Sixth Grade Detective

If you liked young detective games by Brendan Patrick Hennessy and Felicity Drake, you should probably also try Sixth Grade Detective. It's in the same genre, but with younger characters: the children are around 11 years old, and reading about their fluffy crushes is as sweet as watching Chico and Roberta dance. The mysteries you investigate are accordingly tamer - like finding a missing book in the second episode.

The characters are likeable and have some curious hidden depths; I was particularly surprised by Kyle, the leader of the bullies. And the fifth "case" was really heart-warming.

This game placed highly recently on an 'underrated choicescript game poll'. It's pretty easy to see why it placed highly and why it's underrated.

The strikes against it are it's size (it's in the bottom 20% in terms of size) and the fact that it is centered on younger kids (Choicescript games that appear to be for kids tend to sell less, including my own).

The good things are the writing, the stats, and the strategies.

Writing-wise, the game has an episodic structure (about 5 mystery cases) and a lot of freedom in how your character can approach them: greedy, secretive, friendly, etc. Each of the main characters seemed fully-fleshed out to me by the end. The finale seemed fairly abrupt, but it makes sense for a game that is more a string of episodes than anything else.

The stats were great. It was generally very clear which stats applied to what, how to raise them, and where you stood.

The game kept it interesting by strategizing. Staying secretive sometimes benefits everyone but sometimes keeps you from getting money or making certain friends. Similarly, having integrity locks you out of many options but feels good.

Some events had risks you could take with rewards or failures that were logical but unknown ahead of time. I like this better than randomness (from playing a random game earlier today), but it still provides some tension like randomness does.