Detective Guard My Secret Review

You play as a small-time detective and are introduced to three women at a bar. They need your help and you choose a specific drink to begin the first case. You will undertake all cases eventually, so the order does not seem to matter. The #1 case involved a stalker, #2 focused on a power struggle at a company with advanced tech, and #3 dealt with a depressed actress. All cases are quite interesting, with twists and clandestine activities. Each one is roughly movie length. When you add the prologue and conclusion chapters, the first-run will take about 7 hours.

While investigating, you are helped by your girl-Friday assistant, Kitty, who contacts you via phone and occasionally shows up. There is also the bar owner who acts as a narrator or life counselor that summarizes cases and poses meaningful questions with a calming voice. In between chapters, you sometimes use a desktop interface for emails, messages, viewing pictures, and checking surveillance footage. This interface helps to give the game a distinct feel, but it could have been used more for clue hunting. All of the above helps the game maintain rock solid cohesion.

Each case features two leading women, and both are romance options. This creates an intriguing conundrum: your role as a detective may conflict with your attraction. Do you do what is right or what one of them will like? Don’t forget, they might not be telling the truth. After aligning yourself with one of the leading ladies, the timeline fractures. Each woman has a dedicated chapter that eventuates into two main endings. These might come back to bite you in the concluding chapter. Some lead to a nice romance scene, others might floor you with something confronting or sad. The game is definitely not afraid to lead you up the garden path. With these branching choices, it will take about 12 hours to see everything*.

*The bad news is that your first decisions are permanent. Before you run off screaming, you can still revisit the timeline and view nearly all alternate branches. All the good and bad endings for the six women are viewable. So what actually is locked away? One bonus scene with Kitty requires high justice. And your choices will give you one of three different finales regarding the commonality between the cases. Locking these few scenes away is disappointing but it could be worse.

All the eight main actresses do a fantastic job, mostly because of the narrative depth. A few of them have been in similar games, including the alluring bar owner (Customized Girlfriend) and the Chairman’s daughter (Heart of the Influencer). With the precise structure, all eight get their fair share of screen time. While there is a lot of detective drama, it is also quite funny too.

From a technical perspective, the dialogue is unfortunately inconsistent with roughly 60% of it being ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) and the rest being wonderful live audio. Also, while there are major branching paths, the game needed more dialogue options and small choices to provide regular player engagement. Ultimately this is worth getting if you like romance FMVs that have deep stories, akin to Game of Fate 2, Echo Flare, and Vanity Fair: The Pursuit.