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A Case Worth Sketching
At IGDX 2025, among the sea of familiar genres, a quieter kind of mystery drew attention — one not solved with guns or swords, but with a pencil. Linework, the debut project from Indonesian indie team Overly Underqualified, places players in the shoes of a forensic artist in 1990s Shanghai.
It’s a detective game where observation is your weapon, and drawing becomes the bridge between truth and deception.
“There are a lot of detective games,” says Bryan, one of the four developers. “But most of them are Western — Sherlock Holmes, noir settings, or futuristic cases. We wanted something grounded in Asia, in a time that still feels real.”
Drawing Out the Truth
In Linework, players act as a forensic sketch artist piecing together each case through testimony and intuition. The interface evokes a bureaucratic realism inspired by Papers, Please: drag words from witness statements, match contradictions, and compile case files.
But the real twist lies in its drawing mechanic. Using clues gathered from conflicting testimonies, players must sketch a suspect’s face — not just by clicking presets, but by literally assembling defining features like long noses, big ears, or heavy eye bags.
“Not everyone can draw,” Bryan laughs. “So we designed the suspects to have clear, memorable features that anyone can piece together. The challenge is in interpreting the witness correctly.”
Each chapter builds its own standalone mystery, yet threads into an overarching story — the main character’s hunt for their wife’s killer. Get a case wrong, and consequences ripple through future chapters. “You can absolutely catch the wrong person,” Bryan confirms. “There are repercussions later — it’s part of the realism.”
A Game of Contradictions
Beyond drawing, players can perform cross-checking, comparing conflicting witness accounts — like one claiming a suspect wore a red hat, another saying black. Clicking both phrases opens deeper questioning, leading to new revelations or red herrings.
The system turns testimony into an interactive puzzle, letting players feel like actual investigators, not passive observers. “You can only move the story forward by solving cases yourself,” Bryan says. “That sense of player improvement — of actually learning how to investigate — is core to our design.”
Narratively, Linework blends the grounded with the personal, echoing inspirations like Ace Attorney for structure and Detective Conan for tone. Its quiet intensity comes from tension, not spectacle — a study of how fragile truth becomes when filtered through memory and interpretation.
Building a Mystery, Brick by Brick
The team of Overly Underqualified is small — just four friends now spread across universities. “We’ve been working day and night for the past month,” Bryan admits. “It’s exhausting, but seeing people interested at IGDX makes it worth it.”
They plan for five chapters, with a 2027 release window, and are actively seeking a publisher. The team’s optimism and dedication mirror the spirit of their game: patient, methodical, and quietly ambitious. As Linework continues development, one thing is clear — in an age of loud blockbusters, sometimes the most gripping mysteries are those that unfold in pencil strokes and crossed-out notes.
A demo build of the game is currently available via itch.io.
