Gamedec - Game 19 of 2023

Gamedec

Developer: Anshar Studios
Publisher: Anshar Publishing
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG

Difficulty: Easy
Hours: ~4

Finished: No
Final Rating: 6/10

In Gamedec, you take on the role of a... Gamedec. A Gamedec is short for Game Detective, someone who traverses the virtual worlds of the near future and solves crimes.

Fletcher Garrett, my Gamedec

Gamedec takes place in future Warsaw; it immediately throws a shitload of jargon and worldbuilding at you and never freaking stops. You have a journal where you can look this stuff up, but that doesn't really do you a lot of good when you're in dialog and one of the options is "Use Screen Jibba Jab Matrix" and you don't know what the fudge that is because it's never come up before.

Honestly, I wish we spent a little more time in future Warsaw because it seems like a really interesting place. Instead, we are originally thrust into an extreme S&M virtual game (it's not really racy or anything). Following that, we visit Harvest Time, the future's version of Farmville, I guess.

The areas you explore are rather small and self-contained. What you have is a very linear story; once you're done in Farmville Harvest Time, you won't be coming back. The story, at least what I experienced, seemed decent. Both meatspace and the virtual worlds you traverse are populated with some interesting folks. You'll come across characters that are exploiting children for cheap labor (and pumping them full of stims), the spoiled, psychopathic scion of a wealthy businessman, and some cross between Cthulu and uh, It?

Subtle.

All in all, Gamedec isn't bad, but I just couldn't make myself finish it. Awkward dialog, limited exploration, and what I felt was a clunky deduction system all kind of took away from the interesting world I felt was there, but just out of reach.