The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark (2021)

It's basically (much) more of the same as the first. Same kind of humor that will be hit or miss with you. Puzzles are similar (I want to say this one was harder but it's been a while) The 'minigame' puzzles are all pretty good in this (better? I dont really recall much of them in the first) and as far as Graphic Adventure games go, I feel that DD has about done as well as you can do with item-gated puzzles and such to not make it feel too terribly dated or obtuse (It very much helps to break things down in segments or episodes, and the narrative supports this design)

As I mentioned, the (main?) difference I feel here is that the episodes are considerably longer. (The bonus episodes are a bit shorter and easier, too I found... They were also my favorite episodes in the game) I personally liked that, but others my feel differently (as the short playtime of an episode was kind of fun and unique to the format and genre)

Not amazing but I found it worth the 12-13 hours to get through it. Would recommend to those that like the Graphic Adventure genre OR the subject matter OR simply like the humor presented as it is here. (I found this game to be overall less funny/witty than the first, but I thought the thematic structure of each episode was actually a bit more interesting due to the variety. A lot of the writing though was kinda soft in places and that could be due to the game being much longer.) I do feel like the Graphic Adventure/PnC genre is an old one that hasn't aged well and don't really love it or want to play them that often, but games like DD do well to offer a way to scratch the itch time to time by offering something fairly geeky that isn't terribly taxing way to poke and prod things around for a while.

a complete list of jokes that got a laugh/chuckle/nod of appreciation out of me:

• spooky art auction house call Yog-Sothotheby's
• elderly woman in a nursing home swinging from a chandelier who says "I always wanted to try swinging when my husband was alive!"
• every time you visit Dooley's gran's room two more cups of tea and two more sandwiches appear in your inventory
• "duck's capacitor"
• "diarrhouija"
• "wiccapedia"
• a ghost cop car that has legs instead of wheels, briefly viewed "running" in hot pursuit

that's all of them. game is 13 hours long.

This season with the detectives really found its stride. My main complaint with the first game was the puzzle designs being way too easy and obvious. This game totally challenged me. It would take more experimenting and thoughtfulness to solve each case, which vastly improved the experience. They only rarely were illogical, so it really stayed in the sweet spot for point and click puzzle design.

It has a wide variety of locations and events that keeps the game full of surprises. The writing is more consistent too, with really silly but smart dialogue. All together, it’s a game with a solid identity that improves on its predecessors and inspirations.