1. Chinatown Detective Agency
  2. News

Chinatown Detective Agency News

Beta Updates: Unveiling new screenshots of previously unseen areas

Dear gumshoes,

We have a lot of new things to show you as part of our development updates.

Let’s get started with some art


Ricardo's having a lot of fun experimenting with Unity's lighting effects, and some of the end results are just beautiful. Check out the one below - a dark, menacing, dilapidated house where a crucial lead is just begging to be uncovered.



Or check out Tiger Lily's own personal onsen at her health club.



Darkness and light really set the mood in each scene of the game, and that's something we're hoping to consistently deliver.

We've also been working hard on perfecting the implementation of the assets in the game (part of the polishing phase). Here are some gifs of scenes you haven't seen before (no worries, no spoilers!):









Our art team has also been working away on the in-game characters that some of our backers have created. Here are just some samples:











We're also midway through implementing the remaining VO. We had a lot of fun recording some of the key characters in the game. We'd rather not reveal too much information about them, but let's just say they both play a pretty crucial role in the game's many story arcs.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

First round of QA completed


Our first round of QA for the PC build was completed weeks ago, and we've got a laundry list of bugs and issues that our programmers have been focusing on in the coming weeks, followed up by time spent on polish and improvements.

Probably the biggest update now is that we'll be resolving the last Class A bug (a bug that causes a game to crash) in our list -- that means that after that, our latest build will have no more show-stopping bugs, leaving us to focus on the less serious things that need polishing, such as visual and animation hiccups. From a development standpoint, that's fairly important -- Class A bugs are a major obstacle in development progress as they're often indicative of larger issues in the build. Once we finish off the rest of the non-serious bugs and errors, we'll have our first launch candidate build, which is a major milestone. This is something we're hoping to have in a month's time.

Porting Process kicked off


We've also begun the porting process sometime ago for the platforms we'll be releasing in. This is taking place in parallel to our bug fixing/polish phase. We've hired a dedicated UX designer to make sure the game is the best it can be no matter how you play it.

Finally, and we're sure this is on everyone's mind, we've been doing a lot of planning and discussions around the release date. We're going to release an update video in the next few weeks (we just want to finish the next development milestone first). In this video update, we'll make the exclusive announcement here of when Chinatown Detective agency is releasing on all platforms, including PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox.

Thanks for reading and for all your support to Chinatown Detective Agency.

The GenIntCo. Team



The Chinatown Detective Agency: Day One prologue is available for free here on Steam.

Join us on Discord for more updates and content (some game-related, some random) from our team.

Is social media your thing? Amira Darma is on Twitter.

Steam Next Fest Stream: The Voices of Chinatown Detective Agency

Meet the Chinatown Detective Agency’s very own voice actors! Tune in on Tuesday for a pre-recorded stream hosted by Game Director Mark Fillon!

Stream time:
Tuesday (October 5th) at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST / 11pm SGT
You can set a reminder by clicking the button above!

Chinatown Detective Agency is a cybernoir point and click adventure blending stunning retro design with innovative mechanics. Manage your detective agency and use real world research to solve cases as you unravel a global conspiracy.

Want to try it for yourself? The Day One prologue is available to download now! If you enjoy the demo, remember to leave a review and wishlist the full game on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401920/Chinatown_Detective_Agency_Day_One/

See you then, gumshoe…

----
For the latest on Chinatown Detective Agency, follow our social pages:

Twitter: @genintco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genintco
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/genintco
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/generalinteractive
And join our wonderful Discord community at http://discord.gg/cda

Investigating the Writing of Chinatown Detective Agency

Join General Interactive's Game Director Mark and Writer Rik live on Saturday for a stream themed around the narrative of Chinatown Detective Agency!

Stream time:
Saturday (October 2nd) at 6am PDT / 9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST / 9pm SGT
You can set a reminder by clicking the button above!

Chinatown Detective Agency is a cybernoir point and click adventure blending stunning retro design with innovative mechanics. Manage your detective agency and use real world research to solve cases as you unravel a global conspiracy.

Want to try it for yourself? The Day One prologue is available to download now! If you enjoy the demo, remember to leave a review and wishlist the full game on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401920/Chinatown_Detective_Agency_Day_One/

See you then, gumshoe…

----
For the latest on Chinatown Detective Agency, follow our social pages:

Twitter: @genintco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genintco
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/genintco
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/generalinteractive
And join our wonderful Discord community at http://discord.gg/cda

Big Update: Beta!



We're excited to announce that we've hit our biggest and most important milestone. As of today, we have officially completed a functional beta build of Chinatown Detective Agency. This is big. This is probably the most important steps towards completion.

So let's just dive into the details of what this means.

What is this beta that you speak of?

It means you can now play the game from beginning to end. So in purely functional terms, the game is complete.

What is this beta still missing?

It's not 100% content complete just yet - we're still missing some assets like VO, SFX and some animations. We've got placeholder assets for now, but are steadily finishing up and implementing the real assets as we speak.

It's also a pre-QA build. This means that it needs to go through rounds of testing to make sure it's bug free. We have a dedicated QA company to handle this, as the team has decided to go beyond internal testing (meaning testing done just among ourselves and by the community) to deliver a much better game.

