Keep Clicking to Help This Private Dick Dig Up Dirt

Unbeknownst, by ShadeJackrabbit, is a sort of mash-up of the endless clicker genre (think Cow Clicker or Cookie Clicker) and a stylish, pulpy noir detective story. You play as a PI who gets a case—a dog has been pup-napped!—and to solve the crime, you need to click on your notepad. A lot.

Clicking gets you leads, and leads sometimes bring you to new scenes, furthering the narrative as it descends into a wonderfully unhinged horror story. The game's description is poetic in its simplicity:

And what a rabbit hole it is, my friends.

There's something wonderful about the way Unbeknownst comments on gameplay mechanics that obscure the hell out of their real-world analogue. "Detective work" is often represented in games as finding clues in a 3D or 2D space, or ordering objects or photographs like a puzzle. They appear to have some real-world connection to the real thing, but honestly, you might as well be clicking on a notepad hundreds of times, as leads and "clues" stack up on your quest tracker.

Wonderful and at least a little bit hilarious. Unbeknownst has a sly sense of humor that hooked me right away with its dopey dog-nap storyline and goes to wonderful places by the end. It's surely worth all of the clicks.

You can download the game or play in-browser for free on its itch.io page.