Independent game developer Masala Games revealed a new gameplay trailer for its upcoming mystery adventure Detective Dotson at the Future Games Show Summer Showcase 2024. The trailer entices players to explore, disguise themselves, and use the game’s clue board to solve mysteries in a stylised rendition of modern India as the titular Detective Dotson.
Detective Dotson is a mystery adventure game set in a stylised rendition of modern-day India that puts players in the role of Dotson, a reluctant detective. Players can wishlist the game from the Steam store page right now. A demo for the game is out on Steam as well.
The Detective Dotson demo has players solving the mysterious death of Detective Dotson’s father. You’ll chase down criminals, hunt for clues, create disguises, spy on foes, and recruit team members. While the demo has a slice of what to expect, the full release contains more episodes and is slated for release later this year.
Developed in Unity, the game features controller support and an original OST made in collaboration with Nikhil Rao of Indian Ocean, pioneers of Indian fusion rock.
Detective Dotson X Future Games Show Collaboration
Along with this, Future Games Show hosts Roger Clark (Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2) and Britt Baron (Tifa from FFVII Rebirth and Justine from Netflix’s comedy drama wrestling show GLOW) were brought into the world of Dotson as pixel art versions of themselves to reveal the trailer.
“We always like to make pixel art versions of the creators that work with us — it’s our way of saying ‘thank you’,” says Shalin Shodhan, Founder and CEO of Masala Games. “Future Games Show gave us the opportunity to take this a step further by letting us drop the show presenters into our Indian street-side set. When we found out it was Red Dead Redemption 2’s Roger Clark and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Britt Baron, we were ecstatic to have them decked up in Dotson-ified avatars. We produced the whole segment in 4 days in Unreal Engine.”
The story idea was that Britt had gone missing. Roger goes off stage to look for her. The two of them appear in pixel art Dotson-style cartoon versions on the set of Detective Dotson, which is a cozy Indian mohalla. Britt is hanging back from a wedding procession that passed by. She is dressed in a beautiful fuschia ghagra and some nice wedding jewelry. Meanwhile Roger is dressed as a local roadside romeo hanging out at the corner tea stall. The two of them introduce the game as Roger wonders how they will get back to human form.
Detective Dotson at IGN Live
In addition to this, Detective Dotson was selected by ID@Xbox to be a part of IGN Live, IGN’s summer fan fest event. This has the Steam demo playable at IGN Live’s on-ground event in downtown Los Angeles. Furthermore, Detective Dotson is also a part of the IGN Live Steam event — a highly curated list of anticipated upcoming PC games.
