Detective Hayseed – Hollywood

I liked this game. It's got most of the features of a good point and click adventure. The inventory having an active object marker when you press space is actually a major hint and makes the game a bit too easy imo. Otherwise it would be a good difficulty level.

Fun game. Funny and qwirky. But it was fun. I needed very little help getting through the game.

Detective Hayseed is a delightful journey back to the golden days of point-and-click adventures. The game puzzles and engaging storyline are a nostalgic nod to the classics that defined our childhood gaming experiences. It feels like revisiting an old friend from the past :-)

I would love to give this game a negative review,
but it's not a bad game,
just very mediocre.
It's actually the sixth entry in the "Polda" franchise, a series of Czech games about a bumbling detective. I'm Czech myself, but I'm writing this review in English because I think the English dubbed version is actually better than the original Czech dubbing. The main Czech voice actor for the protagonist can be annoying, but the English voice actor is surprisingly solid.
So, why is this game mediocre? There are two main reasons:
1) The story is basic and not very engaging.
2) The characters are equally basic and uninteresting.
The only thing that's truly impressive is the environments. The overall art style is probably the best in the series compared to the previous five installments. There’s a lot of variety in the settings—you'll visit the main character's house, his flying car, a Hollywood villa, a secret cave, the LA police station, Santa Monica beach, a lighthouse, Hollywood studios (including a sci-fi and wild west studio), and even the Oscars ceremony. These environments are the game's strongest feature. Unfortunately, the main gameplay revolves around talking to bland characters, and there’s far too much dialogue that could have been cut.
There are also some minigame puzzles: a chess puzzle, assembling a statue, powering on a PC by connecting lines to the CPU, and my favorite—a movie-themed minigame where you match pictures to the correct movies (e.g., a picture of Indiana Jones goes with a whip, a picture of Trinity goes with green code, and a picture of Titanic connects to an iceberg etc.). It's a shame there weren’t more of these minigames because some were actually pretty fun.
As for the story, there’s not much to say. I’ve beaten the game five or six times, and I still can’t remember anything specific about it. It’s just a generic detective story, but with a Hollywood/movie theme, which adds some flavor.
Along your journey through LA, you’ll encounter caricatures of famous people like Rafael Nadal, Johnny Depp, and Jack Nicholson. However, interacting with these characters is a very small part of the game. It’s a shame there weren’t more of them, as most of the game is spent talking to generic NPCs like a receptionist, a gardener, a couple of policemen, a drugged-out woman, a security guard, and a generic Native American character.
If you search for "Polda" on Steam, you’ll find other entries in the franchise, but they’re not in English. This game is the only exception. It was the developers' attempt to bring the series to an international audience, but I don’t think it was successful, as the newest entry, "Polda 7," is once again only available in Czech.
Now, about the achievements. There are some easy ones that you’ll unlock just by playing the game naturally, but then there are the speedrun achievements, which are quite tough. You’ll need to memorize every single action to progress quickly—really quickly. The game usually takes around five hours to beat, but the hardest speedrun achievement requires you to complete it in ONLY ONE HOUR! What I did was find the world record speedrun on YouTube, write down all the interactions the player made, and then use my notes to replicate the playthrough. It’s a pretty dumb achievement in my opinion, as you’ll have to skip all the dialogue, making the game even less interesting, but it was still a decent challenge.
The last achievement I needed was the "walk 10 km" achievement, which was an absolute grind. I beat the game five or six times and only walked about 3 km. It’s stupid because you can teleport in the game by double-clicking on a spot on the screen. There’s no need to "walk slowly" when you can just teleport, so this achievement is literally a complete time-waster. To get it, I just went to the "Hollywood villa" area, which is the flattest and widest space in the game, and walked left to right for about an hour and a half. If the achievement had asked for "100 km," I would’ve given the game a negative review. Despite being grindy, it wasn’t that bad overall.
My final verdict: It’s a mediocre game. If you don’t expect much and are aware of its flaws, you might enjoy it. But if you skip it, you’re not missing out on anything. However, if you’re learning Czech and want to practice through a video game, this might be a good option. Just keep in mind that the main character speaks often in a Moravian dialect.

+