The Case of Arcadia Springs

On a surface it's a "45~minute" investigation game, but it's a bit deceiving, there are several ending, and some of those endings have additional cutscenes, or more content like a hidden area or new interactions, so it's worth playing the game at least 3 to 5 times I would say (maybe even more than that). If you get one of the abrupt endings, you won't really experience the "true narrative", while the plot is seemingly very basic, there are some dark and complex secrets hiding within the game, you kinda have to probe the game and see how you can change the outcome. I would say the game is pretty good, however, there are some superficial design issues that made it worse than it actually is. As I mentioned in the forum, the dialogue boxes were very hard to read in the default view, the text is too small, and the pixel filter made the font very blurry. You can partially mitigate it by turning off the filter in the settings, and honestly I think it makes the game much better overall, makes it easier to find various hints as the game expects you to pay attention to the numbers. If you can ignore the issues with the text, the game and the characters are decently written, it's very pla…

Short detective adventure that rewards thorough exploration and has a charming style, yet awkward design and poor readability undermine it. The game takes place in a world populated by humanoid animals. You follow a fox detective named Dalton whose latest case involves a series of break-ins. Although you prefer working alone, you are paired with an enthusiastic rookie. On top of that, the case was handed to you personally by the mayor, who is also one of the victims, so it is clear from the start that something bigger is at stake. Gameplay revolves around exploring locations and searching for interaction points. These are not marked, but when you approach one, an exclamation point appears. Pressing the interaction button triggers a comment about the hotspot, starts a conversation if it is a character, or opens a close-up view of the area where you can click on individual items with the mouse. Close-up interactions are also unmarked, so you must move the cursor around and watch for it to change into a hand icon. One minor annoyance is that the close-up view jumps between the upper and lower parts of the scene when you move the cursor up or down. Because of this, clicking on a clu…

4/28 update. Finally finished the game and yeah ok I’ll look past all my Rules For Detective games just this once and slap a big real Recommend on it. 11/10 rating. The developers are very talented storytellers and that counts for a lot in my book. 4/21 update. The game was recently updated and it is better by orders of magnitude. After playing Arcadia again for few hours, I’ve gone back and forth on how to update this and I still can’t recommend this game. I don’t want to write a whole long thing complaining about what went wrong here so I’ll just say this: - I know this game will get polished enough that players can actually finish it. - I think the story is very creative and it was interesting enough for me to drop 20 hours working through a lot of bugs and jank to complete it. - I don’t know that the puzzles in the game were well thought out and I think that is a deeper issue. For example, there’s an undisclosed hidden object search and this is a pixelated game. I’m not sure how users are supposed to eyeball suspicious pixels. I only found it by scanning my cursor over the area after I asked the developer what I was missing. Despite my non-recommendation, I don’t wa…

A lovely gem of a game. It always shocks me how humble and intensely creative furry games tend to be. This game is $5! This is an investigative, open-ended game that contains a very charming detective duo, surprisingly rich and adaptive dialogue (being nice to people is good, actually!), a relaxed soundtrack, and layered storytelling. Gameplay wise, most of the time is spent walking around and checking out clues (Professor Layton, anyone?) and talking to your witnesses. Your success will depend heavily on your thoroughness, code-cracking, and checking your in-game notes/contacts via the main character's phone. Do not expect the game to handhold or let you return to areas later! I love the characters here, they're written with intelligence but each have the kind of ":3" energy that make furry characters so fun. You will likely replay it a few times to explore and detect the deepest secrets of Arcadia Springs, and it is very worth it. I would love to see this would explored further, although this game doesn't leave much room for it. That said, I will enthusiastically play any other games that come from this team. My personal rating: 9/10* It's only $5 just buy it already! CR…