Detective of the Dead

About the Game

Detective of the Dead is a narrative adventure game with RPG and cozy cooking elements in which you are a dead detective in the colorful Mexican afterworld solving cases and puzzles - together with your magic dog Xolo.

The afterlife can be hard, especially when you’re juggling working undercover as a cook by day to get clues and then use those by night to find your killer. You have time to solve that case until the Day of the Dead, when the dead can go to the world of the living - because you want to save your family from being killed as well. This gets more complicated once you realize that your killer may be connected to a conspiracy to upend that upcoming Día de los Muertos.

Work and manage the cozy Taco Stand by day, then solve supernatural mysteries at night!

Let’s Taco About It!

Whip up traditional, delicious recipes for your customers… some might be suspects! Often you need to find or buy the ingredients first. Your grandma Lupita knows how to make the best Tacos and helps you. The tastier you make your Tacos, the happier your customers will be… and the more they will spill the beans! You need those clues to progress in your case. And their Calavera coins - for buying things, bribing and more of those things a detective does.

Investigate the Clues

Pursue the clues gathered by day to uncover the real story by night. You’ll switch back and forth between Alejandro and trusty pup Xolo, each one of you has special abilities, that help exploring the colorful underworld, solving puzzles, tracking suspects, finding missing items and more, all to stop the plot to ruin Día de los Muertos, save your family and stop the gang!

• Single Player (a local Coop mode is planned)

• Semi-open 3D world handcrafted full of life (well, dead NPCs)

• 15 hand-drawn key NPCs for the key case and more for the Sidequests - all with their unique story.

• Top-Down perspective

• 2 core game-loops: cozy cooking + detective investigating with dialogues and puzzles

• ca. 7-10 hours of gameplay with a main quest and lots of side quests.

• In-game hint system

• Official Currency: Calavera coins

• Different endings based on your decisions in the game

• Unique soundtrack for each of the levels and scene specific

• Depending on the location and event, different music themes and pieces of music will support the plot, tension and atmosphere of the game. Music genres that represent both currently popular and timeless regional Mexican music styles as well as old indigenous music repertoires are taken up and reinterpreted.

• Authentic Mexican mini-games incl. Piñatas shooting, Lotería (a bit of bingo), Papel picado & more.

• Release for PC / Steam / Steamdeck (planned also is Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox)

• Voice Over in English (German, Spanish& others planned)

• Translation into English, German, Spanish (more planned)

Things in the afterworld are a bit different than in the world of the living. And it's not just these ancient god's powers, that are part of the game.

As you might know from Coco, the film, on the Day of the Dead every Dead can travel to the world of the living – but they can only do it if they have Cempasuchil, that nice orange flower of power. And the more you have, the longer you can stay with the living. That’s what made Cempasuchil the unofficial currency in the afterworld. So if someone steals all the Cempasuchil from everyone, this would ruin the Día de los Muertos, as no one will travel to the living. But why would someone steal so much of it - to do what with it? In any case the Dead clearly have a problem. And you are their best chance to solve it.

Depending on your decisions the outcome will change for the better or worse. We hope you can solve the BIG CASE and make sure the Dead can go to the world of the Living on the Día de los Muertos. And you too, so that you can prevent the killing of your family and capture the gang-boss.

Thanks for the support of the prototype: