Dark Alley Review – A Tale of Trench Coats and Empty Streets

I lived in Japan, I visited Kyoto before, and I speak some of the lingo, but that does not make me an expert in the slightest. However, I don’t recall the streets of Japan looking like Dark Alley so much, and where, oh where is everybody in this game? It’s a sandbox for… erm, I can’t think of anything witty.

It’s a detective-themed adventure, which in essence is interactive fiction, a.k.a. visual novel. It’s a bit more involved than most, as you can move around relatively freely from a first-person perspective and click on objects to be granted with impatience and sarcasm.

You play Detective Thomas Bennett, a British detective who couldn’t be more stereotypical with his trench coat and hat, and considering this is set in 2012, very much out of place in Kyoto, Japan. By the way, if you know of anywhere else in the world named Kyoto so I don’t have to add Japan for the geographically challenged, do let me know.

Someone called Hale has disappeared. I can’t tell you much about them without resorting to the Steam store page for a summary, as the setup to Dark Alley was very minimalistic, and the narrative doesn’t exactly give you much to work with, or dare I say, care about so much.

Spotted Dick

In short, Hale is also a Limey bastard (hey, I’m allowed – I’m British), and he’s got involved with the yakuza somehow. Thomas sets out to find out what happened to him and is immediately presented with a chase scene down some dodgy alleys that don’t seem to make much sense in terms of design, even for Japanese city standards. It’s all a bit… off.

That impatience and sarcasm mentioned come from our protagonist; if you dare click on the same thing twice, he’ll begin with, “Again…” then repeats himself. I’m surprised he has any friends. Perhaps Cheesecake Games’ earlier title, The Empty Desk, may give some more info on that. For me, he’s unlikable and wears a stupid hat. Better than a deerstalker, though.

Anyway, you need to go to Hale’s home; the bridge is down. You find another way by breaking into a home and then getting rid of a bee’s nest (you have allergies). There’s no inventory in Dark Alley, so when I picked up three bricks, which I presumed were the solution to a problem, they simply disappeared and were never spoken about again…

Puzzles and Disappearing Bricks

The puzzle elements in Dark Alley are very linear. Objectives can be found in your notebook that inform you that you need a way in somewhere, or to distract someone, etc, etc. There are no real clues other than that, so you end up exploring small environments separated by chapters, hunting for something that can be automatically used as a solution, as well as collecting voodoo dolls as a Kyoto souvenir. Naturally.

One of the biggest questions I asked myself early on was, “Where is everyone?”. It’s a very quiet game without anyone wandering the streets in a presumably busy place, empty nightclubs, and a shirtless yakuza showing off his tats in such a very unJapanese manner. Plus, he’ll catch a cold, the silly old chap.

The locations are nicely presented, as are the talking-head visual novel elements, but they seem a little detached from one another. More importantly, while it looks alright, there’s not actually anything to do. You can crawl and sprint, and get involved in a non-interactive slapping game early on, but it doesn’t really make sense and feels unfinished.

Clichés, Gaijins, and Not One Bowl of Ramen

While I’m not remotely offended in the slightest, I found the stereotypes to be exactly that, with yakuza parading themselves about ending each line with gaijin, or an undercover Secret Service agent masquerading in a role that couldn’t be more broadcastable. Methinks someone has been watching Tokyo Drift one too many times. It’s a bit cliché for me.

Nevertheless, Dark Alley is a detecive/interactive fiction game, and its core content didn’t really do much for me to stay engaged and I ended up switching off to it and not really rooting for anyone or anything. That’s a bit of a shame, as I was hoping for this to be a little more engaging or exciting, and regrettably, it was neither, and I think this would have to be filed as a cold case.

Still, make your own deductions and play the demo. Who knows – you might like it, gaijin.