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Game Review: The Darkside Detective
I used to play a spooky game every October, like Maniac Mansion or Resident Evil IV or Silent Hill II, as a theme to pick a particular title out of the massive mountain that is my backlog. That fell off in 2019, where I basically stopped playing any games at all for months until the Plague Years drove us all inside and I had nothing else to do with my time, and then Laila made it pretty difficult to stick to the schedule. But this year with wanting to play a game a month I wanted to bring it back, and a while back ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee suggested the game Darkside Detective to me because it was an adventure game and because it had pixel graphics. I took one look at it and put it on my wishlist, and when the summer Steam sale rolled around I bought it, and then I played it.
Was it spooky? Absolutely not. But it was fun.
It's that kind of humor.
The premise of Darkside Detective is basically X-Files crossed with a comedy duo. You play Detective Francis McQueen, the head (and sole) member of the Darkside Division, who has an overcrowded tiny office in the local police department. He's overworked, underpaid, no-one takes him seriously, and his partner is the funny man of the duo, Officer Patrick Dooley. I don't mean a prankster by that, though, I mean that Dooley is comedically inept--McQueen just can't catch a break. Despite that, he takes in every weird incident in the game with a resigned air and a wry quip. And that's basically all the background you need, because the this is not a game with lore, it's a gag-a-minute puzzle game where the weirdness is the point. When I started the game, I was a bit confused for a moment because I figured that I had missed some introduction or clicked past an opening movie or something. But no, Darkside Detective understands that its premise is all you need to know and the important part is the puzzles.
That extends to the actual narrative of the puzzles themselves, which in classic adventure game tradition are much more about solving weird problems than about making a coherent world. There's a haunted library where the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft are arguing about who is the better horror writer and also Enid Blyton (famously English, not buried in America) is there too. There's a zombie apocalypse where as near as I can tell, no one actually dies and which features a mob boss named "Al Corpsone." And of course, each puzzle is self-contained with basically no reference to the other puzzles. You don't even have to start with the first one. You can pick case 1 or 2 or any of the free DLC cases (7, 8, or 9) to start from, and you'll learn everything you need from the interactions between the characters.
The one bit of non-obvious lore is that there's something out there called the Darkside, which is little a distorted mirror of the real world. This is not treated as a subject of horror in any way--in one mission you run into an old woman in the Darkside and ask her if she's "Grandma Dooley" and she says that she's "Grandma Ghouley." You also meet Detective McScream of the "Brightside Division." It's that kind of game.
The puzzles are not exactly brainteasers.
As such, the main draw of the game other than the jokes are the puzzles, and they're fine.
I grew up a Sierra adventure gamer, playing games like King's Quest VI, so the puzzles I'm used to are much more fiendish. One wrong move could spell the end. It was possible to use a item in the wrong place an hour or two of gameplay back, and when you got to the part of the game where the item was necessary you wouldn't have it and you would lose. Hope you had an old save! They don't make them like they used to, which is probably a good thing--if you don't buy a pie in the bakery in King's Quest V, if eat the pie when you do buy it, you can't throw it at the yeti in the mountains, and the yeti eats you. I hope you had a save game from three hours back! That's how things were, because there wasn't an overwhelming flood of games coming out, so a single game probably had to last you months and if it took you weeks to figure out a single puzzle, well, that's value for your money.
The Darkside Detective is a modern adventure game which means it doesn't have any of that. All puzzles have reasonably obvious solutions and all items are fit for purpose. If you find an item, you can use it in a puzzle, and you can't use it in any place except the puzzle where it's designed to be used. On the one hand, this can occasionally lead to the classic "try everything with everything" problem that one-use items avoid--in the King's Quest example, if you use the pie it's gone, so you had better have some idea of what the proper solution to the puzzle is instead of just "use pie on lead pipe", "use pie on old shoe", "use pie on lady's handkerchief", etc. until you get some feedback that you're doing the right thing. On the other hand, I already talked about the downsides of this approach and I didn't miss it. I never had to spend very long staring at my items in confusion. The main confusion I encountered is when I missed an interactive item or, in one case, missed an area with more interactive items. Turns out you can go left from the car park into a construction area. I had to look that one up.
