Francis McQueen is a police detective. But not an ordinary police detective. No, he investigates cases of a paranormal nature. The mysterious cases, the odd cases, the cases the other detectives won't touch with a ten-foot pole, because they don't bring any accolades, even for a mayors husband, and are more than likely to chew your face off. McQueen is the Darkside detective, who is given, or who more or less stumbles upon, the cases that are of the odd nature. Together with his partner Patrick Dooley, he solves the unsolvable and untangles the tangled tethers between two realities.
The Darkside Detective has McQueen and Dooley solving 6 different cases with no overlapping story. You could call it a paranormal procedural game, in which each episode takes you to a different crime and location, but which still can have some familiar faces among the people you see. After solving the 6 main cases, you can tackle 3 additional cases, so there are actually 9 cases with varying length and difficulty.
The first case, Malice in Wonderland, has McQueen and Dooley solving a case of a missing kid. She has gone missing from her home and it doesn't take long for McQueen to figure out that she's been taken to the Darkside, from where she needs to be rescued.
When Dooley wanted to return his library books, McQueen decided to tackle along, only to get involved in the case of Tome Alone. Supernatural forces have taken root in the local library and that's not a good thing.
Dooley brings McQueen on another when he finds that the subway is closed. It seems that a Darkside portal has opened up on the tracks and the Darkside and the Lightside trains have witched places. Now there are ghosts in the world of the living and living in the world of the ghosts, so something has to be done about it in the case of Disorient Express.
Office McNugget is having a retirement party, to which all the officers, including Dooley and McQueen, have been invited. It's not a good start for the party in Police Farce when McQueen notices the pile of burning presents. Lo and behold, there are gremlins on the loose at the station. Hijinks ensue when McQueen hurries to save the station from collapsing.
Loch Mess is a case, where McQueen is looking for Dooley, who has gone missing while leading his scout group. Monsters, mobsters, deranged parents or something else entirely, you find out.
Chief Scully summons everyone to take care of the riots spreading in the city. When Dooley and McQueen arrive at their assigned locations in the case of the Don of the Dead, they soon notice a common nominator in the form of zombies. It's bad practice to have zombies infesting the city, so they need to find out what in the world is going on.
The first of the bonus cases is Buy Hard, which is set during the hectic Christmas season. McQueen is accompanying Dooley, who is doing some last moment present shopping when it turns out that the mall Santa is actually Krampus, who has turned the kids into gnomes.
Polterguys is the shortest story of the game. McQueen is visiting Dooley's sister for dinner when he notices the poltergeist haunting her TV. Like any good guest, McQueen decides to perform an exorcism on the haunted TV.
McQueen decides to take Dooley on a road trip for his birthday, but they end up winding up in a case of a mysterious sand storm in Baits Motel. What exciting secret has caused the storm? Does the rude motel keeper have anything to do with it? Or maybe it's the carnies.
As you might have guessed, The Darkside Detective is not a serious game. It's a heavily tongue in the cheek comedy about a detective, who solves supernatural cases with rather unconventional means. The puzzles are mostly rather simple and require you to try using everything in everything. Luckily there's a limited amount of items you can have in any given story, so it's not as overwhelming game mechanics as it sounds.
Graphically The Darkside Detective is formed from very chunky pixel art. The art is crisp and clear, so it doesn't really look half bad. While it is a point and click game, the characters themselves don't move on the screen. McQueen and Dooley stand on one spot of the screen while you point and click everything you see worth pointing and clicking at. you can also use items on chunky pixels on screen as well as use chunkily pixelated inventory items on other inventory items. So it's a pretty standard fare as far point and click games go.
How much you'll enjoy, and perhaps even tolerate the gameplay, hangs almost solely on how much you like the style of humour The Darkside Detective has. It's not a greatly designed game as far as the gameplay or the puzzles go, but if you enjoy the chuckles it has on offer and the atmosphere of the strange cases at hand, then it is a game well worth playing at least once.
The Darkside Detective can be enjoyed in small or big doses on most platforms out there. For PC, you can get it from GOG and Steam at least. It has a sequel as well, so there's more of it around, if you want it.
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