4/5 ★ – FireFoxie's review of The Darkside Detective.

Platforms played on: PC I’ll be honest I came across this title completely by accident through a sale on Steam. Between the ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reviews and the summary of the game my interest was piqued. Plus, I’m a sucker for indie games and The Darkside Detective was something I knew I had to play. The game features a detective named Francis McQueen and his sidekick Patrick Dooley who solve crimes and mysteries of the paranormal in the city of Twin Lake. You’re given six initial cases to solve, but after completing them you’ll be given another three bonus cases. Each case has its own story and is treated like an individual episode which I really liked. Something I also enjoyed about The Darkside Detective was that even though the characters and the world revolves around the supernatural, it doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest. That’s because the game is written to be a comedy instead of a generic horror game, which I found to be refreshing. It was really fun to speak to all the characters and examine everything on screen because of how funny the character interactions or responses were, plus it also added some world building and character development. The pop culture references towards certain movies and tv shows was also a nice touch. Speaking for myself only, I found nearly all the jokes to be hilarious and found myself laughing out loud. I will admit though that there are a few that do fall flat and I think that’s because there are some serious grammatical issues in certain pieces of dialogue. The script really could have used an editor. The Darkside Detective is a simple point and click game. The gameplay isn’t very intricate because you mainly just use the cursor to move around the screen and click on objects. If you find something you’ll need than McQueen will pick it up and put it in your inventory for later. However, you’ll need to talk to some characters to trigger certain events in order to obtain specific key items. Let it be known there is no ‘HINT’ button in this game, so if you get stuck and don’t know what to do you’re either going to have to figure it out yourself or use a guide. The game also has the player solve some puzzles too, but I never found any of them to be particularly difficult which might disappoint some players. Also, there’s only a handful of puzzles in the game in general, it’s a little lack luster in that area. Overall: I’m not going to pretend that The Darkside Detective is a perfect game because it definitely isn’t. It has it flaws and a lot of gamers are probably going to find the simplistic gameplay and lack of voice acting disengaging. Some gamers probably won’t finish it and some won’t find its humor all that funny because, like most things, comedy is subjective. But for me it was exactly what I needed it to be: a fun and relaxing game filled with a lovable cast of characters. Pros: + great sound track + lovable characters + funny humor + cases were fun to solve + easy trophy/achievement list Cons: -Poor written grammar at times. -game doesn’t provides any hints