Artificial Detective was revealed during today’s Xbox Partner Preview, a ‘decopunk’ action adventure game coming that will be the debut game for Vivix – a studio comprised of artists that have worked across everything from Modern Warfare 2 and Control to Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.
Set in a largely robotic world, the game features AD 2846 as the protagonist, a robotic detective (who claims to be the best and only detective in the world), with two companions.Moqgli is a human girl who is a tech prodigy and will come in handy for the story with hacking, crafting, upgrading, and repairing, in addition to providing an emotional beat to the story. Then there’s the Dedicated Artificial Weaponized Guard, or the pretty obvious backronym D.A.W.G., who is a robodog that can provide support in combat and stealth encounters. The trio will travel across the Conglomerate North on a flying streetcar which acts as their hub between missions.
Speaking to Xbox Wire, Vivix’s CEO & Co-founder Ilya Kuzyuk said, “When you leave the streetcar, you explore a range of distinct biomes, including a futuristic Police Station, a hidden underground Corporate Lab, a RoboZoo, and more. It’s a game about improvising, surviving, and investigating, whether that means fighting, hacking, sneaking, or using the environment as a weapon. Artificial Detective is not just a robot action game – at its core, it’s a story-driven action-adventure about companionship, curiosity, and survival in a world where the rules have outlived the people they were built for. The emotional dynamic between AD, Mowgli, and D.A.W.G. is just as important to the experience as combat or exploration.”
Speaking of the streetcar, the trailer shows that even this isn’t an island of safety. They’re attacked by a strange robot that’s made out of transforming cubes. These are, Kuzyuk reveals, tied to one of the game’s main antagonists, known as Bishop. He said, “In our world, Bishop is a powerful, unstoppable robotic entity composed of multiple morphing cells known as Monks, and those modular, cube-like forms are part of that larger concept. They’re not random visual noise – they reflect the kind of unnatural, adaptive machine intelligence that has taken over parts of the city.”
The trailer showed off various approaches to exploring the world and fighting enemy robots. Whether using stealth to evade them, calling upon DAWG for a takedown, using explosives, or a pneumatic drill to attack larger enemies. Then, of course, there’s some actual detective work to go alongside.
It’s an interesting looking reveal, and one that we’ll definitely keep our eyes on with a projected launch in 2027.
Source: Xbox
This sounds like an exciting debut for Vivix! The concept of a ‘decopunk’ action adventure with robots has a lot of potential. Looking forward to seeing more about how the gameplay unfolds!