The DeTechTive

Description

*The DeTechTive* is presented in stunning SVGA and requires a double-speed CD-ROM drive and 16-bit sound card. Enjoy a short narrative FMV adventure starring your second favorite pixelated sleuth.

It's only a demo of what I had in mind for the "full game", but I hope it's enjoyable nonetheless. My biggest regret is the lack in sound effects and music for the most part.

100% Human-Made: No AI of any kind was used in the making of this game!

Playtime

About 5 minutes. I ran out of time to include more puzzles.

Features

- SVGA
- Full-Motion Video
- Puzzles involving old tech
- Classic golden-age adventure gameplay

How to play

Play with the mouse, a left-click means "interact" i.e. "do something", a right-click is for examining things. You can skip videos with [Esc]. If no video is playing, then [Esc] will end the game.

Controls

- *Left-Click* - interact
- *Right-Click* - examine
- *Esc* - skip video or quit at any time.
- *Alt+ENTER* to toggle full screen

Credits

Once again, a game by Phil Strahl a.k.a. Pixel Prophecy made in less than the 48hrs because I sacrificed almost 4 hours to appear on the DOS Game Club podcast and I had so much fun talking about the Tex Murphy games for some reason. I hope you still enjoy the game despite it being a bit bare-bones

Versions

- 1.0.0.0: Initial release
- 1.0.0.1: Fixed typo and a crash-bug
- 1.0.1.11: Post-Jam version with added voice acting and lots of refactoring under the hood: ► https://pixelprophecy.com/games/the-detechtive/downloads/ld60-the_detechtive_post-jam-version.zip

Comments8

UnidayStudio18 Oct 2026, 23:34

Just got the notification from Ludum Dare that you published the game and the first thing that went to my mind is: "can't wait for the video on this one!". Well done, Phil. I'll play here and have some fun now. 😃

Lomna19 Oct 2026, 19:26

Great effort Phil! Creating an FMV game in a 48 hour jam is an ambitious task. The lack of content is not surprising.

Phil Strahlauthor20 Oct 2026, 01:15

@unidaystudio: I recorded some clips at key moments in the making of this game, so you're good haha! Thank you so much!

@lomna: Thank you so much! Yeah, somehow I over-scoped. At last this time I didn't switch engines midway (but I was very close!) 🙈

INCD02120 Oct 2026, 09:36

PHIL... No Linux or web build? I want to play this!

- Sadness fills my mind. A dream shattered, never to come true. I hope someone will post a play-through for the enjoyment of us windo-phobes.

Hope you had fun creating it! 🦄

Chef20 Oct 2026, 13:05

The opening sax music sets the tone right away. Hard to find the tape without hints, but this idea made me want to shoot real video for my next jam project too. Great concept!

Phil Strahlauthor20 Oct 2026, 19:29

@incd021 I am so sorry! I really tried to get a HTML5 build ready after finishing the Windows submission but I keep having insurmountable problems because the browsers won't play the videos 😢 The format is correct but the autoplay protection somehow makes it impossible to queue them up like on desktop. I never thought that this would be such a problem, but I've been burned so many times by CORS and other protections... I'll keep playing around with it but I can't make any promises...

@chef Thank you for playing! And you definitely should, it was a lot of fun and it was much faster than drawing everything 😅

OadT21 Oct 2026, 14:21

I got lucky: It took me 3 minutes to find the tape, so I was able to enjoy the game a bit longer 😄

You did a great job at capturing the feel of 90s point and click adventures and I like that the game itself and its content reflect the theme. Also the saxophone music at the start was super fitting! Short but cool entry!

beareye21 Oct 2026, 19:32

I didn't expect cinematic videos in this game, but it was cool. Artstyle was really nice and I enjoyed the vibe. I wish there was more of this game! Well done

Other games by @philstrahl

★3.35

co-authored

★3.31

Bean There, Done That

★3.96

LD56