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

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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:

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.

Thematic and technical bugs

Though I said that I can appreciate the less heavy-handed approach to story-telling, I felt like it didn't do enough service to the themes that the game tries to tackle, which, for a point-and-click 8-bit adventure about solving mysteries, is actually a lot.

The first half of the game already has you committing potential crimes for the sake of a greater good, or otherwise working with chaotic neutral characters that fall on the ambiguous side of the law. The morality of taking on seedy jobs is already one thing to think about, until the second half of the game rolls around. To provide some brief context, the second half of the game starts Amira solving a crime involving the murder of an unnamed woman, and revolves more heavily around the ethics of technological progress and the legacy of humankind. 

(Side note: No matter which route you take, most of the game's second half stays consistent, which was a bit grating as I played through the multiple routes trying to get different endings.)

It certainly is a lot to think about, but the short runtime of the game's second half doesn't give you enough time to properly process it, especially since you're still hopping from city to city trying to solve a mystery, and because the final villain doesn't reveal themselves until the end, leaving you little time and little evidence to understand and rationalise their motivations. That's not to mention all the other things going on in the background, like surveillance and the unfettered capitalism, though to be fair, the game doesn't really develop into those by choice, otherwise playtime would likely double.

I will admit, at least, that while it tries to tackle heavy themes, it rarely ever felt obnoxious. I couldn't chalk up the reason why; perhaps it's the focus on mystery-solving rather than philosophical pondering, or because the game doesn't really push any answer or agenda to the questions it presents, only urging that you think about them.

Aside from the thematic bugs, though, the game is full of actual technical bugs too. Though I concede that the pre-release version I played wasn't the final build pushed to release, there were a good amount of bugs that at best, took away the polish of the game, and at worst, made me restart an entire case. Dialogue sometimes didn't match what the subtitles were saying, I had to play the entire second half of my first playthrough with just BGM and sound effects because voices broke, audio mixing for character voices was inconsistent at times and at one point, the sprites were just walking backwards (that one, I have to admit, was pretty funny).

But the most annoying bugs were the ones that required me to restart an entire case. One of them included a location not loading properly, resulting in a black screen, and another one included looping dialogue. Both of these bugs, in separate instances, occurred in the final case of the game and having to redo it took me out of the immersion, which doesn't jive with the fact that you can only save in between and at the end of cases.

I can't speak for whether the bugs are commonplace or whether a magical last-minute patch fixed these before release, but they definitely were a disappointment in a game that, visually at least, looked very pretty.

Conclusion

Chinatown Detective Agency was a more ambitious game than I anticipated. While it may falter on some of the themes it presents, and while the Googling and trivia aspect of investigation will turn off some players looking for a more traditional experience of solving mysteries, the three different routes were still compelling enough that I played through each of them once. And while the second half of the game takes quite the philosophical and rather dark turn, it was still engaging for me, even if I had to play it three times.

The numerous bugs were unfortunate though, and I can only hope that they get fixed over time if any of them made it to the final release. In fact, if a remastered version of Chinatown Detective Agency gets released with more clients to take on, more cities to visit, and the assurance that most of the quality control issues are fixed, I'd be interested. Overall, for an indie developer that's only published a single game prior to this release, it's a good start.

There is one more thing I want to address, and that is its depiction of Singapore to a global audience. Representation was an important part of the game's creation process, at least according to this tweet by the game's creative director Mark Fillon. On the whole, the game does a good job of portraying Singapore without harping on the stereotypical 'exotic' characteristics like the ban on selling bubblegum. It's hard to convey, but suffice it to say, the game's Singapore did feel familiar, even with all the corruption and capitalism. (As for the other cities in the game, it's hard to say, as you don't spend much time in them as you do in Singapore.)

Chinatown Detective Agency is available on Steam now for S$22, as well as on Nintendo Switch and Xbox for US$24.99 (it's also on Game Pass for the latter). Average playtime from start to finish is about seven hours, which, unless you're planning to play all three routes, is a little underwhelming considering the price, along with any potential bugs that may have made to its release. If you're curious about what the game thinks Singapore will look like in the future, or if you're just really into the idea of trivia detectives, it might be worth it to try out.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.