Chinatown Detective Agency review: Carmen Sandiego meets cybernoir

A mystery story is one of the most wonderful, exhilarating experiences in any form of media: following clues, interrogating suspects, finding the facts, and so on. However, this genre has a downside: Once you reach the end of the story, any attempts to revisit it garner diminishing returns. You already know whodunnit. Chinatown Detective Agency (CDA), the recently released indie game from General Interactive Co, attempts to fix that with middling results.

Chinatown Detective Agency is a 2D point-and-click adventure game, intentionally reminiscent of the old-school P&C titles — more specifically, the Carmen Sandiego games. It’s set in a futuristic Singapore and follows the adventures of private eye Amira Darma. Through a series of cases, she gets progressively more involved in the seedy underworld (and oft-seedy overworld) of the city.