Gumshoe Detective Agency: The First Case

While I did enjoy this game, with just over 90 minutes of playtime and no replay value, the list price is just too high. It's unfortunate timing for Gumshoe Detective Agency that The Roottrees Are Dead released this year with top-notch UI, hours more content, and inside jokes that rewarded searching the wildest tangents. I hope this developer continues to work on this concept and expand their skills because I do believe the audience for this type of game exists and is hungry for more.

Honestly, softly not recommending this. The feel of hunting down clues and putting together can be satisfying, but the system put together in this game is unpolished enough to make it fall apart for me. The in-game notes system was close to completely unusable, where I could enter text into it but could not select anything on it or even move between the lines. I ended up having to open an external program to keep notes on. This could have been some issue completely on my end somehow because I don't know how that would have gotten past testing, but it was something that impacted my playthrough so I need to bring it up. Adding to that issue, the implementation of the in-game ui is very basic, to the point of being almost counter-intuitive. For example: I have the browser open to a web page, I open the email. The email window completely covers the web browser and cannot be moved. To navigate back to the web browser I can either hit the "x" at the top of the email, or press the web icon in the navigator. Well, you better hope you either hit the "x" or weren't doing anything too important, because if you press it in the navigator it will send you right back to the main search page. Roottrees (which this game directly compares itself to in the about section) had a very polished, very put-together design for its search function, a convenient notes system, and enough extra information to look through that it built up the titular family while simultaneously planting several red herrings for your main quest. This game bills itself as "the first case", but even then it feels almost entirely empty when it comes to information not related directly to the mystery. The computer feels like a stage, a set, for the story, rather than a world you're peaking into to solve the mystery. I commend the devs for what they're aiming for, but I would definitely advise people think about what they want out of the game before they buy.

Great premise, but not in the same league as it's Roottrees inspiration. The game overall was too short for the price point, beatable in under 2 hours. What drew me into purchasing was the 1995 PC aesthetic, but the execution is frustrating. There is no web history in the navigation to be able to jump back to previously entered sites easily; you have to remember each search every time. You can't copy and paste by highlighting and right clicking, although Crtl+C does bypass this. The puzzle games were too safe (think sliding tile puzzles), and the story overall simplistic. The puzzle solutions don't always save so if you need to backtrack, you better have written down your previous answers. I see promise in this series though, with small quality of life improvements to the UI and an expansion in the storytelling (larger cases with more twists and turns).

I cannot believe how short this game is i am not impressed and wish there were more levels

I love the concept, but oh my GOD the UI is unbearable. Closing a window closes all windows. You can't move windows. Back-button in the browser doesn't send you 1 page back, if you followed links: it sends you to homepage. I can't save the page I opened in a browser: the game decides which pieces of information are "evidence" that can be pinned on the board. And there's no way to access already found pages! The windows where you have to enter something are reset when you reopen, and you have to close and open again because you can't move windows to the back/foreground. The 1990s computer systems the devs are trying to emulate weren't half as bad as this!

I solved the Gumshoe Detective Agency's first case, and I'm looking forward to being assigned another! I loved this atmospheric game in the style of Orwell and Roottrees are Dead and was totally immersed in the 1990s internet, the great foley sounds (You've Got Mail and the typing/clicking), and the excellent soundtrack (two thumbs up!). I miss the 1990s internet so much, which this game faithfully recreated and brought me back to things I'd forgotten (the visitor counters, guestbooks, text heavy sites, AMAZING backgrounds). That being said, my main complaint is that the game is too short to justify the $13 price tag. Since it's an indie developer, I'm telling myself it's for a good cause, but I can't help feeling a little disappointed by the price tag after finishing the game in ~1.5 hours. The ending felt a bit abrupt too and I wish there were additional rabbit holes and websites to snoop around in. I liked the game, which is why I didn't want it to end! Still, it's a cozy, immersive, nostalgic, and overall fun game that I very much enjoyed and has all the makings of a perfect franchise that I will continue supporting and playing. GDA is a perfect quick escape from the current world/internet.

As someone that remembers 1995, this game provided some fun nostalgia. There's even a tribute to Altavista, which I enjoyed. I'd forgotten about all the user counts and browser buttons on webpages back then. There are some bugs; midway through, my keyboard input stopped working in either the Browser or the Notepad. I saved and quit and reloaded my game and it worked fine again. The puzzles are somewhat challenging--I didn't struggle much except for the ones related to the disk and shape puzzle. Part of the second one was my own fault; I got pentagon and hexagon confused and then couldn't remember if I'd switched the colors appropriately or not. So I did check the guide for assistance once I got tired. (In my defense, I'm sick.) I liked the variety of puzzle types even though I didn't enjoy those particular puzzles. I also got tired of the sliding puzzle; I'm OK at those in general but don't really enjoy them and the way this one is designed, I struggled to know which white tufts went where, so I had to move things around again after I thought I'd solved it. As mentioned, I did consult a guide for a couple of puzzles and kind of wish there were hints built into the game, like if you emailed your colleagues with the puzzle maybe they could respond with subtle hints. (Not the answers obviously, as the mystery wasn't solved until the end, but if they could give hints like "maybe there's a clue on that website they were chatting about" or, for the shape puzzle, maybe they could work out the color of each shape and feed them to you a line at a time if you email them repeatedly. Anyway, I may be the only one that struggled with those particular puzzles and of course I am sick so maybe wouldn't struggle with them in other circumstances, so it might not be worth the developer's time and effort to create an email hint system. Despite a few challenges with the interface and certain puzzles, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it to those that enjoy this style of game.

If you're coming here after playing the Roottrees are Dead - or Emily is Away...you will be so disappointed. I bought this on sale for $9 and finished it in a little over 2 hours, the main reason it took that long was because of one puzzle that I didn't cheat on that was massively hard for no reason. My criticism comes from the story line - even at the end of the game, I didn't really fully understand the entire plot - it has a lot of holes in it and there's not really a lot of clues to bring the story line together, you're made to fully make up a connection on your own - which is very easy to miss minor clues for. I feel that $9 was massively overpriced for the value of this game - skip this one unless it's less than $4 or so. I do hope that in the future the writing and storyline is a bit better, this could be a fun series someday!

I feel like the game has potential to be great, but falls under the category of solidly okay. I'm debating between saying Yes I recommend this game, and no i don't...we will see which one I click after I finish typing this...The mystery was fun, the deductions were tricky, but there just wasn't enough there to keep me interested. I wish there were more articles to read or clues to follow, even if they ended up being red herrings. The game just felt too short for me and felt like it was missing something. There were also A LOT of glitches and I kept having to save and restart the game to get it to work properly (it wouldn't let me type in the search bar half the time which is the only way to look up clues in the game). I had fun though so it is worth trying IF you can get it on sale. I saw potential in this game though so if they ever made a sequel I'd try it for sure.