The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker

Good concept but practically, caused more frustration than fun. Free text input made it a game of finding which keywords trigger the answers.

I wanted to like it but could not.

This FMV novel is the most enigmatic experience I've ever had. It’s incredibly gripping and continuously leaves you questioning everything: Who is the killer? Do your patients possess mysterious powers? Or are we the crazy ones?
The performances are superb, and with a sequel scheduled for 2025, I'm really looking forward to playing more games from this developer in the near future.

This may not be a popular review given the positive reviews....however I feel the points I make are justified.

IMODD is a very ambitious game, an FMV where you actually type in the questions. The problem here is you have to type them in the right way, and another thing is it says youve asked a question already, even though the one youre asking is completely different to the one you asked before. Example "do you like the beach?" , was a question I asked, then I asked "do you live near the beach?" and "how far is the beach?" it stated I already asked that question......but "do you like the beach" is hardly the same as "do you live near the beach?" or "how far is the beach" both of which are relevant questions. Also the hints are often ludicrous "Do you believe in Valhalla" When we werent talking about anything remotely relevant to it. Then theres my main gripe.......a hint will come up stating "why did you go out for drinks with doctor dekker" When I had already asked "did dekker ever take you for drinks"? to which she replied "I dont drink".......but then the game hints to ask "why did you go out for drinks with doctor dekker"..and she replied with something else, even though earlier I asked and every time I tried asking again it stated I already asked it....the immersion is completely broken.

A really bad one is when she states "I like that club because they have cheap vodka shots" ..... later she states she doesnt drink....so theres a comtradiction and I stated "why did you say you dont drink but you go for cheap vodka shots?" and no matter how I said it, it stated I had already asked that question.

The game is a good idea.....but heavily flawed

Despite the majority of players enjoying this game (with 83% of reviews being positive by the time I am writing this), I couldn’t bring myself to like it, let alone enjoy it. The slow progression was a major turn-off for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a horrible game, there’s definitely a great concept here. I appreciate the idea of free text input, but unfortunately, it just doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Only very specific words seem to trigger responses, and the conversations end up feeling more like talking to Cleverbot than an actual engaging dialogue.

It’s just not my cup of tea, which is why I have to give it a thumbs down. The potential is there, but the execution didn’t click for me.

Game would have been really good if you didn't havr to use hints because if how difficult it is to type questions

The game is spectacular. I have finished act one and started part of the two but I'm getting more and more hooked. The characters are very unique and the story is crazy. Despite being a little annoying to play it with the steamdeck because of the keyboard issue, I don't care because I'm very hooked on the story. Highly recommended.

In addition, the way in which they have generated the clues is wonderful, either repeating the scene of an answer to detect clues writted with italic letters or questions to answer with yes or no in bold and having the clue of the asterisks to continue investigating around this thread.

Edit: I’ve noticed that sometimes u need to reask the question with differents words (example: question using pics did not give me an answer but it did using photos) or u need to rewrite the question using another kind of words that do not interfere with another answer and sometimes this is a bit annoying.

Edit 2: I must admit that I have used a save so as not to have to repeat the game infinite times for certain achievements, despite the fact that in each attempt the killer can change and that controlling sanity creates different endings.

Despite everything this game is a d*mn masterpiece.

Very good idea. Very good acting. Very disappointing resolution.
Even though, if the sequel is implemented better, I'm ready to give it a try.

A nice mix of FMV and conversational adventure, so if you like those kinds of games, or are curious about them, you'll probably enjoy this one. The acting is REALLY good; each character has their own, unique personality and secrets you'll have to uncover. I was totally immersed in the mystery at hand, and was a blast to try to uncover what twisted thing was going on here. At some points, as in any conversational adventure, I failed because I wasn't writing EXACTLY what the game wanted, but it is very forgiving in giving you help and letting you advance through the main plot line without getting completely stuck. Really enjoyable, but you have to be interested in this things, it's not for everyone.

References to a lot of Lovecraft's short stories.
Good acting.
Good story.
Very nice.

The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is a solid detective game with many possible outcomes. I primarily bought this game because I am a therapist and I love detective games so I felt that it was a nice blend of my career and my interests. I'm always leery of FMV games, but this is very well done. Dr. Dekker doesn't struggle with phrasing and will give the player a lot of leeway with how you ask questions. You can even be playful with it. At one point I decided to quote a scene from the Big Lebowski and I had some pretty comical results. "Do you see what happens, Larry? Do you see what happens when you..." The bottom line here, you will get a lot of replay value and the characters, while as a counselor I find them insufferable (Jaya), as a gamer I find them fun to explore. The achievements can be tedious so if you're an achievement hunter, beware. The story is solid and the game is a nice spin on detective games. I'd give this a 3.5/5 in total.

👍

I really wanted to like this and it's clear a lot of love and hard work went into this, but there certain things that made this really unenjoyable for me to play.

Firstly, the UI is pretty terrible. It can be difficult to see which of the questions are marked with green asterisks and the cursor is tiny with a color that's really difficult to see.

Secondly, while I don't mind the gameplay format of asking questions, there aren't enough logic trees on what responses you can trigger. Huge spoiler for the last chapter, but I triggered the responses for a character saying we "had fun" in her home last night in the middle of a line of questioning about her describing that same situation as a rape. Her tone shifted radically between the two responses because it was clear i was supposed to do all the "had fun" dialogue first, but missed a couple because they weren't required. It made the scene especially icky in a way that I don't think was intended. There are other times that tone shifted rapidly or things felt out of order, but this was the most egregious example due to the subject matter.

Finally, I didn't know going into this game that the killer is randomized. If I had known that, I likely wouldn't have bought it. Randomized mysteries are really hard to pull off due to the amount of work in creating dialogue trees, and I don't think it was done well here. The killer for my playthrough was someone who had opportunity, but no real motive. I guess the motive was he was mad at Dekker, but... so was basically everyone. This might have been excusable if the individual character plotlines felt like they went anywhere or had any kind of resolution, but they don't in my opinion.

I feel bad because I do think this game could have been good, but instead I found it really frustrating.

I can't fix them and that's okay

I had so much fun with this game! It did take me a little bit to kinda get my bearings and figure out how to get the conversation flowing naturally, but once I did that I was all in, and found it pretty immersive and engrossing. Loved the characters, the acting, and the stories, and my god were some moments unsettling! Totally reccommend it if this seems like your thing!

Great, Full Motion Video game about mental health.