The Darkside Detective

The supernatural, humorous, pixel-art adventure The Darkside Detective is currently free, for Windows and Mac, 100% free to keep, in a time-limited Epic Store’s giveaway offer! Grab it while it lasts, because The Darkside Detective normally costs US$14.99.

The Darkside Detective is an indie point-and-click adventure with retro pixel-art visuals, set in Twin Lakes, a fictional city connected to a ghostly mirror version of itself known as “the Darkside.” It was developed by Spooky Doorway and originally released on July 27, 2017.

Some of the city’s criminal activities have a supernatural nature, and Twin Lakes maintains its own (underfunded) division to investigate such cases. The game is well known for its satirical style and for making numerous pop-culture references, including nods to police action films, science fiction, and horror.

Published by Akupara Games and available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Stadia, and Atari VCS, The Darkside Detective was generally well received by critics and even picked up a few awards. It also has hundreds of very positive user reviews on PC game platforms as of this publication. A sequel, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, was released in April 2021.

You can get the game here!

Trailer

About the game

Grab your trench coat, tune your sixth sense and join the Darkside Division as they investigate the outright bizarre, the downright dangerous and the confusing cases of Twin Lakes. Flesh-hungry tentacles, mafian zombies, and the occasional missing sock are no match for The Darkside Detective.

Where cultists crawl, where demons dwell, where the occult… occults? *ahem* That’s where you’ll find Detective Francis McQueen, the lead investigator of the criminally underfunded Darkside Division. When evil darkens the doorsteps of Twin Lakes City – hell, even when it just loiters around shop fronts or hangs out in shady alleyways – he’s there, ready to investigate the cases that nobody else will.

He is The Darkside Detective.

The COMPLETE SEASON ONE collection of this multi award-winning comedic serial adventure sees Detective McQueen and his sidekick, Officer Patrick Dooley, investigating cases plaguing Twin Lakes and its colorful citizens. Point at everything in sight, click around mysterious and eerie locations, and use your wits (or borrow a friend’s) to lay these cases to rest!

Feature List

9 paranormal bite-sized micro cases to investigate around Twin Lakes City, including a Christmas Spectacular Special
At least three jokes
Cutting edge, high definition pixels
One free curse-removal, up to and including mid-level witch hexes
Music from Ben Prunty, the audiomancer behind gems such as Into the Breach, Subnautica, and FTL

The Story

Twin Lakes

Twin Lakes is just like any other American city – mean streets, twenty-four hour diners, transdimensional doorways… wait, no. No, that last thing isn’t right. It is, in fact, far from right. But it is common in Twin Lakes.

Something is wrong in the city, an evil exists here, overlapped but out of sync with the world as we know it. A place that shouldn’t exist, but does. A place that goes unwritten about in their papers, full of things that go unjudged in their courts. A place that Lonely Planet described as “Indescribable.”

When flesh-hungry tentacles rise from the sewers, when the moon shines extra red, and when one sock goes missing from the dryer, you can bet that somehow the Darkside is involved…

The Darkside Division

You might ask how a city operates when the forces of evil are around every corner and in every coffee shop (hogging the nice window seats and bathroom stalls right when you need them). Well, ignorance is bliss and the people of Twin Lakes are pretty blissful. Most don’t even believe anything strange is going-on.

But thanks to people like Police Chief Scully and Detective McQueen there are a few precautions against the darkness – occult items are banned, vampires are on a no-fly list and there is the Darkside Division, the two-man operation responsible for enforcing the more esoteric rules of Twin Lakes and investigates strange goings-on across the city.

McQueen and his sidekick Officer Dooley are, for better or worse, the first and last line of defence against things that go bump in the night (things that go bump during the day are the jurisdiction of another department).

References

As mentioned, The Darkside Detective is packed with clear cultural references. Here are the ones we were able to identify:

Die Hard — Directly parodied in the case Buy Hard.
Murder on the Orient Express — Referenced in the title Disorient Express.
Twin Peaks — Twin Lakes itself may be a nod to Twin Peaks. Its atmosphere, humor, oddities, and the investigation of such oddities echo this bizarre (but great) series.
Scully (The X-Files) — McQueen’s boss is named Scully, probably an explicit homage to the overall also great The X-Files.
Krampus, the Central European Christmas figure representing the dark opposite of Santa Claus.
Gremlins, referenced through the kids turning into green little monsters at the mall.
HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) — BETI’s design, especially the iconic red lens, evokes HAL 9000.
Home Alone — Tome Alone is a straightforward pun on Home Alone.
Alice in Wonderland — Malice in Wonderland is a direct nod to Lewis Carroll’s classic.
SETI and sci-fi themes about searching for alien signals — also one of the Wonders of the World in Civilization and Civilization II :p
Loch Ness Monster — The Loch Mess case parodies the Nessie legend, complete with paranormal conspiracy flavor and a touch of British humor (including the name “Nigel”).
Sensationalist reporters — Dick Brickman is a walking parody of tabloid journalists, echoing figures like Geraldo Rivera.
Zombie mafia films — The undead mobsters recall 80s horror mixed with mafia tropes. The case name Don of the Dead is a clear parody of George A. Romero’s seminal series.
The Monkey’s Paw — Direct reference to the classic cautionary tale about cursed wishes.
Osiris and Egyptian mythology, featured in the heist involving a resurrection jewel.
Urban legends of alligators in sewers, a long-running American myth.
Tales from the Darkside — The game’s title itself seems to allude to the classic 80s horror series, which featured short stories of terror and the supernatural involving “the other side.” There’s even a Stephen King episode, “Word Processor of the Gods” (Season 1, Episode 8, 1984).
Poltergeist — The Polterguys case nods to Poltergeist and other haunted-house stories, including a spirit trapped inside a VHS tape.
The “Indian Burial Ground” trope, common in haunted-house fiction like Poltergeist, Pet Sematary, and The Shining.
Genies/Jinn, blending Aladdin-style wish tales with satire about poorly phrased wishes.
FedEx, transformed into the extradimensional parody “Fed-Xtra Dimensional.”
Bates Motel, directly referenced through a pun on the iconic Psycho setting.
Bodybuilding werewolves, satirizing both classic monster lore and fitness culture.
Chupacabra, the well-known Latin American cryptid.