It’s interesting to consider how the role-playing genre has evolved over the years, shifting expectations around what one can expect from an RPG. Today, an RPG typically consists of a relatively large fantasy or sci-fi world, a deep story, and a combat system that relies heavily on various numerical values. Gamedec—A new release from Polish developer Anshar Studios — more or less hits those first two stats, but no battle points or stats to speak of here. For some, this lack of focus on gameplay can be a drawback, but we encourage you to give it a try anyway. There is a fascinating world to enter here if you have the right mindset.
Gamedec puts you in the role of Gamedec of the same name – a ‘game detective’ – who conducts various cases tracking missing people, solving murders, etc. All these cases are based on the author. The work of Marcin Przybyłek, a Polish author who wrote five-a collection of original short stories set in a technologically advanced universe. Each case lets you jump between Realium (real world) and different digital games — like a cute game Harvest Moon—Using a special chair that can channel one’s mind into the game.
While character development is kept to a minimum, it’s quite enjoyable to immerse yourself in the nuances of each story and take in the various larger-than-life personalities you come across. Plus, each case has a lot of interesting twists and turns as you dive deeper into the investigation and start rocking the wrong trees. All of this is wrapped up in one player-driven story — the choices you make in the investigation will affect the outcome of the investigation, and there’s really no way to ‘lose’, even when you repeatedly fail to put all the important pieces together.
So those who love short story collections (like the source material on which it is based) will find a lot to love here. While a better, overarching plot eventually comes into play, each mini-story tackles compelling topics like transhumanism in simple ways that make each subplot feel like it has something worthwhile to add to the overall experience. In a world where the line between reality and fantasy is so blurred, there’s plenty of room to tell interesting stories; Gamedec did a great job of taking full advantage of its premise. It’s nothing revolutionary and there isn’t anything here that can really blow you away, but we found ourselves enthralled by many of these stories.
One small issue we’ve noticed here and there, is that it sometimes feels like the script isn’t written with player-controlled choices in mind. Perhaps the NPC responds with a statement that clearly doesn’t make sense to what your character just said, or maybe they’re talking about a character or event you haven’t discovered as if you had. Narrative logic glitches like this don’t necessarily ruin the experience, but they do take you out of it sometimes—the script feels like it could use some tightening.
Gameplay can be likened to classic point and click adventure game, as each case revolves around you talking to the NPC, examining the environment, and slowly building up a list of key clues and insights that you then use to deduce what happened. Each case is divided into several segments where you are trying to answer a central question, and there are usually several potential answers you can choose from for each question. You can guess the answer at any point, but it’s a good idea to take your time gathering as much information as possible to make an informed decision, as you can’t get your deductions back once you’ve done so. close it — the story then advances and moves on to the next segment of the case.
In each part of a case, much of your success will depend on how effectively you can navigate the conversation to get the information you want from the witnesses. Not everyone likes gamedec or is willing to talk about what they know, and this tension is shown in some conversations by a simple bar that fills up depending on the question you ask and the answer you give. . of them questions. If the person likes you enough, the bar will fill up one way and you can unlock a piece of important or syndicated information easily into the location you’re trying to hack.
We appreciate this slight focus on performance during interrogations, as it forces you to pay attention to how you interact with each NPC as you put yourself in their shoes and provide them with answers. words they want to hear. More importantly, it gives conversations real stakes when you don’t just roughly force dialogue trees — so to speak. Mistake and ask that person to permanently close the door to you. This may mean that you will find out any potential clues or insights they may have provided, and although you can still make inferences without them, you never will. know what information may have influenced your decision.
To give you a greater sense of progress and increase your odds of successful information extraction, there is a whole ‘work’ system that works to expand your character portfolio. Your characters can be influencers, a hacker or a thief, and each character corresponds to exclusive dialogue choices in the chats that make it easier for you to pass. For example, you can go through a long conversation with someone hoping to convince them to give you the safe code, or you can use the “Sleeve” (Thief) dialogue option on the safe. to break in on your own.
All jobs are connected through a tree, and you unlock new ones using the color-coded personality points you earn in chat. For example, a strong answer to a neutral question will likely give you a red point, while a healthier answer will give you a green score. Each job will cost a certain amount of points to unlock, but the downside of it is that the jobs are additive. You can feasibly unlock entire trees if you are strategic in how you harvest points — so benefit from all of dialogue options will grant you — but in most cases you’ll have to be a little more discerning because it’s quite difficult to consistently predict what you might gain from dialogue choices.
We highly recommend this light on the classroom system, as it imbues Gamedec with replayability for future runs while giving you something to look forward to beyond just chasing an audit. investigation or other interrogation. Plus, the variety offered by additional dialogue options helps to make conversations more interesting, as your characters often take on a slightly different personality as they take on a role. of a particular job.
We think it should be said that Gamedec is not a ‘fun’ game like many others. From a raw, moment-by-moment gameplay perspective, you basically just read long walls of text and then go through a few steps to read longer walls of text related to something else. Approach this with the same mindset as one can visual novel is recommended, then; The stories themselves are compelling enough to be worth the effort, but just keep in mind that there’s not much actual “game” going on here. In many ways, it’s more like a self-chosen adventure novel than a typical RPG.
As for the presentation, we are happy to announce that Gamedec has done a great job in conveying the high-tech, low-life themes that are so important to the cyberpunk genre. The model may be simple and the texture is relatively low-key, but every scene is meticulously detailed. Whether you’re searching in the bright apartment of an executive in the High City or scouring the dirty streets in a BDSM MMO, each environment creates an aesthetic and immerses you. in character struggles. Unfortunately, we’ve noticed some graphical glitches here and there, such as occasional and non-existent environmental models. Nothing to break the game, but we would appreciate a little more polish.
Inference
Gamedec is the kind of game that recalls a much simpler kind of RPG. You won’t find any innovative combat systems or god-killing cases with the power of friendship here – this resembles a point-and-click adventure game with loads of dialogue to overcome. If you’re particularly into science fiction or cyberpunk in its literary form, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here; If you like RPGs to tackle lots of numbers and fight awesome enemies, you won’t find much. If you think Gamedec sounds like your type, we definitely recommend you give it a try. Aside from the occasional graphic glitches and out-of-sequence dialogue, Gamedec has done a great job in achieving what it sets out to do.