Another missing element, even when it seems like it would be appropriate, are timed puzzles. Old adventure games are infamous for being unplayable without DOSBox or other special software because they often had puzzles you only had a short time to solve that were tied to the computer clock speed, like King's Quest VI's room with the descending ceiling. This means that on modern computers these puzzles complete essentially instantly, and they were never a lot of fun in the first place--you'd be more often fighting with the interface than using your brain. In contrast, Darkside Detective has a scene where your partner Dooley is trapped under collapsed rubble with zombies approaching him and you can just stand there as long as you want to figure out the proper solution. It was a little strange, but every one of the characters behave like they were obviously in an adventure game so I wasn't taken out of the moment. I walked away and figured out that I needed a large quantity of holy water and even though I had to go to the other side of the graveyard, I got it done and Dooley was fine when I got back.
Old man yells at cloud.
The main feeling I would say Darkside Detective has is cozy. Not in the sense of a game like Stardew Valley, but in that it has low stakes, nothing is ever a serious threat, and none of the characters ever act like they're in danger. That's why I say this isn't a horror game even though it's all about spooky things--Dooley always misses the point, McQueen's attitude is
after basically every statement he makes, and that almost never changes no matter what situation they're in. Supernatural horrors never phase McQueen--he one time he freaks out is when the cake at a birthday party is on fire.
Combined with the complete lack of time pressure or worry about mis-using your inventory items, I never had to feel like I was in a tight spot. If I came to a puzzle I wasn't sure about, I could take my time, look around the screen, go to other screens, and just slowly try to solve the problem. If there was a zombie pounding on a door or a cake on fire, it would burn forever unless I did something about it. Solving the problem is the focus, and if it takes me a while to do it, that's fine. I can enjoy the jokes. The characters aren't bothered about it, so why should I be? This is a chill game even though it's about a dimension where up is down, cruelty is kindness, and monsters are real. But you know, in a kind of non-threatening way.
There sure are.
Is the Darkside Detective a great game? No. I wasn't expecting it to be because I had never heard of it beforesashagee told me about it. She thought I would like it because she saw the pixel graphics and knew I liked adventure games. And I did like it because I like pixel graphics and I like adventure games. It's not going to stick with me for very long, but I'm glad I played it. I'll just have to find a game that's a bit spookier for next year.
Maybe the sequel? It did end on an ominous cliffhanger.
sashagee suggested the game Darkside Detective to me because it was an adventure game and because it had pixel graphics. I took one look at it and put it on my wishlist, and when the summer Steam sale rolled around I bought it, and then I played it.Was it spooky? Absolutely not. But it was fun.
It's that kind of humor.
The premise of Darkside Detective is basically X-Files crossed with a comedy duo. You play Detective Francis McQueen, the head (and sole) member of the Darkside Division, who has an overcrowded tiny office in the local police department. He's overworked, underpaid, no-one takes him seriously, and his partner is the funny man of the duo, Officer Patrick Dooley. I don't mean a prankster by that, though, I mean that Dooley is comedically inept--McQueen just can't catch a break. Despite that, he takes in every weird incident in the game with a resigned air and a wry quip. And that's basically all the background you need, because the this is not a game with lore, it's a gag-a-minute puzzle game where the weirdness is the point. When I started the game, I was a bit confused for a moment because I figured that I had missed some introduction or clicked past an opening movie or something. But no, Darkside Detective understands that its premise is all you need to know and the important part is the puzzles.
That extends to the actual narrative of the puzzles themselves, which in classic adventure game tradition are much more about solving weird problems than about making a coherent world. There's a haunted library where the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft are arguing about who is the better horror writer and also Enid Blyton (famously English, not buried in America) is there too. There's a zombie apocalypse where as near as I can tell, no one actually dies and which features a mob boss named "Al Corpsone." And of course, each puzzle is self-contained with basically no reference to the other puzzles. You don't even have to start with the first one. You can pick case 1 or 2 or any of the free DLC cases (7, 8, or 9) to start from, and you'll learn everything you need from the interactions between the characters.
The one bit of non-obvious lore is that there's something out there called the Darkside, which is little a distorted mirror of the real world. This is not treated as a subject of horror in any way--in one mission you run into an old woman in the Darkside and ask her if she's "Grandma Dooley" and she says that she's "Grandma Ghouley." You also meet Detective McScream of the "Brightside Division." It's that kind of game.
