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Chinatown Detective Agency (PC) review: A trivia detective in a bleak world

By Glenn Chua - 9 Apr 2022

Gameplay, and the world of CDA

Image: General Interactive Co.

Wow, Singapore has changed quite a bit.

Chinatown Detective Agency is a point-and-click mystery adventure game, where you play as a private detective in a bleak 2037. A collapsing global economy has reached a new low, and technological progress, along with the ambitions of private entities have eclipsed things like workers’ rights and privacy in priorities. But it’s not just any futuristic setting– you get to see all of it, a world on the brink, unfold in good ol’ Singapore!

Yes, the game is set in Singapore, with local actors voicing Singaporean characters. But that’s not the only place you’re allowed to visit, as there’s a whole list of cities that you’ll have to visit for different clients. But I’m getting ahead of myself; between the futuristic setting, the themes which the game tries to tackle (of which there are a lot), and the ups and downs of gameplay, there’s a bit to talk about here for such a small game.

 

Carmen Sandiego, now with Google

Image: General Interactive Co.

Right off the bat, the game’s 8-bit aesthetic makes itself apparent. Indeed, the game takes heavy inspiration from educational games of old, especially Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a game where, similarly to CDA, you’re tasked to investigate, collect clues and travel an 8-bit world.

But Chinatown Detective Agency has a radically different setting. You play as Amira Darma, a former Singapore Police Force (SPF) officer turned PI, based in a dingy office in Chinatown. The game’s first half sees you taking on primarily three clients: Rupert Zhou a man connected to Singapore’s elite, Tiger Lily a health bar proprietor who pulls the strings of some of Singapore’s most powerful, and Keenan Iyer, a fiery anti-corruption official at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. 

While you get to work with all three as a taster of sorts, later down the line you’ll be forced to pick one to work with full-time, which can affect who you hire as your partner later as well as the game’s ending. In general, you’ll get to experience different facets of the game’s setting through each of the routes; for example, Keenan’s route will have you rubbing shoulders with the world’s elite, while taking Rupert as a client will have you commit ‘steal the rich and give to the poor’ theft.

The investigation aspect of the game, however, isn’t what you would typically expect in other detective games like L.A Noire. Instead of interviewing witnesses and deciphering lies from truth, pertinent clues are just presented to you, and the investigation part comes from real-world research (i.e. Googling) in order to provide context for clues. There’s even a handy ‘Web’ button at the bottom bar that opens up a search browser.

It's a decent and sometimes fun mechanic that has you, the player, learning about things like ancient mythology and classical literature, though this may seem like a big compromise for those expecting more cop-like sleuthing. If you want a balance of Googling and traditional puzzle-solving, there’s a good amount of code-breaking and pattern recognition puzzles involved, but otherwise, you might want to look elsewhere if you're not entertained with being quizzed.

Better brush up on your French wine knowledge. This list of wines is an example of how you're supposed to work with clues rather than find them outright.

But just because you have the clues doesn’t mean that the answer is just a Google search away. Some of the puzzles involving general knowledge required more intensive research than I expected, and to illustrate this, at the risk of spoiling this particular puzzle, let me ask you this:

Do you know how the Sumerian number system works?

Luckily enough, though, the game does have a hint system, in the form of peppy librarian Mei Ting, who incidentally is one of the last human librarians in the world.

There are other aspects of the game as well, though they don’t make up much of the playtime, and range between being unimportant to downright annoying. The game, both in its description and through Amira, makes a fuss about earning a paycheck and paying rent to keep your office running. But as most cases will only see you spend, at most, above $1000 or so while earning back at least five times that amount, there’s no way to get broke unless you deliberately spend all your early-game money.

The game's flight booking system, HORUS, allows you to travel the world, and will likely be the biggest money drainer, which isn't saying a lot.

There’s also a shootout section of the game, where you can either kill or subdue a target. The game does urge you to take action before a timer runs out, but between the relatively slow timer and the ease of aiming (at least on PC), I never really found these sections to be urgent. It's still something to note, though, as it's the most action-filled part of this otherwise slow-paced game.

