"You answer the phone in a hard boiled manner. You explain to the woman gruffly that you'd love to help her out, sweetheart, but you're up to your neck in all this weird puzzle shit. You hang up."
Problem Sleuth is the third webcomic under the MS Paint Adventures banner, written by Andrew Hussie, and was arguably the one which first brought Hussie and his work into the limelight. Written and presented in the style of an ersatz text/point-and-click adventure game, it details the antics of three especially hardboiled detectives — Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick, and Pickle Inspector — in their attempts to get out of their offices, all the while working to aid the turmoil-stricken Kingdoms of the Weasels, Clowns, Hogs and Elves, and to foil the dastardly plots of Mobster Kingpin.While initially presented as a take on the Film Noir genre, its strength is in how it parodies numerous point-and-click adventure and JRPG mechanics and tropes, and in its ever-increasingly complicated story which still neatly ties up all loose ends. Much like its successor Homestuck, it also demonstrated a very steady level of Art Evolution up until the end, evolving from relatively crude static panels to featuring increasingly complex Animation Bump panels depicting Super Move Portrait Attacks, Summon Magic and Wave Motion Guns galore.Warning: High chance of spoilers. Proceed with caution.
Amateur Sleuth: All three protagonists, allegedly: they never actually do any sleuthing.
Anachronism Stew: Despite being "vaguely Prohibition-era", characters will play board games invented in the 50s, paint ethnically diverse murals of the 90s, and use computers to search GameFAQs.
And the Adventure Continues: "There's a problem. And you'll be damned if you aren't gonna be the fellas to sleuth it."
The story is manifest out of building previous one-off gags into stable pillars of the game world. From the FAQ:
For instance, the seemingly idiotic and highly ignorable command "Build fort out of desk" lead not only to a short-term humorous payoff, but to an entire imaginary universe paradigm, and in a way, a whole gaming system which appeared to exist from the beginning, but only became manifest through the command.
Chekhov's Gun: Many, including just about every named battle command, but the one with the longest time to fire and biggest effect would have to be Problem Sleuth's CANDY CORN.
You desperately bargain with Death, challenging him to any game you can think of for the fair damsel's life. CLUE, CONNECT FOUR, UNO, BATTLESHIP, SUDOKU, well ok not SUDOKU, but how about SNAKES AND LADDERS, that's fun, or what about HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS god you LOVE HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS.
You're here for two things: to fucking ruin someone's shit, and to play a friendly game of make-believe.
AND YOU'RE ALL OUT OF IMAGINATION.
Also, in an extra:
You're here for two things: to rain unspeakable devastation down on the forces of evil, and to flail your limbs about in a playful manner.
AND YOU HAVE NO ROOM IN YOUR FORT TO FLAIL ABOUT WHATSOEVER.
Chicken Walker: Candy mecha is a sentient example. In fact, even after the head is detached so that it can fly off to fight the villain, the legs still are used for various purposes.
Don't forget the first beast the party slew, which Problem Sleuth then mounted the legs of and walked around in.
Closed Circle: The entirety of Problem Sleuth. It gets to be a BIG (imaginary) circle.
Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Five separate times Problem Sleuth tried to call forth the "righteous fires of charisma" of Sepulchritude, and everytimehewasstopped. After it is finally used, he turns grey and beaten and, greatly weakened, falls into BHMK's Event Horizon.
Dissimile: "the candy mecha's legs scramble around like a chicken whose head decapitated itself and flew into the sky to fight a demonic mob boss."
Distaff Counterpart: Both played straight and played with: Each of the three detectives eventually had spirit quests, where they were psychically linked with female counterparts of themselves. They later meet the counterparts.
Directly as described on the site:
PS, AD and PI each have a lady counterpart, in accordance with deep seated mythology that dictates that any man secretly wishes to have sex with a female version of himself (re: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mickey/Minnie, etc.) HD is PS's counterpart, NB is PI's, while AD is his own counterpart because he has a very poor imagination. So that's one duplicate AD, the one with the wig/helmet.
