Gamedec review – FAQ to the future

Cyber-crimes require cutting-edge cyber-solutions, but even when you’re a gumshoe who specialises in providing on-the-ground video game sleuthing, those solutions aren’t going to be readily obvious. That’s the elevator pitch for Gamedec, in which the greatest way to kill time in the 22nd century is to don a skinsuit equipped with neural haptic feedback and beam down into one of several video games that cater to every whim you could think.

Yes, there’s a porn game where horny hijinks have gone awry.

Enter the titular game detective, a walking encyclopedia of hints, tips, and vodka, who gets called in to solve mysteries and still has to find time to pursue a life outside of their office. Cracking the cyber-case and getting well-paid for the effort, Gamedec is all about paying attention to every line of dialogue that pops up when you’re questioning suspects and tracking down clues for your latest caper, of which there is no shortage of verbosity present.

And that’s great! Following narrative breadcrumbs and creating a character who’s an ace detective in the virtual world and a cyber-celebrity in the waking realm – who could sell blue pills by the crate – makes for a fascinating exploration of what it means to be a digital gumshoe. Unfortunately, Gamedec’s path is a rocky one. For starters, the idea of being able to switch between professions that influence your conversations, spend points in one of four different personality types that can lead to higher-paying jobs, and eight signature aspects within these mental setups, makes for a chunky experience. All of these ideas are clumsily bundled together and lack consistency in how they’re applied to the world around you.

Certain decisions increase the growth of your aspects, earning you new points and unlocks to help advance your game detective along their chosen path. However, sometimes the choices you make result in your aspects increasing for arbitrary and seemingly unrelated reasons.  Because of the structure of Gamedec, where background calculations create extremely different outcomes and directions based on every single line of dialogue uttered, this can result in cases going off the rails and unraveling. It’s not enough of a problem that it happens constantly, but when it does occur it’s noticeable and can lead to broken responses from the characters around you – for a deduction that you never made.

The other problem is that Gamedec’s codex for corralling all your data is an almost incomprehensible mess of poorly designed case notes, lacking any intuitive flow and organisation from your many conversations, interviews, and clues. The content that should take priority is buried beneath a mountain of junk mail, meaning that it’s easy to overlook the crucial details that define a case and allow it to be cracked wide open.

It’s a pity because Gamedec is filled with fantastic “Ah-ha!” moments when all the pieces do eventually line up, especially when you see how wild its story gets. If you thought this century was the genesis of an upcoming dystopia, then wait until Gamedec hits you with wild swerves around MMO clans forming cults, and a free-to-play game trapping farmers in a never-ending crunch session for that sweet sweet loot.

Finding that one vital clue, though, means exploiting virtual reality and finding a few exotic solutions to the dilemma at hand. Whether that’s tricking a bastard-troll of a unicorn into spilling the beans, hacking people, or finding a loophole that allows you to spend in-game currency to get a pay-to-win leg up on the case, is up to you. It’s worth noting, though, that while it wasn’t always possible to find every clue–which actually led to me choosing the wrong deduction on purpose just to move the case along–getting stuck wasn’t an issue as I was still able to progress and unlock more parts of the mystery with the skills I had. It’s an odd system, but it works in Gamedec.

If only the writing could match the more outlandish concepts, as Gamedec is just missing the certain quality that makes a game of this genre find its flavour-footing. The English translation does what it can given the rushed circumstances that it clearly went through, but constant typos and stilted dialogue put a damper on things. Gamedec attempts to explore topical issues but ends up dancing around them without ever having something to truly say about the potentially controversial subject matter.

A clumsy third act further sours the experience. And even if the first run of the game is designed to be a brisk 15 hours, give or take, the lingering clumsiness and several bugs probably won’t convince you to return to Warsaw’s grim future for another go at hard-boiled mystery-solving.