#the darkside detective a fumble in the dark

[hackerwrench]

[tube-tarling]

y'all know those shitty old romance novel covers

[idolcandy]

If I had a nickel for every time a video game had a setting with a secret rocket lab hidden in an old Irish castle I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice

[queer-benoit-blanc]

God McQueen takes Dooley to a motel for Dooley's birthday (which is on Valentines Day) and then Dooley disappears and a year later he's still missing. McQueen's entire life has become devoted to finding him. He's named a cat after Dooley. My poor guy

[badlyblurry]

Just finished A Fumble in the Dark’s main game.

Love that Dooley is canonically a pixel taller than McQueen

[rabbiteartrans]

These bitches are so fucking gay and in love like the second Placehoder Dooley was established any possibility of them being "just friends" flew out the window

[proficientatfreakness]

I don't know? Morse code??

[radinagames2020]

The Darkside Detective

Rating: 5/5. The writing and characters in this game, plus the fun content, get it top marks from me, even though the puzzles aren't that challenging.

This is a review of both The Darkside Detective and its sequel, A Fumble in the Dark. Both are episodic point-and-click detective games where you play Detective McQueen and his hapless partner, Officer Dooley. They work in the Darkside Department, solving (with your help) mysteries based in the occult and monstrous. Both games consist of 6 "main" stories and 3 "bonus" stories although they are all very similar, and I think the bonus ones were just originally DLC - no other difference that I could tell.

Right from the beginning, the setting is a fun one - who doesn't love ghosts, spirits, and monsters? The Darkside itself is a place you can visit, starting right from the first case. The case stories themselves are clever and inventive, and often delightfully reference previous cases and bring back old characters. The dialogue is funny in a quippy way, which may not be everyone's cup of tea, but was completely perfect for me. There's also a fair amount of fourth-wall breaking humor, which I enjoy.

I also loved the characters. Recurring characters such as Raxa are fun and I enjoyed watching their relationships grow over the 18 stories. And McQueen and Dooley's relationship is the heart and soul of the game. They are childhood friends, and their affection and tolerance for each other's (mostly Dooley's) quirks is super endearing. Without spoiling anything, their relationship goes through a HUGE test in the middle of the series. The resolution and impact of that are really fun to play through. I will also mention that, while the writers disavow this, it does not take much of a mental stretch to see their relationship as a bit... more than friends, which I enjoyed. :)

Overall, a really fun series of little puzzle escapades with funny and endearing characters. The puzzles themselves were overall fairly easy, although we did get stuck a couple times, but that didn't bother me because I was busy enjoying the story. So I definitely recommend this to fans of detective games, spooky stuff, and goofy himbos. :)

[agapi-kalyptei]

RECOMMEND ME DETECTIVE AND OTHER NARRATIVE HEAVY GAMES PLEASE

(must be available on PC) (ok to reblog)

already played and liked - the more emoji added the more I loved it:

No Case Should Remain Unsolved 😭

PW Ace Attorney trilogy

Ace Attorney Chronicles (mixed feelings about that tho)

Crow Country (rather old school action horror but still good)

PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo 🤡✨🤬

Doki Doki Literature Club (yeah not a detective) 👧

Disco Elysium, duh 🔫💊🍷

The Painscreek Killings 🔍

A Short Hike 🐦

Paradise Killer 🥂🌈🗿

Slay the Princess

Persona 3 / 4 / 5 🤗🔫🎭

Frogware Sherlock Holmes series

DEATHLOOP 🎡

Dishonored 1 / 2 / 2.5 ♥♠

Thief 1 / 2 / 3 💎

Gloomwood

(splitting into several because Tumblr editor chokes on long lists)

The Case of the Golden Idol 🗿

Oxenfree 1 / 2 👁

Pentiment ✍

Beacon Pines 🌲

Sam & Max games

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 🔍

Aviary Attorney 🕊

The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark

Lunark

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Perfect Tides 🐠

Tails Noir Preludes

Tails Noir

Unforeseen Incidents 🌲🌲

McPixel 2

BAD END THEATER 😳

We Happy Few 💊💊

Shadows Over Loathing

Outer Wilds ☀🌍🌎

Crowns & Pawns

The Stanley Parable / Ultra Deluxe <25xbucket emoji>

Ministry of Broadcast

Return of the Obra Dinn 🚢🔍⏰

Spiritfarer 😭😭😭

Later Alligator

The Procession to Calvary

Psychonauts 1 / 2 🧠🧠

Subsurface Circular

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

Kindergarten 1 / 2 🩸💣🔪

Kentucky Route Zero 🧠😳

Beyond a Steel Sky

Shardlight, Lamplight City and most other WADJET EYE games

The Red Strings Club

The Turing Test

Tangle Tower 💛💛💛

Detective Grimoire 🤎🤎🤎

Paradigm

Firewatch 🔥🔥

The Beginner's Guide

The Sexy Brutale

INSIDE

Her Story

Did Not Like:

Deponia (asshole MC with no character development)

Thimbleweed Park (pseudointellectual "nothing really matters" BS)

Scene Investigators (too much guesswork, annoying exact phrase typing "puzzles")

Nine Noir Lives (a bit too childish)

Tales of the Neon Sea (idk the writing was meh)

Blacksad (good game but a terrible PC port)

VirtuaVerse (same old 90s adventure game tropes and a MC who's an assface and never shows empathy)

Games I have in my library but didn't play yet and yes I know I should:

Va-11 Hall-A

Roadwarden

Supraland series

Carto

To the Moon

Not for Broadcast

Alba

D4

FoxTail

[tiredgamergirl]

Welcome to the Darkside. We have cookies. Well, we had until someone ate them.

