"Oh, we're finally getting to the climax," I said, gleefully, as I enter the third area of the game. "So that was two cases and maybe one more to tie the overarching mysteries and that'll make for a very satisfying game!"
Readers, my optimisms are unfounded. That was not in fact, the climax of the story. I don't think there was ever a part that I'd consider a "climax" at all. After that midway point, it just kind of meaders, never really reaching for any sort of high. Yes, they did tie the overarching mysteries together, but in a way that is unnecessarily roundabout. When I reach the ending sequence I was so ready for it to be over.
Alright, back up a sec. Gamedec is a detective game, that elusive not-genre that's been aproached towards with countless different game mechanics. Gamedec approaches it from the lens of western (tabletop-inspired) RPG, where who you are is determined by your stats and the actions you take influence and are influenced by those stats.
Mechanically, it's one of the more interesting approaches to a detective game. Cases consists of multiple areas and you're given free reign to explore it. Collect clues, talk to people, strongarm or charm them into giving you information, depending on how you build your character. With enough clues you'll be able to make Deductions: choosing one conclusion out of a few different choices. Progress is usually locked behind those conclusions. You have to pick one, even if you don't have enough information, before the next phase of the game will open for you.
Add this with its lavishly-crafted environment and the stats-based mechanics and you might be mistaken to think this is a game with a great deal of freedom. In practice though, you're usually just kinda railroaded through those lavishly-crafted environment. Your Deductions can be wrong, but the game will progress anyway, either railroading you to the truth or leaving mysteries unresolved. Progressing also means leaving everything in the previous area behind, including the friends you've made or clues you've only partially investigated.
It gives off this sense of disjoint, of fragmented narratives that don't reall combine together into something whole. This would be fine if it's just a set of separate episodes, each with their own mysteries and characters, but the final arcs desperately try to combine them together and the end result is just kind of incoherent. It also doesn't help that the game has a lot of characters but barely give them any attention. I just end up not caring about anyone here. They'll just be replaced by some new characters in the next area anyway.
I took 9 hours to finish this game, and honestly, I wish I stopped playing after 5 hours or so. That's enough to get a grip with all the mechanics and its admitedly fascinating world. Afterward I'd rather just imagine playing it than actually sit down and trudge through it all. If that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, no, actually I'm just damning it. It could've been so much better.
It feels like like they have a lot of people working on team, but not enough direction. It seems like most of the team just kinda noodle away with their own thing. Each area has little mechanics that mean absolutely nothing as a whole, but I imagine was pretty fun to program. One area has a whole crafting system with day-based, turn-based action limits. One area is a spoof on grindy F2P farming games, complete with lootboxes. One area is a glorified game of Mastermind code-breaking game.
This goes for the art too: there are a lot of details to that hologram screen that shows up for exactly three seconds, or the hovercars that you only see a few times in the background, or those chairs. There was one area where the floor is an aquarium, complete with fishes and coral reefs. It was beautiful, but you just breezed through the whole place without even given the chance to sightsee. This is straight up one of the most beautiful, AAA-styled graphic I've seen, and for what?
I don't know. Maybe it'll be better as an episodic release. Maybe it'll be better if it's more open-ended. It will definitely be better if it's shorter though, if it doesn't aim for too high and then get lost in the tangles of information it makes for itself. I sincerely hope the studio make recoup their money though, because those are beautiful set pieces and I hope the people who work on them well.
Here's the game btw
https://store.steampowered.com/app/917720/Gamedec__Definitive_Edition/
