When I first saw Detective Dotson being advertised, I was very excited about a detective game being set in India. However, as I played through it and got to grips with the game, I found Detective Dotson to be quite disappointing.
Detective Dotson
Developer: Masala Games
Price: $14.99
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
I love indie games, as I find that a lot of the time, they are far more creative than anything in a triple-A that I’ve experienced. I loved the unique concept of Detective Dotson, where the man himself dreamed of being a Bollywood star, but instead had to solve the case of who killed his father.
The game is full of vibrancy and bursting with color. Not to the point it becomes overwhelming, but the perfect amount. This was one of the biggest advertisers for me, as I love games that can balance muted colors and vibrancy just right. I saw that it was a side scroller and expected something akin to The Silent Age. However, I was completely off-base with that assumption.
The first case you are thrown into to help you adjust to the game mechanics was about a dog that had been dyed pink with paint. It was a fun and cute little case to introduce the game, but I was very baffled by the mechanics that followed. Instead of feeling like you’re unlocking a story as you progress, it just felt more like I was playing a bunch of minigames to try and receive a crumb of information.
One of the main ways to get information from people is by buying items from the various vendors around and then selling them to the person at a higher price. This is a fun mechanic, but as I progressed to other cases, I found that it wasn’t actually that beneficial all the time.
Another mechanic is the way you need to make money to purchase items and then sell them to people. To do this, there are multiple people you can talk to, who offer you the chance to wager money to play a hidden-object style minigame. I also stumbled across a minigame that was very obviously heavily inspired by Rift of the Necrodancer, but overall was a lot slower and easier to play.
I did enjoy how unique Detective Dotson is, but overall, it isn’t a game that I could see myself playing to the end. It feels more like a mobile game and has a very cheap feeling in some places, especially with fireworks-style visuals when you unlock a new clue. On top of that, while the voice acting is fitting, it has a muffled, sort of tinny sound, like it was being recorded in a bedroom or something of that sort.
Detective Dotson is a fun little game, but it lacks the polish I wanted from the experience. Instead, I think this game would be better as a mobile game, and I would prefer to play it that way. The mechanics weren’t at all what I was expecting from the game, especially since it is advertised as a game where your main mission is to uncover who killed your father. Instead, it felt as if it wasn’t taking itself seriously.
The Final Word
While it was lovely to be able to see a world bursting with color and full of culture, it didn’t feel fitting to the overall theme of Detective Dotson, and instead felt like it was a bit all over the place.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
