Parents' Guide to

Gamedec

By Marc Saltzman, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Mature game offers interesting premise, but issues prevail.

Game Windows 2021
Gamedec Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

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Is It Any Good?

Our review:
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While the RPG dishes up an intriguing concept, and the decisions you make will change the story, boring characters and decisions saps all of the fun out of this tale. Gamedec has a lot of worlds that offer variety, and it's great that there's no combat to be found. But it doesn't take long for the shine of this game to wear thin, after interacting with non-memorable clients (and characters you're sent to talk to). You don't care about any of these people, which really zaps your motivation. Trying to crack the case and make your progress bar inch towards success might be gratifying enough for some players, plus unlocking new abilities and dialog tree options is smart, but it's just not that engaging. What's more, while you're ask to spend time customizing your Gamedec's abilities, spread out over different personality types, the responses seem arbitrarily assigned, or unrelated to the chat, At other times, there are bad typos in the conversations, but English may not be the developers' native tongue.

There were some Polish words in the Codex, too, perhaps not translated to English yet. In short, for a game not to have combat, the dialog sequences have to be extraordinary. Unfortunately, this isn't case here. You'll refer often to the game's Codex, which includes all the characters and relationships, locations and conversations, and more, but it's very laborious to sift through. Gamedec can be fun, with its smart deduction engine, and you feel good when you've successfully interrogated someone or better yet, solved a crime. Plus, some of the interactions are time based, which adds some extra drama to them. Also, the set pieces are impressive, as is the musical score. But the tedious dialog choices and unimaginative characters will disappoint. It's too bad, as the story is interesting and the adaptive nature of your choices is ambitious to say the least, but Gamedec ultimately doesn't completely hit its mark.

Game Details

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