Gumshoe Detective Agency: The First Case

I expected to enjoy this game because I liked The Roottrees are Dead and the concept is similar, but mechanically it so badly falls short that I couldn't keep playing after 20 minutes.

First, the interface UX is bad. There is no copy and paste functionality, which would be very useful for the basic mechanic of finding keywords in web pages and then searching for them. There are multiple problems with the window management emulation. If multiple windows are opened, it seems to be impossible to change which one is in front, making moving or cross-referencing information between windows difficult. Moving and resizing windows also works badly: I somehow managed to pin the notepad to the top-left corner, and I couldn't find a way to dislodge it, and when I tried to resize it, the size changed wildly, with the corner I was moving often nowhere near the mouse pointer. The notepad also has a text input issue: when it is closed and reopened, the cursor is moved to the beginning of the text and cannot be moved, making it impossible to append to existing text. I also fairly quickly encountered a bug that caused text input to stop working entirely, and I had to close and relaunch the game to restore it.

Second, the game was missing what I consider to be basic investigation QOL that I would expect in a game like this. Most importantly, I didn't see a list of previously executed searches and previously visited pages, which would be used to recall previously-discovered information. There is also no way to directly execute a search from a webpage or other text, such as by highlighting the text and right clicking to search for that text. Instead, with the previously mentioned lack of copy/paste functionality and useless notepad, in order to revisit a page you need to remember the relevant search term (and how it's spelled), manually type it in, and follow the relevant hyperlink sequence again to reach the desired page. Puzzles also don't seem to stay solved: after I unlocked the diary, the next time I opened it it was locked again, and I had to remember and manually type in the answers again.

This was a gigantic disappointment.

Gumshoe Detective Agency is clearly inspired by The Roottrees are Dead but fails to understand many of the aspects that makes it actually umm..... good.

So lets go through them.

First U.I, the roottrees has a plain text editor notes app that allows you to copy any text into it and I believe in the remaster search through highlighting making it easy to search for items that have differcult spellings. It also would occasionally prompt you if you were on the right track but were missing something. for instance in the tutorial of roottrees one of the first puzzles is finding out a characters actually first name. Putting in there given name gives you a hint instead. This game to the best of my knowledge does not have a notes app despite the instructions clearly referencing one. If it does exist I apoligize. There were several times were this became frustrating as I would have to search things multiple times do to slight spelling errors. wow copy and paste would help there.

Of the various pages you had to unlock through a password several of them required you to login every single time. which was annoying and janky especially because it was not consistant. Some puzzles like the shape one seemed incomplete or at least the logic was not as tight as the game designer assumed it was. Maybe thats player error on my part but I'm usually pretty good at those kinds of logic games.

One of the amazing things about The Roottrees is its expansiveness not only do you have this giant corkboard to discover but the number of prompts you can type in are well staggering. The first time I played it I spent the first 20 minutes reading around an ad campaign for a chocolate bar and sitcoms from the 80s and you would think that this is just pointless fluff but no. The way the game is written and designed these seemingly disparate details do fit into the mix. They are relavant you just don't have the context yet. In Gumshoe there is a lot left on the table. Somethings can be searched up like the 'white gull cafe' and yet others can't what is relavant to the story and what isn't honestly feels kinda arbitrary and I didn't feel good exploring. The whole mystery in general is quite linear, very short, and not particular clever. This isn't a game where you really have to think about the mystery. Its a lot more like I was taking a Lexile Quiz at the end for reading comprehension. Which as a Roottree-lIke is not a good thing.

The ending segments of these games should take time to figure out. another inspired game 'a case of fraud' (2025) does this well. is the story as deep as roottrees ... no. but it took pondering the evidence it felt like an actually puzzle that I had to break down and consider. This game does not require that. It gives you a few soft ball puzzles to solve, (here I mean literally one of them is a slider puzzle), writes the barest bones of a story and calls it a day.

It feels really cheap from the graphics to the story to the art assets, which they have not listed as A.I Generated and I know that can be a bit of a witch hunt but the paintings that are used as character portraits in this game are done in a style thats popular in generative AI models. I'm not trying to be a 'wokescold' or something but as a consumer I would like to make an informed choice when I buy a product and something like that gives me pause. I'm not going to buy a game if I suspect its using AI assets and so it benefits the developer if there upfront and transparent about ther artistic process. especially if an asset feels incongruent with the rest of the artistic direction of the game.

Overall this game is way overprice for what you get, which is a bare bones story and maybe 1.5 hours of gameplay if were being generious. It lacks a lot of the actually puzzle mechanics that makes the genre enjoyable and the narrative itself lacks the conplexity that more story-driven players can enjoy. There are not deep character here but there is a cute dog. They bring him up a lot.

Also this is a nitpick but the game is inconsistant on the name of the main character. In different sources he is listed as either Chris or Michael Karadec and no you can't look up either of those names.

While I did enjoy this game, with just over 90 minutes of playtime and no replay value, the list price is just too high. It's unfortunate timing for Gumshoe Detective Agency that The Roottrees Are Dead released this year with top-notch UI, hours more content, and inside jokes that rewarded searching the wildest tangents. I hope this developer continues to work on this concept and expand their skills because I do believe the audience for this type of game exists and is hungry for more.