We're still in the middle of localisation, but we're right around the halfway point. One of the biggest challenges we faced during localisation is making sure we translate the puzzles properly. Since most of the puzzles were designed in English, we had to make sure that a player playing the game in another language can arrive at the same answers when they do their research. This was a bigger task than we first anticipated, but we're finding ways to get it done.

What's left to be done?

So here's a quick rundown of what's left between now and release:

  • We're hoping to hit 100% content complete beta (which will have completed one round of QA testing by then) around the week of the 23rd of August.
  • This content complete beta will then be passed on to our partner porting studio so that they can begin the porting process for Nintendo Switch.
  • Complete our second round of QA testing and aim for a fully-tested launch candidate version (for PC) by the end of September.
  • Finish localisation and localisation QA at the same time frame (end of September)
  • Finish off and implement what's left of the Kickstarter in-game backer rewards by the end of October for all platforms (via content updates).


This means that with this new timeline, we're looking at an Autumn release.

We also just wanted to share some highlights of development with you further below.

We planned for 30+ locations. We ended up doing 105 total locations in the game.


Yup, it's pretty crazy. This totally caught us off guard, as the writing evolved over the past year and more locations and environments were added to the list to enrich the story. We had initially planned for just 30 or so locations in Singapore and around the world. In the end, Chinatown Detective Agency will include 105 locations (which include cities, districts and neighbourhoods, and detailed interactive locations). That's over three times the amount initially planned for. And Ricardo has made sure they all look fantastic.







You think that's something? We've also got 202 unique animations (and counting).


Our two-person animation team has been working on some really cool animations to really bring the scenes to life. We've got dozens of unique character models, too (and we're not even counting the in-game backer rewards). We're running at a pace of delivering around one new animation spritesheet per day.

Over 7,500 lines of dialogue.


As a narrative-led game, story and character development are a priority for us. That's why we ended up writing over 7,500 lines of branching dialogue across all the story arcs and multiple endings. As you already know, the key dialogues will all be voiced, and we're very excited about the end product. Our writing team came up with some interesting twists and turns in the plot, and we really can't wait for you guys to play through them all.

Speaking of character development, we've introduced some really cool new characters. Check out their portraits.

Dr. Kon, a genius who has, for better or worse, set far reaching things in motion.

Pierre Danton. Don't you just hate that face? We don't like this guy too much. We've got a strong feeling you won't either.

Ariel Yeo, the heiress of a powerful megachurch. You can already tell she probably thinks she's better than you.

We've got many more new characters you're yet to meet, but we don't want to spoil the story too much.

We spent a lot of time on the puzzles, and they're sure to get you scratching your heads...

Our favorite part of the writing the game was coming up with the puzzles. We've got some pretty cool puzzles for each mission that you'll definitely need to spend a bit of time figuring out. The clues are intriguing, and draw upon some of our favorite topics in history and art. Throughout the story, Amira will run into objects and pieces of evidence that will give you an idea of where to begin your search. In one example, you've got some stone blocks with symbols and icons on them. Maybe you'll recognise what they mean right off the bat. Or maybe you vaguely know which civilisation they belong to and just need to do a bit of research. Or maybe you have no clue and will probably have to ask Mei Ting for some help!



Solve the puzzles successfully, and Amira is one step closer to a resolution. Otherwise, you're going to have to call Mei Ting for some help! And we all know what that means - less money in the bank.

The Road Ahead


Hitting beta is a massive step forward, and the end of development is now in sight. It's taken longer than expected, but we really didn't want to compromise on the quality of the game, so please bear with us. Having said that, our current projection for a new release window is Autumn 2021. We're doing all we can to get this done, but some things took us more time than expected, and we hope you'll understand. Now that we're in beta, we're much much closer to completion.

We'd also like to share with you guys that we have a planned post-launch content update that's totally free and will include new missions. It's our way of thanking our supporters and followers for the support you've given us since day one!

Talk to you all again soon!

BACK TO WORK, AMIRA!

Yours with anticipation,

The Chinatown Detective Agency Team

New story trailer premiered

Dear gumshoes,

We’re coming to you today with, drumroll please… A NEW TRAILER!

As Amira’s adventure is full of twists and turns, the thrills of a global conspiracy looming over her shoulder as she rushes to put the pieces together, we wanted to share a bit more of that in a video. So, we’ve prepared a new story trailer, premiered by IGN as part of their Summer of Gaming:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

To commit a crime to undo the deeds of a bigger one? Well, a detective sometimes has to get their hands dirty, but how dirty is dirty enough?


With E3 season here, we’re bringing you bits of detective goodness in quite a number of shows throughout the next few days! Stay tuned to our Twitter to catch them all as they air.

Thanks for all your continuous support. Please spread the word around if you haven’t already, our diverse project and team will always appreciate it.

Wishlist Chinatown Detective Agency

Play the free prologue, Chinatown Detective Agency: Day One


Join us on Discord for more updates and content, including some first looks and screenshots.

We’re also new on TikTok, doing fun stuff over there. If you’re on the platform, please follow us and support our stuff so we don’t feel as nervous doing the videos! We’re not as young, you know. :D


Thank you all so much,

Mark and the General Interactive team

--
For the latest on Chinatown Detective Agency, follow our social pages:
Twitter: @genintco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genintco/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/genintco/