About the project
Detektif Batavia is a 2D point-and-click detective game set in Batavia in 1926. Its first case, The Clock Shop Theft, has players investigate the disappearance of the antique De Zwaan clock from the display case of the Waktoe Emas clock shop in Pasar Baroe — even though the display case is intact and no door was forced.
The game deliberately doesn't do the thinking for the player. Important clues are never highlighted: players have to inspect locations, compare testimonies, refute witnesses with the right evidence, and connect clues on the deduction board until they can write the closing report.
All illustrations are drawn in code as SVG, and the case content is separated from the game engine so new cases can be written without touching the engine. The game is plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with automated tests that play the case from start to finish.
Key features
- Investigation without highlights, with layered inspection (desk → drawer → letter)
- Evidence-driven dialogue: the right evidence breaks a lie, the wrong one makes witnesses defensive
- A tiered deduction board with several clue paths for each conclusion
- Item combinations, a progressively revealed map, an automatic journal, and tiered hints
- Normal and Easy modes, with progress saved automatically in the browser
- Code-drawn SVG illustrations and automated tests with jsdom
Releases
There is no official release for this project yet. The latest code is always available in the GitHub repository.