We played the early demo of a promising graphic adventure that is close to being financed on Kickstarter
Although Kickstarter no longer attracts the attention of a few years ago and large macro projects capable of reaching millions of dollars are increasingly scarce in the video game, crowdfunding continues to serve to boost interesting games and put them on the exit ramp with a welcome injection of money and a popularity boost, vital in a scenario like the current one in which each independent project must fight for every inch of notoriety it can achieve.
Chinatown Detective Agency is one of those games, a cyberpunk graphic adventure set in Singapore but that will take us around the world chasing an increasingly intricate conspiracy. We play Amira Darma, a former Interpol detective who left the body under mysterious circumstances and is now trying to stay afloat as a private detective. An old friend puts us in touch with the representative of a group of powerful men from the city-state. One of its members, the majority shareholder of a powerful insurer, wants to find an executor who has disappeared with several million of the company, an apparently crystalline case that will twist to unsuspected limits.
Pixelated beauty
Two things stand out immediately from this project. The first is the graphic presentation, for which several talented and well-known pixelart artists such as the Brazilian Ricardo Juchem have gathered, which is evident in the stylish and detailed representation of the scenarios, both in the most remote shots and in the closest scenarios. The second distinctive element is that the game forces you to use real knowledge outside the game to be able to advance in some puzzles, a technique that other graphic adventures have used – particularly those of "Where … is Carmen Sandiego?" that they are one of the most underlined inspirations and that were known for their double facets as entertainment and as educational software. At one point in the demo, we are offered a quote from a book, which we must search in the browser to identify its author and be able to search for it in a library, not revolutionary but stimulating.
There are other curious details, such as that we have a budget – and some expenses – that we will have to take into consideration. Taking a flight will not be just a matter of clicking on a map. We will have to see the schedules and pay the cost, making sure that we can afford one thing and the other, which gives the adventure a greater layer of realism and puts us more in the world and in the mind of our protagonist.
The game is halfway through its funding process, but with 13 days to go, you only have about $ 4,000 left to meet the minimum funding. Those responsible, the General Interactive studio, have been diligent in putting together the different facets of the public start of the game: trailer, complete Steam page to start putting it on wish lists (vital for the platform's visibility algorithms work), and a very early but effective playable demo that you can try for yourself to see if the project is to your liking. If all goes well, it is slated for launch in early 2021.