The puzzles are not exactly brainteasers.
As such, the main draw of the game other than the jokes are the puzzles, and they're fine.
I grew up a Sierra adventure gamer, playing games like King's Quest VI, so the puzzles I'm used to are much more fiendish. One wrong move could spell the end. It was possible to use a item in the wrong place an hour or two of gameplay back, and when you got to the part of the game where the item was necessary you wouldn't have it and you would lose. Hope you had an old save! They don't make them like they used to, which is probably a good thing--if you don't buy a pie in the bakery in King's Quest V, if eat the pie when you do buy it, you can't throw it at the yeti in the mountains, and the yeti eats you. I hope you had a save game from three hours back! That's how things were, because there wasn't an overwhelming flood of games coming out, so a single game probably had to last you months and if it took you weeks to figure out a single puzzle, well, that's value for your money.
The Darkside Detective is a modern adventure game which means it doesn't have any of that. All puzzles have reasonably obvious solutions and all items are fit for purpose. If you find an item, you can use it in a puzzle, and you can't use it in any place except the puzzle where it's designed to be used. On the one hand, this can occasionally lead to the classic "try everything with everything" problem that one-use items avoid--in the King's Quest example, if you use the pie it's gone, so you had better have some idea of what the proper solution to the puzzle is instead of just "use pie on lead pipe", "use pie on old shoe", "use pie on lady's handkerchief", etc. until you get some feedback that you're doing the right thing. On the other hand, I already talked about the downsides of this approach and I didn't miss it. I never had to spend very long staring at my items in confusion. The main confusion I encountered is when I missed an interactive item or, in one case, missed an area with more interactive items. Turns out you can go left from the car park into a construction area. I had to look that one up.
Another missing element, even when it seems like it would be appropriate, are timed puzzles. Old adventure games are infamous for being unplayable without DOSBox or other special software because they often had puzzles you only had a short time to solve that were tied to the computer clock speed, like King's Quest VI's room with the descending ceiling. This means that on modern computers these puzzles complete essentially instantly, and they were never a lot of fun in the first place--you'd be more often fighting with the interface than using your brain. In contrast, Darkside Detective has a scene where your partner Dooley is trapped under collapsed rubble with zombies approaching him and you can just stand there as long as you want to figure out the proper solution. It was a little strange, but every one of the characters behave like they were obviously in an adventure game so I wasn't taken out of the moment. I walked away and figured out that I needed a large quantity of holy water and even though I had to go to the other side of the graveyard, I got it done and Dooley was fine when I got back.
Old man yells at cloud.
The main feeling I would say Darkside Detective has is cozy. Not in the sense of a game like Stardew Valley, but in that it has low stakes, nothing is ever a serious threat, and none of the characters ever act like they're in danger. That's why I say this isn't a horror game even though it's all about spooky things--Dooley always misses the point, McQueen's attitude is
after basically every statement he makes, and that almost never changes no matter what situation they're in. Supernatural horrors never phase McQueen--he one time he freaks out is when the cake at a birthday party is on fire.Combined with the complete lack of time pressure or worry about mis-using your inventory items, I never had to feel like I was in a tight spot. If I came to a puzzle I wasn't sure about, I could take my time, look around the screen, go to other screens, and just slowly try to solve the problem. If there was a zombie pounding on a door or a cake on fire, it would burn forever unless I did something about it. Solving the problem is the focus, and if it takes me a while to do it, that's fine. I can enjoy the jokes. The characters aren't bothered about it, so why should I be? This is a chill game even though it's about a dimension where up is down, cruelty is kindness, and monsters are real. But you know, in a kind of non-threatening way.
There sure are.
Is the Darkside Detective a great game? No. I wasn't expecting it to be because I had never heard of it before
sashagee told me about it. She thought I would like it because she saw the pixel graphics and knew I liked adventure games. And I did like it because I like pixel graphics and I like adventure games. It's not going to stick with me for very long, but I'm glad I played it. I'll just have to find a game that's a bit spookier for next year. Maybe the sequel? It did end on an ominous cliffhanger.