It has been a few years since Spooky Doorway released the first Darkside Detective game, but after playing through Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, the first game felt more like a sample of what they could offer. Don’t get me wrong, the first game was full of funny commentary and a proper introduction to the paranormal that plagues Twin Lakes city, but this new title has more complicated cases, even more scenes with the paranormal activity, and is just overall more entertaining than the first one!

Story

Take on the role of Detective McQueen again as he goes through six new cases within the 34th most haunted city, Twin Lakes. Each case presents its own story, locations, and troubles to conclude.

Gameplay

This is another game with a classic point-and-click gameplay style. There are no movement controls and everything you do can be done with just your mouse, or controller since there is gamepad support. If you want to investigate something in the current scene, you click on it. Investigating items will lead to either commentary, dialogue, and/or collection of an item to use in your puzzle-solving. Changing scenes is also just as easy as clicking on the direction you want to go. Typically it is by moving the mouse to the far side of the screen you want to go towards, but sometimes you will need to click on pathways and doorways to go inwards rather than left or right.

Sometimes items need to be combined to be used for their intended purpose. To do this, simply drag the item over the item you want to combine it with and a new item will be made. If it is an incorrect combination, a comment will be made by McQueen to let you know it is wrong. To use an item with something or someone in the scene you are in, the process is the same. Drag the item to where you want it to interact with and if correct it will work, but if not then a comment will be made by McQueen.

You will need to think outside the box for most of the combinations and puzzle-solving steps, so be ready to think a bit differently from the logical world we live in. Don’t worry, there are a few comments made in the game that point out the issues with the lack of logic and it really adds to the humor.

Visual

Despite being a pixelated world, there is a lot of detail provided in each scene. The environment is filled with different aspects that pull it all together and everything is able to be known for what it is by looking at it. Definitely not your usual, low-detailed pixelated graphics.

Sounds

Each case and certain areas get their own music to bring it to life, but since there isn’t movement, ther e isn’t a lot of sound effects. The music choices are very fitting and the sound effects used for cutscenes and item interactions are fitting as well, though.

Replayability

There are a few hidden aspects to each case for players to find. Typically these are easter eggs and little comedy bits. As far as solving the cases though, the puzzles themselves will always be the same as they were the first time through.

What Could Be Better

They increased the difficulty of solving their cases, which is definitely a good thing, but they didn’t include a hint system. There were definitely times that I would have appreciated a quick hint to help me understand what it is I was looking for or supposed to do next. When you make players think outside the box, there should be a way to guide them through the steps when they get stuck. Even if the hint system was limited, such as only have one or two hints per case, that would have been enough.

Conclusion

Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark is a comedy-filled spookfest! It has entertaining atmospheres, comedic moments, paranormal cases, and plenty of puzzles that really get you to see things differently. Even as they kept the game to a simplistic nature graphically, they brought their characters and strange moments to life. Definitely an amazing step forward from the first title in the series and I hope it won’t be their last!