

I'm marking this game as recommended because I did overall enjoy it, but have a few important caveats. First off, this game is quite short. You are unlikely to spend more than 1-2 hours on it. I personally feel it's important to support indie devs for these kind of games, because these days that's where most of these games from. So, I am okay with paying a little extra for a game when I know it's supporting an indie developer. But, the price is admittedly a bit high for the short gameplay. You might want to put this on your wishlist and wait for a good sale. The gameplay mechanisms are a bit clunky and can be a bit frustrating if you find you want to revisit sites. Every time you want to go to a site you have to do the same search for it -- there is no history or shortcuts to previous sites. Similarly, there are certain puzzles you have to do more than once if you are revisiting content that was locked behind a puzzle. The search terms are also very specific. The game is about kidnapped heiress Victoria Mason, and both her father and the company are important to the story, but if you simply search "mason" in the web browser you get no results. I did also run into an issue where a certain critical link on a website was not visible because I had enlarged the default font size. I had to look at a walkthrough to see what I was missing. So, if you are completely stuck and it doesn't seem you have anywhere to go, check your font size and make sure you only have it enlarged by a few clicks. Having said that, though, it's a fun little mystery and I enjoyed reading through the various web pages and information. I was a teenager in the 90s and the developer absolutely nailed the way the web pages looked back in the mid 90s. (There is also a small chance that when I initially started the game that I actually spent the first 15 minutes playing Minesweeper.) Though the game had its rough spots, I will definitely play the second one and hope that the developer has taken note of negative reviews as constructive criticism.

It's a really fun game and I see the inspiration from Roottrees and Nancy Drew games. Even though it is short, it scratches that mystery itch. Thankfully there is a copy paste with ctrl+c and ctrl+v. And the notebook is helpful to remember things I would like to search later. The ending is challenging in that as there is some clues that you really have to think logically to understand. Wishlist: I wish more of the key words you find were searchable. But it helps to keep you on track without too many distractions. And, I wish you could see previous websites. Other than that, this was such a well executed first game. I'm excited to see what comes next!

I feel like the game has potential to be great, but falls under the category of solidly okay. I'm debating between saying Yes I recommend this game, and no i don't...we will see which one I click after I finish typing this...The mystery was fun, the deductions were tricky, but there just wasn't enough there to keep me interested. I wish there were more articles to read or clues to follow, even if they ended up being red herrings. The game just felt too short for me and felt like it was missing something. There were also A LOT of glitches and I kept having to save and restart the game to get it to work properly (it wouldn't let me type in the search bar half the time which is the only way to look up clues in the game). I had fun though so it is worth trying IF you can get it on sale. I saw potential in this game though so if they ever made a sequel I'd try it for sure.