Developed by Anshar Studios and published by Untold Tales, Gamedec is a brand-new single-player, cyberpunk, isometric detective RPG. Gamedec is a virtual translation of the tabletop RPGs which used text as their main source of gameplay. Apart from plenty of text, Gamedec is also a decision-based title which means that you will be making a lot of decisions in the game to tailor your own gameplay. This is our review of Gamedec on the Nintendo Switch in which we explode a mine and explore some cool virtual worlds to solve various cases.
Gamedec is set in the Warsaw City of the future where people escape into the digital worlds of video games for various activities. The game is divided into two main words, one is called the Realium where reality exists while the second one is called Virtualium which is the digital world of various video games where you enter and solve various cases ranging from murders to finding missing persons. You step into the game as a Gamedec who are private detectives hired by people to enter the video game worlds and solve various cases. Gamedec is a perfect example of how the modern world brings its own modern issues to solve and Gamedecs are a result of these modern issues. With more and more people running into digital worlds, crime is also shifting to these virtual worlds, and it is up to you, Gamedecs, to investigate and solve these crimes.
While the Realium is not too big in the game for you to explore, you will spend most of the time in Virtualias which are the digital worlds of different video games. These are all of the various themes such as the Twisted & Perverted where you earn points by having sex or killing people or the Knight’s Code where you build your strongholds on islands, gather your armies, and then try to take over your enemy’s strongholds. Each game world is highly-detailed and completely different from the other. Each one features different NPCs for you to interact with, different scenarios for you to experience, and tons of choices for you to make.
Gamedec plays out just like any other traditional detective game that you might have played earlier. After getting some basic information about finding a missing person or a murderer, you gather clues in Realium and then enter the game’s virtual world Virtualium in order to gather more clues and solve the case. At the very start of the game, you create your very own character from some basic options. There are prebuilt male and female characters to choose from while you can edit their name, choose pronouns, and their Origin. It does not really matter but what matters is choosing Values that determine the starting stats of your character.
Character development is not huge in Gamedec however you can choose various Professions in the game which are sort of like various skills and proficiencies. These are just fancy names for skills such as Sleeves which is a fancy name for thief or Infotainer which is a smooth talker and can use the skill to smooth talk into people giving out information to you. You can purchase these Professions as you progress in the main story and earn more Values by performing various actions in the game. The four values include Decision Making, Analytical Skills, Creativeness, and Social Skills. The more you use these skills while solving cases, the more points you earn and the more professions you can unlock with them. Each Profession has a price, and you pay with the earned Values. This is the only character development you have in the game.
Solving cases is not that simple in Gamedec since this is a choice-based game and every choice that you make in the game matters. Sometimes even the smallest choices and the ones that you thought were the most insignificant to the case matter a lot to the case later down the road. All of the choices you make in the game are in the form of dialogues. Using your unlocked professions, you can also select special dialogue options but if you do not have the required professions, you cannot select these ‘shortcut’ dialogue options. Your dialogue is your main weapon in the game and you can use it to piss off people and have them like you. A meter shows your progress in every given conversation where you can see whether you are making good progress with a certain NPC or bad progress. The game keeps track of all NPCs you meet in the game’s Codex along with other important information about various aspects of Warsaw City.
After picking a case and your preliminary investigation, you enter the game world using a special seat and helmet where you must explore, find clues and deduct results. You collect clues by thoroughly exploring areas, and inspecting various sites and objects. You then interview various NPCs to learn more about various incidents and then you make a deduction about the current scenario and then move on to the next phase of the investigation. You should know that the game does not hold your hand through any of this and you have to find out everything on your own. You are free to speak with NPCs however you like and based on your choices, you will unlock new clues, or you will not. After that, you will need to work with whatever you have and then finalize a deduction and then stick with that deduction.
You can die at various points during these investigations however during the multitude of times I died in the game, I simply respawned back without losing anything. You mostly die because of your own curiosity in the game for example I once activated a mine I found in the trashcan, and it exploded killing me. I was just curious to see what would happen in the game and I died. This is just an example of how much freedom and little bits the developers have put into the game. It is certainly a text-heavy game but for players who love visual novels and detective games, this is the perfect mashup of the two. I was mostly hooked to the game in order to find what happens next in the case as different clues and deductions keep you on your toes. Each case has multiple paths to choose from so one playthrough will only allow you to experience one side of each case. You can replay the game again if you want to explore all of the options and paths for each of the games in the game.
While overall Gamedec ran pretty smoothly for me, I did encounter one major game-breaking bug and because of this bug, I lost all of my progress. During my first playthrough, I was exploring the game world and after nearing its end, I walked into an alley that was a closed one and my character was stuck in an invisible wall. At this point, I found out that the autosave only saves when you enter a game world and after that, you must save manually, and it did not bother saving again during the entirety. I had to restart the game from the start and play all the way again to the point where my character got stuck. However, this time around I kept saving at random spots and never relied on the autosave feature again. Apart from this bad bug, I do not remember any other bug or even a glitch during my entire second playthrough of the game. I did not notice any framerate issues with the game as well however some of the players do seem to be reporting some visual hiccups here and there as well.
Gamedec offers you complete freedom when it comes to case solving and I really love the aspect of not having to follow a straight line for approaching the cases and leading to their solution I love the fact that the game used dialogue as its main weapon in the game because that is what it wanted to be. Gamedec is a virtual representation of tabletop RPGs and dialogue was always a huge aspect in nearly all the tabletop RPGs. Some players might miss shooting and running around with big guns or character development because at its core, Gamedec is a non-combat RPG, and the gameplay actively reflects it. The levels in the game are pretty cool to explore and the vast dialogue options to go for while solving the case give you plenty of freedom to proceed in the cases however you like.
Final Verdict:
Gamedec brings an interesting take to the whole cyberpunk universe with its non-combat gameplay and heavy dialogue-dependent gameplay. I personally liked the overall presentation of the game, and it certainly keeps you entertained with its diverse locations and a multitude of cases to solve. The visuals look great on the Nintendo Switch and if you were looking for a decent detective game to play on the go, Gamedec is probably a really good option for you. The cases are long and the freedom to approach them in whatever way you like is really good. There is however not a deep character customization aspect and the lack of basic gameplay elements such as shooting, and more controls might be off-putting for some players. Nonetheless, the game has a beautiful world, and the case-solving is satisfying. Having a huge dialogue system also means that the game offers high replayability because you can jump back in cases to try out other options and paths in each case. Highly recommended for players who were looking for a new and decent detective game on the Nintendo Switch.
Final Score: 7.5/10
