Chinatown Detective Agency [Review]
Chinatown Detective Agency is a little point-and-click game, where you (duh!) play a role of private detective, starting out and solving cases -- and amongst them, there will be a case that starts simple, but sets the path for your career...
This little game is intriguing and funny, and I loved characters and the story. And under usual circumstances it would be a five stars from me, but there are a couple of things about the game itself that, sadly, made my experiences far from perfect.
Firstly, this game leans into a concept of having to look up things online to know answers to questions in game. Now, that certainly was a thing a while back that was quite popular; and to me, personally, the time for this concept to work has passed.
Not only did I constantly got tons of walkthrough for the game links which made it harder to go through results and figure out what exactly I need to know... on top of that, the things to look up were... very specific and rather tough to find.
Granted, the game gives you an option to call your friend / ally for help and get hint or solution which I did appreciate, but at the same time -- it’s like skipping a puzzle in a game, really. I didn’t choose to gather help because I struggled or didn’t want to try and solve the puzzle, but because solving the puzzle was time-consuming and complex to the point of it being... unbearable to me.
And, I truly hated the parts where googling things up was mixed with time limit. Now... I am going to ignore what happens when you have slow connection; however, my internet speed is decent and I still was too slow if I didn’t know anything about the topic and had to find info... It was truly annoying (especially since fail means you get yeeted back to start of the mission).
So that’s a design choice in gameplay I did not like, but I could deal with it. However, game was also just so filled with bugs to the point where simple, plain playthrough (once) through the game made me cause to even softlock it once. And little bugs that you notice but ignore were so common it really pulled me out of immersion of the game.
Those were two major issues I have. The writing certainly made it worth my time, the pixel graphics are nice and the areas are designed well -- a couple extra items to click on, but things are rather linear most of the time. The whole art design definitely was up my alley, somewhat retro-ish from my POV and made me feel nostalgic about my childhood, for sure.
The game had many great parts, the story pulled me in and I just wish it was polished just a little bit more. That being said, it is a 25$ indie game (albeit published by Humble), and I am not gonna harp too much at its flaws. I think for the 25$ you get a decent little game, an entertainment for ~10h, with possibility to replay it as at some point you do make a rather big choice (it might be fun to see where other choices take you).
So, all in all, I recommend it, but you should be aware of the couple of flaws Chinatown Detective Agency has, and it may at times annoy you. Though, if you are a connoisseur of good story, you won’t be disappointed.
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