"Chinatown Detective Agency" is a cybernoir adventure set in Singapore in the near future, and is currently raising 57,000 SGD on Kickstarter by the end of April.

Players take on the role of Amira Dharma, a former Interpol agent turned private investigator, solving numerous cases in the heart of Chinatown. Developed by General Interactive Co, the game is a departure from the 3D tile placement world of its predecessor, Terrior, and is darker and more troubling.

Chinatown Detective Agency unfolds like the point-and-click adventure of a Carmen Sandiego game. You explore the world, travel to different locations, collect evidence, and talk to witnesses. Life as a detective in Chinatown is far from glamorous, and you have to take on enough cases to pay the bills.

As part of the game's Kickstarter campaign, General Interactive has released a polished demo that you can play on Itch.io. After playing the demo, aside from the great voice acting and gorgeous pixel art, what particularly caught my eye was the fact that you are asked to do research outside of the game. In one scene, I had to look up the source of a real book by typing a citation into Google and entering the author's name into the computer as a password. The need to look up clues and bits of information on the Internet is a feature that continues throughout "Chinatown Detective Agency," and it will be interesting to see how General Interactive develops it.

Deciding what clues to follow, what cases to take on, and how to handle pressure situations will affect the outcome of the game. You can also grow your agency into a thriving office by hiring staff like assistants to do your research and secretaries to handle your bills; the Kickstarter page says, "Pursuing clues and gathering evidence may be rewarding but Amira is not just a detective. She needs to keep her staff happy and her office running smoothly."

It states.

Pledges for "Chinatown Detective Agency" start at $16 / £14 for a digital copy of the game and increase from there; for more information on Chinatown Detective Agency, visit their Kickstarter page.