What a shootout looks like in CDA.

The most annoying gameplay mechanic for me, though, would probably be the hacking sections. The hacking minigame is essentially a matching tiles game, where you have to match six pairs of tiles to break in. Because there's a limited amount of guesses you can make, though, and there's not really any way to get hints for it, it's always a pure guessing game, with some memorisation of the tiles required, which doesn't particularly feel very detective-y.

Finally, saving is something to take note of. The game doesn't allow you to save in the middle of cases, only in between, along with auto-saving at the end of cases. While this does prevent going back to a specific savepoint and changing a dialogue choice,some of which do change the outcome of the game, for example, it does get annoying when you meet the occasional game-breaking bug (which we'll talk about in the next page). It's also worth noting that there are a limited number of autosave slots, so for important moments like picking which client to work with full time, you might want to do a manual save, lest you have to play through the game's introductory phase again.

 

A Beautiful, Dystopian World

Aside from the investigation aspect of the game though, one of the more exciting parts of Chinatown Detective Agency is just zipping around the futuristic setting, finding tidbits about how the world has progressed since our present time, and just seeing how different places in both Singapore and the world have evolved. Even through its pixelised style, there's a sheer beauty that comes from each location.

For example, here's Athens in the evening, a combination of old-world architecture and new-world surveillance drones, punctuated by the Pantheon in the distance:

Looking good, minus the security drones.

Unfortunately, though, the UI you're seeing on the side and bottom is always there. And while these sights are really pretty, for most of the cities, you're restricted to staring at just that one pixel art, as extensive free roam is only relegated to Singapore. Which is why, for me, the most captivating part of the game's setting was Singapore itself. The game's main way of getting around Singapore is the (now privatised) MRT, which allows you to see how the different towns of the country have changed. For example, take a look at Chinatown itself, now a street of neon lights:

Behold, the Chinatown of the 2030s.

If you live in the east, you're in for a treat, too, as most of the game's accessible Singapore locations in are in the city and along the eastern half of the East-West Line. If you're a westie, though, the only two places traditionally considered 'West Singapore' that you can visit are Tuas and Bukit Timah. Though, bewilderingly, the latter is located in the northeast:

Not sure why it's there.

I should stop myself this review becomes a gallery, but exploration should be something on your list, should you decide to pick the game up. This is especially because some locations aren't mandatory to visit, meaning you'll never see them if you strictly follow the game's beaten path. Each location in Singapore, as well as each global city in the game, also has a helpful 'Info' icon that gives a brief rundown on the location's history, as well as a timeline of important events, which is a nice touch that adds to the educational aspect of the game.

As for the rest of the setting though, the game never really goes out of the way to explain how the world got this way, or why certain events are happening. For example, in the background of the game, a global strike is occurring, and while its effects are felt in Singapore (and you briefly work with a union member), it's never explained how it got this way. Similarly, hints of what has happened in the past 15 years in Singapore are given, but never elaborated upon; entities like the MRT and National Providence Fund (the game's equivalent to the CPF, presumably), are being bought up by private companies after a so-called 'Deregulation', which we're never given the full backstory of how and why.

On one hand, I can understand this understated approach to story-telling. Much of the game is centred around solving mysteries, and having it be hampered by exposition and blocks of text about how the world is failing would take you right out of it, so keeping it this way was probably the more prudent choice. On the other hand, I just really want to know how the world got to this state. While the 'corporate-overlord-anarchy' trope is one that's well-used in futuristic fiction, I'm interested to see how it plays out in the game's version of Singapore, at least.

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6.5
  • Playability 7
  • Graphics 8
  • Sound 6.5
  • Addictiveness 6
The Good
Real-world research and general knowledge is an interesting gameplay angle
Pixel art looks really good
Singapore was nicely portrayed
The Bad
Other gameplay mechanics like budgeting and hacking didn't really add much to the game
Buggy with some QC issues, especially in the second half
Writing in the second half didn't explore the themes it presented as much as I wanted it to
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