If you know me, you know I like my P&C Adventures with big pixels. The Darkside Detective fully delivers on that part. Although it uses high-res lighting on many screens, this doesn't detract from the overall nice chunky look of the game. The character design is fittingly simple, and the background art is full of nice little details and pixel-art renditions of pop-culture items to draw your eye to.

Gameplay wise it differs from traditional P&Cs by having static scenes (no character movement, except when scripted) with some idle animations going on. You interact with the world and solve puzzles by either clicking hotspots, or dragging your inventory items on them. This is a clear diversion from the traditional formula, but it didn't make me enjoy the game less.

The puzzles are mostly logical, and very seldom require "moon-logic" to solve. Even in the instances, where it seems so, there are usually clues provided in either dialogue or item descriptions, sometimes both. There were only very few times, where I had to resort to the old "everything with everything" method.

The cases themselves are nice, mostly self-contained plotlines that are full to the brim with pop-culture references, little in-jokes to past cases, and so on. The writing is nothing special, but I found it very enjoyable overall.

All in all I very enjoyed this game, and can't wait for the 2020 release of season 2.

Recommended to everyone, who loves pixel-art and slightly lovecraftian mystery stories.