A Rough But Refreshing New Detective On The Scene
2025 has been a banner year for games that deviate from white, western-centric stories. South of Midnight and despelote never quite made it into the Game of the Year final six, but there were moments of buzz around their inclusion. And the burgeoning Indian development scene now has a big release in the form of Masala Games’ Detective Dotson.
The titular Dotson is a Bollywood-loving private investigator whose father has recently passed. We open on him tipping his dad’s urn into the Ganges. While other people would be taking some compassionate leave, he’s busying himself with cases in his local town.
They start endearingly small-scale, the equivalent of a firefighter saving a cat from a tree. His dog has been painted pink and the culprit must be found; some biryani has been stolen from the set of a Bollywood film set. Dotson manfully whips out his notebook and starts investigating.
It’s Elementary, My Dear Dotson
While Detective Dotson looks like a 2D graphic adventure, it’s dabbling with more influences than that. For one, controls are not of the traditional point-and-click variety. Detective Dotson feels developed for consoles, with platformer-like movement on the analogue stick and the ability to jump and even ledge-grab onto roofs. Not that Detective Dotson is an Indian Tomb Raider: there’s a shonkiness to the jumping that constantly reminds that you’re playing a graphic adventure with aspirations rather than a true platformer.
It is, of course, a deductive game too. Your first task is to gather as many clues as possible from the corner of town that you’ve been allowed to roam around. That means chatting to locals who are less forthcoming than you might hope. They’re a mercenary bunch (or, charitably, they are believers in a barter system) as very little comes free. They want curries, paan, samosas and toys before they’ll loosen their grip on information.
So you’re buying from shops (there’s even a fully-featured haggling system), trading with others and generally spending tons of rupees in a game of back-and-forth. So much back-and-forth, in fact, that it’s the largest proportion of the game, to the point that we verged on fatigued.
Dial M For Masala
Bartering means money, and you don’t have enough to buy everything. In comes Detective Dotson’s minigames, which I’ll admit to being profoundly mixed about. Some are inoffensive, like the hidden object games that we learned to farm for cash (play them twice, exit, then play them again – otherwise they experience diminishing returns). Some are a little on the scratch-your-eyes-out side. We’re not going to recover from attempting the ‘complete all cricket minigames’ achievement, if only because it’s a brutal Bombay Mix of luck and cruelty. The Guitar Hero Bollywood minigames are somewhere in the middle.
Which all leads to the ‘and one more thing’ deduction. Detective Dotson opts for a huge pinboard of threads and empty spaces. People, places and terms are added around the side as post-it notes, and your job is to organise them into the provided frames. A helpful hint system gives much-needed help (and is replenished by putting rubbish in bins, which warms the cockles). It should be noted that the hints don’t cover the evidence-gathering in the first place, which is something of an oversight and can leave you stuck.
I’ve got a bone to pick with this pinboard, as it’s actually quite difficult to read. Sometimes you’re meant to read it left-to-right, other times right-to-left, and while there are arrows they’re inconsistently used.
And Then There Were Naan
But while we’re being critical about the gameplay stuff, the stories and cases are endearing. There’s a detachment from reality that adds the secret ingredient. Cross-dressing as Karishma, a local woman, gets you access to parties and you can make everyone dance with a tap of RB. Swapping into a sadhi’s clothes (or lack of them) lets you float around town, peeping into people’s thoughts.
Detective Dotson is ripe with so much charm that the stuttering detective-work and controls end up getting pushed to the side. And as much as we love space marines and cyberpunk cities, it’s refreshing to be walking around a grounded yet still unconventional (at least for video games) setting.
And the biggest lesson we’ve learned? If we ever go to India, we’re going to need a backpack of gifts for bartering. We made that assumption because of you, Detective Dotson.
Important Links
This Steam Hit is a Love Letter to India & Detective Dotson is OUT NOW on Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/this-steam-hit-is-a-love-letter-to-india-detective-dotson-is-out-now-on-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/detective-dotson/9NXGD1ZLJ1JL/0010
