You know you’re in for a treat when the credits catch on fire.

It’s always nice when you can look at a game and immediately guess the spiritual inspiration (if you’ll excuse that not-joke) behind its style. And so it was for me with Voodoo Detective.

I should probably explain. I went to the store page for Voodoo Detective, and upon seeing about 5 seconds of video, immediately pinged it as being in the Lucasarts style. If I’d scrolled down first, I would’ve seen that the devs were admittedly inspired by Monkey Island. And yes, this is actually a positive; I was really happy to find out that I got it on the first try, and even happier to see a game in that style.

For those not familiar, Lucasarts adventure games, at least post Maniac Mansion, were known for a couple of things, but most notably, the fact that it was impossible for the game to wind up locking the player in an unwinnable state. This became the overwhelming norm in the industry, so it might not seem too important, but Sierra games tended to create scenarios in which you’d saved past the point of no return, only to realize that you really needed that completely unremarkable item you didn’t think to interact with a while back. What does this have to do with Voodoo Detective? Absolutely nothing, but I wanted to talk about it. So there.

As for the game itself, it naturally has excellent animations, and a distinct and appealing visual aesthetic. The game is bright and colorful, as befitting its island setting. The backgrounds are of note, as they work well with the character designs. Every area has a bit of texture to it that I like. Hell, not only are the backgrounds and characters hand drawn, so is the UI. To put it simply, it gets top marks for presentation.

Voodoo Detective also gets high marks for sound, as you may expect. The soundtrack is excellent, running the gamut from tropical sounds to jazzy detective noir fare. It’s no surprise; Short Sleeve Studio got Peter McConnell of Lucasarts fame (and frankly, pretty much everything Tim Schafer makes) to do the soundtrack. Special note also has to go to the cast they hired to bring these characters to life; in particular, William Christopher Stephens does an excellent detective deadpan as the titular Voodoo Detective. The rest of the cast features no slouches, either; odds are very good that even if you can’t identify them by name, you’ve heard them around.

The story is imminently spoilable, so we’ll talk broad strokes. VD is hired to help a young woman recover her memory. And the path to doing so uncovers a massive conspiracy spanning most of Zo Wanga. Also, there are lots of jokes. A ton of jokes. Which is to be expected, as the game is made after the Lucasarts style. And they’re very much to my taste.

One more thing I feel the need to bring up is that the game will run on, and I quote, “as or more powerful than an iPhone SE (2016)”. And that’s despite being made in Unity, which I have a love/hate relationship with. Sure enough, it ran on my 2014 mid-range office potato flawlessly. Not a single stutter or hang. You definitely get kudos for that, Short Sleeve.

They went for quality over quantity, for sure. As is typical for adventure games, Voodoo Detective is only a few hours long. The challenge level of the puzzles aren’t super high overall, either; not that that is actually a mark against it. As a matter of fact, really need to nitpick to find things that are “wrong” with it, which makes me feel kind of bad. If I had to , I’d likely bring up the fact that some necessary items are rendered as background objects, making them hard to identify as something you can take and use. I may have spent a good hour and some change looking for a candle that was in VD’s office the entire time, which I discovered long after finding the object necessary to change it into the form it needed to be for the first spell you actually use in the game.

That said, overall, Voodoo Detective is definitely worth your time. It easily earns a recommendation from me, at least.

Final Score:

About Author

B. Simmons

Based out of Glendale California, Bryan is a GAMbIT’s resident gaming contributor. Specializing in PC and portable gaming, you can find Bryan on his 3DS playing Monster Hunter or at one of the various conventions throughout the state.

See author's posts