Footprints
Games
The world of Detective Gallo is a bizarre one. There is a path
surrounded by fake gold coins on each side, a fountain filled with the
taxpayers’ tears, an area called The Knives District with knives stuck
in the road, and a town filled with anthropomorphic chickens with
unusually strong attachments to their plants.
Our protagonist, Detective Gallo, is a rooster with a plant of his
own, a cactus named Thorn. He is constantly asking the cactus for
advice, when he’s not listing one of his many “Rules of Gallo,”
all of them proceeded by a number.
As the game opens, Gallo receives a visit from one of the town’s
richest residents, Phil Cloro, whose plants have been brutally murdered
by what appears to be some kind of poison. After Phil offers a generous
reward for tracking down the culprit of this heinous crime, Gallo agrees
to take the case. Unfortunately for him, it will mean interacting with
the other birds in town, which is something our loner detective is not
overly fond of. Candy Bop, who owns the sweet stand next to Gallo’s
office and has an unhealthy infatuation with Gallo, is a particularly
hard person for him to deal with.
The tone of the game is comedy noir, and it maintains a very
endearing, silly sense of humor throughout its 6-8 hour run. It’s very
engaging and cute, and the characters are entertaining to interact with.
The voices are clear and well acted for the most part. Sometimes,
however, there were background conversations that would overpower Gallo
when I was trying to get his observations on things. I found that if I
turned down the setting marked “Sound Volume,” it resolved the
issue. The soundtrack is great and suits the game’s tone well.
The graphics are very pleasing, cartoony with vibrant colors that
suit the game’s style. My only complaint is that I would have liked to
have seen more of the world. While locations open up a bit as the game
progresses, players will mostly be traveling in a limited area,
consisting of just a few screens. The screens we do explore are
striking, however, particularly in the scenes where the night sky is
clearly visible.
Gameplay is classic third person point and click. The puzzles were
very well done, and I found myself stuck on more than one occasion,
something that hasn’t happened very often in recent adventure games.
The puzzles were mostly well clued, though there was one that I thought
could have been handled a bit better. That may have something to do with
my own interpretation of that particular clue, though, and other players
may feel very differently. Most puzzles were fun to solve, and there
were quite a few that consisted of several steps, which many adventure
game fans will appreciate. For anyone concerned, the game can be saved
at the player’s will at any point and is not reliant on auto-saves.
One warning for those who pick up the game – I did encounter a bug
which prevented me from receiving a crucial inventory item I needed.
When I found myself unable to proceed and eventually resorted to a video
walkthrough, I realized I was missing this item and ended up having to
replay a significant portion of the game. I won’t spoil it here, but
there is a thread on the Steam forums about it if anyone else finds
themselves in the same situation. Hopefully, the developers will release
a patch for this at some point in the future.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Detective Gallo. It was filled
with fun, diabolical misleads and a very enjoyable twist in the end. I
recommend it to anyone interested in third person, puzzle-filled
comedies with entertaining characters. It can be purchased on Steam and
GOG.
