
Voodoo Detective 2022: A Rich Story Full Of Whimsy And Intrigue
May 24th, 2022
Short Sleeve Studio, LLC
Monkey Island inspired point-and-click adventure!
A rich story full of whimsy and intrigue!
Hand-drawn backgrounds, animations, and user interface!
High definition graphics!
Prominent voice talent from games and films such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Fallout, Diablo, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Trek, Austin Powers, and many more!
A brilliant soundtrack recorded with live instruments composed by none other than Peter McConnell of Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, and Psychonauts fame!
Voodoo Detective is a fantastic point-and-click adventure game. The game begins in a small island village steeped in rich Voodoo tradition, invaded by big retailers, and infested by wealthy tourists. In a desperate struggle for survival, local color and colonial corruption collide. Against this interesting backdrop, we meet a mystery woman with no past who finds herself at the center of a narrative so profound that the strands of reality threaten to unravel. Join Voodoo Detective on his most recent investigation, where danger lurks behind every dark secret and every thrilling moment could be his last. Put on your fedora and trench coat, detective; you have a mystery to solve!
Voodoo Detective is one of the most delightful adventure games we’ve played, in part because it draws so heavily on classics, and you can tell it’s incredibly self-aware of itself and adventure game clichés. We felt the main character was amusing with his smug and sarcastic remarks, and we couldn’t nitpick any of the speech except for a few minor characters, which, again, is a big feat for any indie game, so we truly appreciate it. The game lasts about 4 to 5 hours if you don’t accept any of the abrupt endings, and there are a few minor variants in the conclusion, but you can acquire both of them from the same save point, so it doesn’t provide much replay value. You may skip the speech and have your character go faster, which cut the playing for us a little short. We enjoyed the characters, and we were never bored following the narrative. As the title suggests, you are a Voodoo Detective, which appears to be his real name, though we are not certain. The game features some undead themes, investigation work, and classic item-combining puzzles, but it does not take its tale seriously.
Without giving too much away, we loved how the Voodoo Detective game got into our point-and-click brains and messed with our genre expectations – sometimes what seems incorrect at first turns out to be another trap. We’d say it’s a game that recognizes its adventure audience, and that not everything has to be done by the book if the end result is enjoyable for the player. Except for two or three slightly convoluted solutions, most of the problems were rather simple, and you sometimes had to exhaust all of the speech, which required retracing between the individuals. It’s not a very logical game because the game makes fun of the genre, which we personally enjoyed. We believe that when people bring up the “not logical game” criticism, it’s not always appropriate if the puzzle itself is intuitive; we believe that if all of the puzzles had to follow a realistic set of rules, this genre would be pretty boring. We’re always up for some inventive puzzles that may employ some goofy solutions, as long as they’re interesting and not too time-consuming. We’d rather have developers do something different with the advancement than have another generic puzzle.
Even if the game does not take itself seriously from the start, we enjoyed Voodoo Detective’s narrative and cared about the characters until the end of the second location. It was fantasy, but it was somewhat grounded, and then it went a little too far for our liking, but the game managed to offer us a relatively gratifying finale. On a more personal note, we are unhappy that we did not get to return the??????? to the chef; we believe it would have been the logical climax of the story, which we did not get to experience.
Voodoo Detective does not look as good as some of the other adventure games in the pricing range for a $15 game, but the settings were fun to explore; we simply think it had some consistency issues – some of the open areas felt a bit too much like filler, although most of the chambers had a lot of detail.
For us in Voodoo Detective, the main character was a big victory since he had fantastic voice acting, was really hilarious, and always had something sardonic to say. We liked the story and the jokes for the most part; we think you lost us a little near the end, but we liked the endings enough not to be disappointed. Lots of point-and-click genre deconstruction; we like that the game recognizes what it is and who is playing it.
We liked that you went very creative with them, with the exception of a few puzzles that didn’t have a good hint, we know people love to bring those “not logical” game arguments, and it’s not a very logical game, but the important thing for us is that we had fun, and some of the solutions were funny as hell.
You can skip the conversation and have the player move faster in Voodoo Detective, however, we occasionally wished for a hotspot sign. We’re also going to give you extra points for the last fight, notably the soul strike animation, which was a little on the nose, don’t you think? Is that a reference to the friend on the other side towards the end?
We couldn’t tell from the trailer whether the game’s aesthetic would be worth the $15 price tag; in fact, we feared the game would be too short. However, aside from a few open backgrounds, we liked the graphics, and there is adequate attention to detail in the smaller places. We’d say 4-5 hours is about average.
A few strange riddles – we’ll only include a few puzzles that didn’t make sense to us in Voodoo Detective. For the grave, it is obvious who you are looking for; however, it is not as clear which combination you actually desire because various solutions are possible. The one with the spoiled drink was a bit odd, so you’ll have to guess that one. We missed the sulphur deposit’s hotspot. The Dune allusion puzzle was also a little strange.
So, up until the conclusion of the second location, our commitment in the story is 100 percent on a certain character, the reason we’re playing the Voodoo Detective game, and then you take it away from us for a different motivation. In the end, you came around, but our desire for playing the third site was diminished as a result. We’re a little surprised we didn’t get to go talk to the ghost together; it seems like it should have been the end of the story.