Gamedec Review (PC)

I leap to get to a graveyard, where a player is expecting my first deductions on weird issues plaguing players inside a game called Harvest Time. I get waylaid by the sheriff, who I sweet talk into giving me another job, dealing with an Outlaw. But both of those are in the future.

For now, I plan to spend the next ten minutes working on my virtual farm, trying to get the money for a cow. And then I will get a gun and see whether I can kill the Outlaw and solve all this game’s problems with one well-placed narrative bullet.

And this is one of the less weird video games that my character is exploring, trying to deal with a range of problems that modern gamers might find familiar and some much weirder ones. My detective is unconventional and brusque but he gets the job done and that’s what his clients appreciate.

Gamedec is developed by Anshar Studios and published by Anshar Publishing. I played on the PC using Steam and it is also offered on the Nintendo Switch. This is a text-driven adventure game that creates an intriguing vision of how crime might affect video games in the near future, especially if virtual reality becomes incredibly popular.

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The player takes on the role of the gamedec from the title, a detective that specializes in dealing with cases in virtual reality. In this version of the future, a lot of people spend more time and do more important things in VR and, naturally, crime has also moved to this new medium.

There are troll wars, attempts to kidnap avatars and plenty of hacks. And some users are doing in VR stuff that they would be unable to get away with in the real world. The gamedec that players control will need to have solid tech skills in the virtual space and decent social abilities in the real one to solve cases.

The narrative of Gamedec starts off a little slow, with little in the way of connections between the first few cases, but a big theme eventually pops up. It offers a new way of looking at issues that are already affecting our society and presents a pretty bleak version of the future.

The game focuses too much on developing an internal lingo to anchor the experience in a futuristic space, which leads to some awkwardness in conversation and constant consultation of the built-in wiki. And there are some conversations that don’t flow in a very natural way. But the writing does a good job of hinting at the interior life of the protagonist and manages to quickly sketch believable other characters.

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Gameplay in Gamedec is centered on conversations and exploration. The player character has no combat skills in the real world (there are some violent confrontations in the visited VR spaces). A conversation kicks off a case and then it’s all about finding clues, talking, making deductions, and settling on one solution.

It’s impossible to get all the info about the cases and the game emphasizes the tension inherent in working with incomplete info. The Gamedec can fail to understand what he is dealing with and how characters are affected and then end a case with a solution that satisfies no one and negatively affects our protagonist.

Based on dialog choices, gamers will get four types of emotional upgrade points. These open up various specializations that in turn activate new ways to interact with characters and extract more information. An extensive encyclopedia allows players to see details about the world and create connections between the various hints they uncover.

I appreciate the variety of featured virtual worlds: Harvest Time is a Farmville in VR concept, complete with “yeehaw” and the option to work on your own farm; Twisted & Perverted is the seedy underbelly of the future, with people acting edgy and adopting a punk aesthetic; Knight’s Code is all about Japan and a more classic MMO approach. The player only sees small areas of these worlds but they represent well throughout extensions of already existing trends in gaming.

The biggest issue with Gamedec is one it shares with the entire adventure game genre: getting to a solution, even an imperfect one, often requires a weird and apparently illogical sequence of interactions and events. The game does not have a hint system but there are walkthroughs that will allow players to push forward when stuck.

Despite the limitations of its gameplay, the game does a great job of imagining a plausible and slightly scary future. VR adoption in the real world is not as high as in this game but we might get there someday. A certain breed of criminal will be willing to target players and exploit their favorite pastimes to rob or hurt them. It might not take too long before Gamedecs, using a more attractive name, become a necessary reality.

Gamedec is pretty and bright, especially for a cyberpunk adventure. It nails the visual identity of its various virtual reality worlds, while also using its presentation to comment on their nature and mechanics. The spaces sometimes feel a little cramped and a small number of characters have a clear visual identity. The game is not fully voiced, but that allows players to focus on the written word rather than be distracted, and the rest of the sound design is also decent.

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The Good

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