Nupixo Games recently released a new point and click adventure game featuring Di Renjie, aka Detective Di. Loosely, Detective Di is like the Chinese cultural equivalent of Sherlock Holmes in as far as legendary detectives go. Movies and books have been written about Di, but I had never heard of a videogame based upon him until Nupixo’s Kickstarted Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders. A very small development team put together this game with a lot of heart and the result is a really cool point and click that I’m happy to recommend.
Given the modest budget and size of the development team, you can’t go into Detective Di expecting a Lucasarts-level experience. What you can expect however is a great mystery tale that was told well and intriguing enough to keep me hooked for the duration. Game length is relatively short, understandably, clocking in between four and five hours of mostly steady, enjoyable progress with little time wasted on poorly designed puzzles or backtracking. There are about forty-five unique locations in the game, several that expand larger than just one screen space, too. There are no voiceovers, but the dialog is well written. Di will encounter many NPCs to query about the events taking place in the story as he tries to solve a string of deaths collectively referred to as the silk rose murders.
Controls are as straight-forward as you would expect for a classically designed point and click. A mouse is all you need. Paying attention (or worst case, pixel-hunting) for clues is part of the experience, and I can only think of two or three times where “hunting” became necessary (and even that was just for an extra several seconds). Wisely, the game helps keep you on track when this happens by prompting you to stay in the room you’re at until you have unearthed all vital clues. At certain intervals in the game, whether it be in the branching conversation with an NPC or after solving a puzzle or combining inventory items, an overlay screen will pop-up to show you how many key elements to the case you have discovered and how close you are to coming up with the full story. The game takes place across about four chapters, and each chapter has a half dozen or so such ‘major clues’ that you must discover in your adventuring before you can attempt to re-enact the crime. I liked how Nupixo presented these moments to the player via what amounts to an interactive, in-game cutscene. As Di is explaining to another NPC how the crime unfolded, you watch events happen with the in-game engine and then you will have some multiple choice questions to answer (basically finishing out a thought of his to prove you paid attention to the case — and fortunately, the story and writing are good enough that you’re going to be paying attention anyway because it’s interesting).
Generally speaking, Detective Di could be reasonably referred to as a casual point and click game simply because of its relatively flat design. That might sound harsh, and I use the term flat as you might use in describing a basic data network. In other words, there is not a lot of layered complexity to the design of the game; NPCs, puzzles, and inventory items and their interactions are all pretty much at hand and sensible. There just is not a lot of, well, ‘life’ to much of the experience. Again, that sounds worse than it really is, my point being that if it’s in the game, it’s probably someone/something you can interact with and it’s probably essential, and how it’s essential is easily understood. Still, for Nupixo’s first point and click, they did a respectable job with the puzzle design and gameplay, in addition to the aforementioned great story and story-telling. The lack of voiceovers and minimal effects is not a big deal for those that enjoy the genre. The few musical tracks that play in certain locales are good. Graphically, it’s basic to be sure, but understandably so. The graphics are not anything to write home about, but neither are they something that should keep you from playing.
Nupixo has done a fine job with Detective Di, all things considered. Anyone that enjoys a good mystery story or point and click games would do well to make time for this one and hopefully we’ll see Nupixo continue to invest in the genre.
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