An interesting RPG-Puzzle game known as Deca Police is coming later this year. It puts players in the shoes of Harvard, a special investigator who wants to use any means necessary in order to solve the crimes of the city of Broadstone. Deca Police was announced as part of the February 8 Nintendo Direct, and is developed by Level-5.
The Special Investigations Unit that Harvard and his party are a part of are able to use an immersive simulation known as the Decasim that houses the memories of every past crime. In the Decasim, it seems fans will be made find clues at crime scenes by simulating them as a puzzle. As the game is developed by Level-5, fans can trust that the cases that they'll solve will be challenging with the studio's history of working on games like the Professor Layton series.
However, the trailer for the new RPG shows that not every case will be a matter of finding the culprit in the simulated world and then capturing them outside. Combat is mixed in-between the investigative portions of Deca Police, and those fights seemingly happen both inside the Decasim and out. As a result, some strange circumstances may pop up to hinder the efforts of Harvard and his companions, including Harvard being changed into a cat inside the virtual world by a mysterious hacker character.
While fans primarily play as Harvard, it seems that they'll be able to pick and choose which member of the party will be the one tasked with different parts of the investigation. Each of them serve their own specific role in the case, with party members being skilled in forensics, profiling, general logic, and more. On top of that, players can swap between controlling three members of the party during turn-based combat. Deca Police shows the turn order on the right side of the screen, much like similar RPGs like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth.
The trailer focuses on gameplay to entice future players, but not much was given in terms of the game's story. However, the characters bicker among each other, with plenty of comments being made towards how headstrong Harvard is to humorous effect. It seems that more details will be shown in the coming months as the game is scheduled to be released later this year for the Nintendo Switch, as well as PS4 and PS5.
The announcement of Deca Police comes after Level-5 had stated that it was working on a completely new IP. It's hard to say if Deca Police is this new Level-5 IP in specific just yet, but at the very least, fans of the studio have a new interesting RPG to look forward to later this year.
Deca Police is currently scheduled to be released sometime in 2023 for PS4, PS5, and Switch.