A number of years ago I went to Dublin for a Gaming Convention, a big part of that was Irish Developers showcasing their games. One of my favourites was Spooky Doorway's The Darkside Detective, a fun point and click mystery adventure. I kept meaning to play it but in honesty, I just kept forgetting about it, until now.
Soup. It is wondrous stuff if you're not sure what to eat or you're feeling under the weather it can really help. One of my favourites is chicken noodle, it's hearty and real comfort food. Playing The Darkside I found myself asking was this my comfort food?
Story
The story, or, rather the cases follow the adventures of Detective Francis McQueen and Officer Patrick Dooley. They, or more correctly Detective McQueen help investigate the paranormal mysteries of the small town of Twin Lakes. There are six cases and three additional bonus ones, with fun names like 'Malice In Wonderland', 'Tome Alone', 'Polterguys' and 'Loch Mess'.
Overall the cases are fun and have some great stories. Being a point and click adventure most of the gold is in the dialogue. Some of my favourites include: 'why is there a hobo dripping all over my carpet','ah, come on now Detective, you're hardly going to arrest the weather' and a flaming trash can that says 'help me I'm on fire!'.
Visuals
The Darkside Detective is pixilated fun, it works really well, especially with it being a tongue in cheek mystery game. While you might not expect much from 8-bit style adventure the visuals can often be quite stunning. In particular the colourful lightning vortex, the Darkside train station and the Mayan Pyramid.
Overall the visuals manage to be simple, stunning and fun!
Music
If you have ever wondered what the X-Files Music crossed with a chiptune would sound like it, it may sound something like The Darkside Detective. It works really well and it's clear that composer Ben Prunty had a lot of influences for the eighties and nineties. Ben is an American composer who created the soundtracks for FTL, Colour Sky, Chromatic T-Rex, and Fragments.
The score runs a little over an hour and features some great tracks, my favourites include 'A Town Unlike Any Other', 'Happy Retirement', 'BETI', 'Smyth's Graveyard' and 'Revenge Of The Don'.
Overall a great soundtrack that really helped in making the game special.
Gameplay
The Darkside Detective is a classic point and click adventure. What I liked about it most was its accessibility, what I have found in the past is that occasionally point and click games can be overly convoluted. I have found some to be a little overly complicated with the puzzles and found myself asking 'how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?'. The Darkside Detective allows you to enjoy it without having to spend to much time scratching your head.
Outside of solving puzzles there is some fantastic dialogue. There are a lot of pop culture references throughout the game but instead of feeling clunky and overused they made me smile. There are even jokes about the game itself and they work so well.
Overall the gameplay is a lot of fun and only a few times was I left feeling a little confused.
Final Thoughts
So, after eight hours how did I feel? Pretty good! The cases were fun as were the characters you interact with. The visuals and music work really well in creating the mysterious feel of the game. The gameplay is simple and fun, managing to move away from some of the more frustrating point and click adventures. Overall this one gets a solid 4 out of 5
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