Review | Dupery: A Game of Solo Deduction - Roguelike Dickbuilder
If you were to ask me what the most popular video game genres are at time of writing, I’d give you a small laundry list, from extraction shooters to farming sims. For the purposes of this review, though, here are some of them: roguelikes (and roguelites, but I’m not too attached to the differences), mysteries, and online daily puzzles. Indie studio Gilded Rune Games, no novice to the casual scene, saw these three highly drift-compatible categories and thought, “someone should capitalise on all of them at once”.
Thus Dupery: A Game of Solo Deduction was born. Joining the likes of Murdle and Clues by Sam is a grid-based puzzle game with hidden roles, stage gimmicks and plenty of deception. You play as a detective looking for the leader of the mysterious Syndicate, a crime network that seems to have every baddy and goon in town under its thumb.
Every character has a unique skill: for example, the Surgeon may kill a random person within a certain time frame, and the Artist will let you know which role the bad guys are pretending to be this round. All can either be telling the truth, lying, or being made to lie, forcing the player to rely on an ever more complex set of context clues.
Four categories of persons of interest exist, half “good” (arresting them will cost you reputation, but letting them die on you is fine) and half “evil” (must be put away for the round to be won, by any means necessary).
There are three stages where this madness can unfold. In order of unlocking, they are the Office, full of suspects whose skills depend on how long you take to solve a case; the Casino, ruled by the almighty poker chips, which are spent with most actions and determine the length of your investigation; and the Docks, where even a seemingly successful round can go down the drain if you don’t have the fuel to make it back home.
It’s a sound structure all around. The place where Dupery falters, though, is its randomly generated nature. Unlike the daily mystery puzzles mentioned above, which must always lead to a clear-cut solution, sometimes the layers of deception thrown at the player by the deceitful roles are so thick, it ends up coming down to pure guesswork. I should also not discount the possibility that I’m thick. Trust me, it crossed my mind many a time — but it does seem to be a real design flaw, as Steam reviews inform me I’m not alone.
I must also say I wasn’t very charmed by the soundtrack. I’m usually a sucker for a good saxophone, but the ones employed here struck me as more grating in their high pitch than smooth and noir-like. The visual design, on the other hand, hits like nothing else, all grayscale except for key information.
You can also play detective even more stereotypically by building a little corkboard of clues, connecting suspects and making notes. I mostly used the pen to mark down any confirmed roles, and it was a handy option to have.
Dupery: A Game of Solo Deduction might be a fun diversion for a few rounds, but even with the player’s own wits, it may be hard to find a run that goes very far. Unfortunately, I might just keep sticking to the ol’ dailies.
Dupery was played on PC using a code provided by the publisher.
