Gumshoe Detective Agency: The First Case

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!

On the shorter side, and with some weird UI issues, as other reviewers have pointed out. The fact that you need to search for one specific word/phrase per webpage is annoying, and the fact that you have to do it every time makes it really annoying - especially since there is no in-game notepad to copypaste from. Having to input passwords and such every time you want to open a locked page also feels pointless and means you need to keep remembering them even if you'd rather focus on progressing the case. The solution in the end also felt a bit thin. Still, I mostly had a good time playing, and the process of discovering new things was fun. I'm really on the fence about whether or not to recommend this one - in the end, it's a soft recommend if it's on sale, but ultimately that feels more like a no than a "yes, play it!"

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'm sure I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said by all the other reviewers, but I'll post a review anyway to support the creator. :) This game feels like a good first draft at a Roottrees Are Dead style game. The internet search engine is always a fun mechanic and I like searching through webpages for the clues I need to solve the case, but the way it's been implemented here is very rudimentary compared to the Roottrees system. I hate to compare Gumshoe Detective Agency so heavily to a different game, but many people who might play this will almost certainly have played Roottrees first. So - having played Roottrees myself, a lot of the quality of life features that made the internet search mechanic fun and easy to use were very obviously absent from Gumshoe. Roottrees had a history you could use to quickly backtrack through the pages you'd visited, and the notebook included links for passages you'd highlighted so you could go back and see the passage in context. Not so with Gumshoe; there's no history, and navigating away from the internet browser to look at the case file or other evidence resets your progress back to the search engine when you come back. Appa…

I really enjoyed this game that scratched my 90s computer nostalgia itch (special shoutout for the Antonio B. page!). The game is fairly short - it took me just over an hour and a half to complete, but I had a blast. It was slightly challenging but not frustrating - I'd classify it as more of a relaxing mystery game. Regarding the comparison to Nancy Drew games, I'm a huge fan of ND games and wouldn't say this is like them other than maybe the digging through articles/documents element. I haven't played Roottrees yet, so I can't comment on that comparison. There are some little things that were mildly inconvenient that other reviewers have mentioned (back button taking all the way back, having to re-enter information/passwords, not being able to move the windows, etc.), but none of them were dealbreakers for me. I would have liked to have had the notepad that was referenced (thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find it), but using an actual notepad and pen worked just fine to keep my notes. The regular price could be a bit high for the length of gameplay, but I had no problem supporting the creator on this one. Hope for more games from them in the future (looks like one mor…

I really enjoyed this game! It scratched some of the itch I've had since playing Roottrees, Hypnospace Outlaw, and Type Help, though it was a shorter experience. The mystery itself was pretty straightforward so I didn't get hung up on any one puzzle for long, it was a nice breezy game to knock out with a cup of coffee on my morning off. For future titles, having resizable windows and a search history function would help a lot but with my handwritten notes I didn't struggle with the UI. Also maybe options to turn off the clicking sound effect, I didn't realize how often I ambiently click on nothing until I had to hear it in the game audio.