Usually games that involve the supernatural are considered quite hard to penetrate because of their shocking images, dense plot, and oppressive atmosphere that might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Adventure games also have the reputation of being hard to grasp, with logic puzzles that coined the term “moon logic” because it is so out there only a lunatic can grasp. But what about mixing both and throwing the dread out of the window and wrapping it all with some witty humor and puzzles that you don’t need a PhD in out-of-the-box thinking? That’s where The Darkside Detective comes. Conceived during a Jam, the developers Spooky Doorway crafted six cases (and three bonuses) that are bite-sized self-contained short adventures, each hardly over an hour long to solve even in a relaxed pace.

Detective Francis McQueen is a detective of the Darkside Division of the Twin Lakes City police department, who always gets dispatched with the strangest cases along with his partner, police officer Dooley – who is quite the himbo.

The retro style can bring memories of old titles, like Simon the Sorcerer,the Secret of Monkey Island, or even the King’s Quest series, with charming and colorful visuals. Thankfully the game has modern sensibilities, so the simple visuals also reflect a simpler and snappier gameplay and take the term “point-and-click” quite literally. Anything highlighted has a commentary from McQueen and there isn’t any of the dreaded pixel hunting to nitpick every last screen. It is a literal love letter to the classics of the genre and also a nice introduction for those who never played one but always wanted to try it out. The music grants some gravitas to the game, creating a spooky atmosphere that is inspired by horror classics and can give a certain air of mystery and tension without being overbearing and complimenting the visuals along with the story.

Everything about this game is a work of love for adventures and classics like the X-Files and Twin Peaks, the banter between McQueen and Dooley is always a treat to witness and it can get even wittier when they interact with many of the other characters, some even recurring ones. The short duration of the stories make sure they never over stay their welcome and places the duo in a number of different situations brimming with creativity. The absurdity of the situations lean to the comedy and unexpected punchlines.

After the release of the game the developers added three more cases along with a teaser to the follow up, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark. One of these extra cases is actually much shorter than the others, closer to a mini-scenario similar to the free-roaming in Case 6 of the main game, but the others are along the same length of the main story.

The Darkside Detective is a charming game, full of personality and it is clear the dedication and care present in every screen. Give it a chance and enjoy the ride.

[hackerwrench]

[tube-tarling]

Missed these two

[idolcandy]

[arcticgraverobber]

I just finished: Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark!

Another game I finished a while ago and haven't go round to writing this yet, hopefully I will get back to normal pace and also remember enough to write this

Adventure games are a genre I always have enjoyed, but like many people I can get frustrated with the moon logic they're infamous for. Modern adventure games of course are largely a lot simpler, but can still be somewhat overwhelming when you get far into them, having 20 items that you don't know what to do with and have forgotten what you were even meant to be doing in the first place.

Darkside Detective, both the first game and this sequel, mitigate this issue by splitting the game in to a series of shorter adventures. As an anthology, each adventure has a separate story, and separate puzzles so you don't go crazy trying to keep track of everything. This may seem an odd comparison, but it reminds me a lot of the Club Penguin spy missions - which were probably my first introduction to the point and click genre. While obviously designed for young children and thus containing very simple puzzles, even when I played it as an adult on a nostalgia kick I still appreciated the structure of the game, and felt the need for something similar to it, but for an older audience.

The first game did function as this, and while some of the puzzles were a little frustratingly obscure, the main thing I dislike was the games constant attempts at humour. Whilst they weren't incapable of being funny, the game suffered from what quite a lot of comedy games suffer from in so far as they HAVE to be funny at every turn.

Darkside Detective 2 has progressed from this I think, being genuinely funny throughout a lot of it, but also allowing room for the plot. The game has a vaguely Twilight Zone type thing going, mostly sci-fi horror concepts and stories parodied but also sometimes taken in interesting places, which the first didn't really manage to do.

Largely I like Darkside Detective 2, and will definitely play another if it gets made. Though I did have to resort to the occasional walkthrough hint, I found the puzzles fun and the story compelling enough, and the jokes hit more than they missed.

Significance: 1/3

Grade: B

[badlyblurry]

Guess what I bought, played, and got obsessed with in like two days.

Sticky note close-ups under cut

[rabbiteartrans]

Detective Francis McQueen: a fully human boy? Who can say