Beat Cop Preview

Beat Cop is a retro pixel art style point and click game by developer Pixel Crow. Set in Brooklyn during the 80’s, you play Jack Kelly, a disgraced detective who’s been demoted straight down to the position of a beat cop. Now you must help Jack Kelly clear his name while fighting the criminal underbelly of the city of Brooklyn!

On the streets of Brooklyn you need to clear goals that are given to you by your new boss, a boss who doesn't like you, or anyone for that matter: these are usually easy objectives like ticketing parking fines, clamping down on cars with illegal tyre treads and making sure no shifty people are lurking around doing any shoplifting. If the life of a beat cop isn’t that exciting for you then you’ll also be dealing with the Italian mafia, solving a murder and of course leaving the job every day with enough money to pay off your greedy ex-wife.

You play the game by clicking. Nothing more difficult than the old fashioned point and click. You make Jack move by clicking where you want him to go and he’ll walk, double clicking will make him run, using up his stamina bar (very quickly, dude needs to join a gym!), you click on a person to talk to them and you click on a door to enter the premises. You also have a collection of tools that you can use at the bottom of the screen: A radio to call headquarters, a ticket book that you click on then click on the vehicle you want to ticket, handcuffs to arrest people, a gun to subdue those who don’t want to be arrested and a notebook that tells you your objectives, your current stats and keeps you up to date with the latest news.It’s a very simple mechanic but could be made even more streamlined in the future by including hot keys for all the actions.

Everyday you’ll be given situations where you have to decide if you want to play the good cop and prosecute those breaking the law, or if you want to be making a little extra money on the side, take a few bribes to look the other or do a few jobs for the mafia. All good deeds do not go unpunished/rewarded though. Each decision will either increase or decrease certain meters. Giving someone a ticket despite them asking you not to or trying to bride you will increase your police rating, but will decrease your people rating. Doing a job for the mafia will increase your mafia rating but decrease your police rating, the rating system determining who’ll talk to you and what information they’re willing to give. Being a good cop might sound attractive, but may come at the cost of people not wanting to talk to you or give you any important information, so you have to think about what kind of cop you want to be and how desperate you are to try and clear your name.

Beat Cop is currently in pre-alpha, and while I did encounter a few crashes, the current build is extremely fun to play. While it has a simple game play it matches with the retro style graphics, accompanied with a light hearted (yet foul mouthed) humour gives the game a rustic charm that will have players falling in love with the game, I highly recommend people keep an eye on open for this on Steam.