Dr. Darley and the Case of the Deboned Children

In spite of your advancements in the medical field, there are still illnesses out there that do not seem to have a cure or an explanation. Hence, even if most medical conditions can be treated or cured nowadays, there’s still a chance you might develop some kind of sickness that baffles the doctors. Thankfully, such cases are very rare, and there are other, more immediate things to worry about in your day-to-day life.

Dr. Darley and the Case of the Deboned Children is a visual novel in which you follow the exploits of a famous doctor by the name of Dr. Antony Darley, who is known for his ability to find cures and treatments for a variety of strange diseases. At the moment, the game is mostly a kinetic adventure, which means that you get to watch the events unfold without much control over what’s happening.

It all begins when Dr. Darley is called to investigate a weird illness in a small mining town, where children appear to lose their bones in their sleep. Since the game takes its inspiration from the likes of Sherlock Holmes, there’s a fair bit of investigating to do along the way. As it turns out, the disease is not as natural as the villagers think, since a criminal might be behind the whole thing.

The writing is very important in a visual novel, especially since in this one you mostly have to sit and watch it unfold. Thankfully, the writer did a very good job in terms of dialog and plot progression, and you can actually feel the tension rising as the characters go deeper into the mystery. Granted, this is not the complete adventure yet, so not everything is resolved by the end.

The characters are nicely designed and quite charismatic, and you can tell that a lot of work went into the artwork itself and the background. The colors may appear a bit faded, but that’s because the color scheme is in tune with the overall atmosphere. At this point there is no music and no voice acting, but these things are planned for future updates, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the project.

When it’s all said and done, Dr. Darley and the Case of the Deboned Children is not very interactive, but it has the spark needed to ignite your imagination and keep you intrigued all the way through. Hence, we can only hope that the full version is going to be just as fun and well-written as this prototype.