Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders

*Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders* is one of those adventure games that stayed with me long after I finished it. One of the things that immediately makes it special is the setting. Asian stories are still surprisingly rare in mainstream point-and-click adventures, especially compared with visual novels, and ancient China is an even rarer backdrop. The game makes wonderful use of it rather than treating it as decoration. Its protagonist, Renjie Di, is based on the real historical official Di Renjie, who later became the basis for a long tradition of fictional detective stories. He is essentially a kind of Chinese Sherlock Holmes, and here we meet him early in his career, investigating the murder of a Korean ambassador before becoming entangled in a much larger web of political intrigue, violence and personal motives. The story is excellent. It keeps expanding while maintaining a strong sense of momentum, and I constantly wanted to uncover the next piece of the mystery. The characters feel unusually vivid and multidimensional for a relatively short game. By the end, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about some of them, which is usually one of the best signs that the writing has…

This is an old school point-and-click adventure game made for the Nintendo switch and dumped on Steam as an afterthought. I think it's funny when developers who can't do graphics properly dump pixelcrap on the Nintendo Switch... nobody who owns one of those is old enough to remember when pixel graphics were the only kind you could get (because of technological limitations that are now non-existent, as non-existent as the valid excuses for using pixelcrap). But I digress, although the main theme of this review of course is to point out that the decision to make the game look like crap is the primary reason this Nintendo Switch shovelware isn't worthy of being in any PC gamers library. This is a point and click adventure where you take on the role of a Chinese detective and you solve some murder mysteries with minigames, puzzles and tedious pixel hunting as you click around to try work out where the hotspots are. Well, we all loved Day of the Tentacle, but this is a dead genre and this attempt to resurrect it fails. Which is not to say the concept and plot are bad, but the game is tedious and strung out, lacks the feeling and soul of the original point and clickers (this is n…

storyline and puzzle are both nice but i wish i could use my keyboard too while playing!

I'll admit, I am not a fan of pixel graphics, and I rarely play them. I lean toward games with realistic, stylish, pretty graphics, and pixel art just doesn't do it for me. What can I say, I'm just drawn to eye-candy. However, because of the very positive ratings, and the deep discount, I decided to take a chance with this game. I don't regret that decision, as I very much enjoyed Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders. The story was captivating and it drew me in. Perhaps, it even opened me up a little to trying other pixel games. A good story can indeed drive a game and push one forward to completion. The game probably takes a good 6 to 8 hours to complete, which is decent for the current price. Never mind my time, I leave games running between play times and saves, rather than shutting down and having to restart.

Excellent game! I wish it were longer, or there'd be a second installment. Great gameplay, all with only the use of the mouse, no keyboard needed. Simple but effective, which is all I need for a point-and-click game. The storyline is great. The art is great. The music is great. Thank you!

The unique setting of ancient China is really all that make its stand out as an adventure game. The art is serviceable, but simplistic. The story isn't flat out terrible, but its bland and uncompelling. The characters are all two-dimensional. The puzzles are either easy, or tedious. The logic for one of them is flat out nonsense. Even if you know the solution it makes zero sense.