One of the single most pivotal moments in my childhood was when my parents gave me my first ever point-and-click adventure games: Kings Quest and Space Quest, and man, oh man, I was hooked. I’ve always been good at reading, but I’m pretty sure that on some subconscious level, I willed my mind to learn to read so that I could play more and more point-and-click games.
Throughout the years, my love for the genre has never quite let up; if you want me at my happiest give me a good point-and-click game, unlimited snacks and enough free time to enjoy it. The single draw of being an adult with a love for a bygone genre isn’t that there’s a lack of point-and-click games to play. Instead, it’s that there are too many bad ones.
Enter into the scene and my life, Voodoo Detective, a noir-infused point-and-click adventure that doesn’t just feel inspired by the classics but rather like it’s one of them. From the fantastic hand-drawn art to the expressive voice acting and engaging story, Voodoo Detective takes everything I loved about the genre growing up and makes it go down with the silky smoothness of a good whiskey – with the kick of it too.
You play a character called Voodoo Detective, who rather aptly works as a Voodoo Detective. But times are tough for a detective famous for his blend of sarcasm and hoodoo, but that all changes when a mysterious woman walks into his office. Now I’m not going to talk any further about the story, but know that, as with any good adventure story, you start with just one single clue and build from there.
There is very little that feels unfamiliar here. All the core aspects are as you’d expect them to be. Explore environments, pick up things, combine those things with other things to make a new thing, and use that new thing in another part of the environment. It’s the classic beloved formula at its very best, only complimented by modern refinements. One of these refinements comes in clean and refined art. I can’t tell you how many hours of my childhood were spent looking for one specific pixel in a sea of pixels.
Pixel hunting is just something that never happened here. The art is so well put together that it’s pretty obvious what you can click and can’t. The “hook”, if you will, of Voodoo Detective comes in its rather unique puzzle-solving mechanic. Fully leaning into the Voodoo aspect, you carry around a Voodoo recipe book which you will have to use to solve many of the game’s puzzles.
Most of the puzzles in Voodoo Detective are pretty self-explanatory. If you ever get stuck, the protagonist is always willing to give a hint or two about where you should be casting your focus. But as with any point-and-click game worth its salt, one or two sections require some pretty intense moon logic, but thankfully these moments are so far apart that moon logic never feels like the norm.
