Dragon Detective: A Friend from the Shadows

Sad because Ace Attorney has been on ice for the best part of a decade? Then I think this game is for you if you're looking for similar experiences. Closer in format to Ace Attorney Investigations, Dragon Detective does a great job in presenting itself as a mystery game. The mysteries in game managed to stay on that fine line where they feel rewarding to solve: while I struggled with some solutions, once I figured them out I felt dumb for not noticing, rather that cheated because the game was using logic I couldn't follow. The pacing of the game is also snappy, the game never stops moving forward, and investigations and confrontations never go long enough that they become tedious. There's no eternal confrontations, unlike what Ace Attorney sometimes falls in. I like the overall plot of the game, the setting of Rivulette is well established, and the unique factors of the place are often important to the story of the game, with the worldbuilding often being integral to solving the ...

Dragon Detective is an Ace-Attorney-style detective adventure game. I think it's the most enjoyable game of this kind I've played since Aviary Attorney. For the most part, the player's task is to examine everything and then go through a lengthy dialog, occasionally deciding which response or piece of evidence to choose. But DD also has deduction board mechanics, and its nice graphics, excellent writing and good pacing keep things entertaining. The game tries to avoid incessant repetitions (which are the plague of this genre) and remembers to frequently switch locations, introduce unexpected twists or connections between the cases and occasionally go on an amusing tangent. DD keeps things fairly simple: there aren't too many characters and points of interest to deal with, the case setups aren't too convoluted, bits of lore are introduced when they become relevant to the story, and it's usually clear which piece of evidence to present. However, the best response in a confrontation can ...

I've played this for nearly 4 hours in and I must say I absolutely love it. I was laughing so much at some of the dialogue, I love the characters I have been introduced too so far and gotten to know. Overall for a point and click investigation game like Ace Attorney, it's pretty good! I'd recommend it for anyone who loves that type of game.

Great game, mysteries were fantastic to solve. Characters are solid and well written. One annoying bit is that you have to rely on the auto save to save your progress, so sometimes you can be sent back to the start of a investigation if you quit before triggering the auto-save. And sometimes the characters could use an extra portrait or two, since sometimes a character would be showing great emotion while stuck on their default pose. (mostly towards the case 2 killer) Other than that, great game. Hope to see more from the development team!

I was quite impressed by Dragon Detective: A Friend from the Shadows. A game in the same vein as Aviary Attorney or Ace Attorney (oh, hey, it even has an alliterative name), but the protagonist is, notably, a dragon, which is both narratively and mechanically relevant. The game does a good job both with its story and with its world (one particular reveal from later in the game really caught me by surprise, in a good way), and I also love all of the various characters in it (especially the ones we see across several different cases). A very good showing, I enjoyed this game quite a bit. I also think the game's music does a good job of elevating the experience, since it fits both the tone and environment of the game well.

Sungazer Software has all the markings of an indie darling. Their games are all wildly different genres that are connected by their use of species and the undefinable charm of their passion. Four people (and a couple beta testers) made this entire game, and I'm willing to bet that's about how big the team was for their other projects. The only thing holding them back was, at least in my opinion on The Tenth Line and (from personal observation and anecdotes of my best friend) Eden's Last Sunrise, their gameplay. It had an equally undefinable 'clunkiness' to it, born from developers without the experience required to make combat in either game feel properly seamless. So naturally, when I saw their next game was an Ace Attorney like, I was very excited. Their one obstacle from making great games, circumvented by another genre shift. I wanted to love this game so badly as a result. I've played similar 'attorney-likes' as I'll henceforth refer to them, and the two I'd like to bring up ar...

Only finished first case (a large part of my playtime thus far was the demo), but I'll leave a review for early impressions. I like it - a lot of its own individual identity and worldbuilding that ends up readily applying to the first case. There's characters you get to care about, good character art, well-written music, and some humor thrown in every so often. The protagonist, Sevyn, is a little bit straight-laced, but it seems like this builds well with the off-color personalities he interacts with. There's still plenty of playtime for the game to absolutely wow me, so I may edit the review, but I enjoy what I've played as a general Ace Attorney fan, and the price isn't much.

Pretty well-made Ace Attorney style game. Very cheap for its length, too. I especially liked the "clue assemble" and "hypothesis" system during investigations.

Solid soundtrack, solid story that concludes well, not too difficult A fun spin on the very well trodden ground of murder mysteries, wouldn't mind a follow up

I really enjoyed this game, the characters and the world were interesting. It's done in a similar vein to ace attorney but I think I prefer this game's mechanics overall. You gather evidence, try to piece together what happened (I liked this!), and confront suspects. Like the ace attorney games there can be some frustration when it seems like there is more than one "right answer" to a question. Overall though I recommend it and I hope to see more.