Dividing By Zero: All the damn time. Their favorite method seems to be ramming a window through itself.
Fight Woosh: Going outside with a window unplugged would make the world become metaphorical for a moment. And then a Beast appears!
Fighter, Mage, Thief: Team Sleuth consists of an easily-riled stocky brawler, an imagination-wielding loon, and a dagger-throwing, smooth-talking speedy bastard.
Additionally, the whores collected by NB and HD become this.
Later, the key becomes a gun, double subverting the command to retrieve the gun-it happens, just not right away. It could could also be more Foreshadowing concerning the plot. Think about it-the key turning into gun could parallel shit getting real to shit IS real.
The Gods Must Be Lazy: GPI will only respond to the command "Fondly regard creation." He actually does do two things, but those things are create the universe via Stable Time Loop with the help of the temporally replicating Pickle Inspectors and sewing the universe back together when it is torn apart. Never once does he directly help the protagonists.
Good Bad Bugs: Every real weapon has a tendency to not be a weapon. invoked
The Infinite Summation Honeybee Professor peppers his speech with bee-related puns ("Avoid 1:1 duplications which will lead to unwelcome 100% matter accretions, and you'll keep hiving a honey of a time!") until he gets muted.
Very well, bee that way!
Asshole!
And then he gets right back at it once he gets unmuted.
Once we have completed building your Impetus Comb, and all of its Jocose Honey has ripened and is sweet as can bee, that is when the fun beegins!!!
Interdimensional Travel Device: There are two ways to travel between the real world and the world of imagination: Either climbing through a window, or entering a fort and imagining really hard (booze helps with the latter).
Interface Screw: The whole keys/gun thing mentioned above in Gas Lighting. Each of the three main characters and their female counterparts have a similar problematic weapon. It's supposedly a bug in the game that gets exploited for laughs and frustration. See also You Can't Get Ye Flask below.
Kevlard: Ace Dick's variation on the Auto-Parry technique involves taking the attack in the gut. Zombie Ace Dick extends this to taking attacks in his rotting body as a whole.
Also, some characters share a common limit break bar.
Locked Door: Almost all of them, except, ironically, Death's door.
Locked in a Room: Problem Sleuth and Ace Dick start out bitterly hating each other and both locked in their respective offices and the game ends when they finally escape.
Marathon Boss: The battle with DMK lasts for about half the duration of Problem Sleuth.
The Merch: For a $20 donation, Andrew Hussie would draw a short comic of any command the donator wished (until increasing demand forced him to stop.) Past ones can be seen here. Also, there are several prints and shirts, and a Sepulchritude hoodie, still available at Topatoco.
Mighty Glacier: Pickle Inspector's "Tootsie Roll Frankenstein" transformation. Twice as strong as an actual glacier, but twice as slow, too!
Mind Screw: It can become increasingly difficult to tell where (and when) everybody is. Summed up in this line: "You're not totally sure, but you think this means there are now three Ace Dicks running around."
Naughty Tentacles: While we never see actual naughtiness, the text suggests that pretty much any entity with tentacles does this. Particularly unpleasant with DMK... whose tentacles have thorns.
Nice Hat: If Problem Sleuth's regular hat doesn't qualify, the Admiral's Hat certainly does.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: DMK and BHMK never would have formed as they did if not for Fiesta Ace Dick's actions.
No Fourth Wall: On a couple of occasions the characters look up an FAQ for the game on GameFAQs and input cheat codes to bypass certain parts of the 'game'.
Also, at one point in the game, Ace Dick beats someone to death with a stat meter.
Also also, when DMK's final form starts generating additional life bars, Problem Sleuth starts physically attacking the life bars.
This is what being a hard boiled problem sleuth is all about. It's about being a strong, silent type, oozing with confidence, charisma, and other fine qualities such as not being trapped in your own office. It's about having a working phone. A real desk. Not one, but two steak dinners. And some hysterical broad on the line, yackin' about some fella she's got troubles with. It's always the same thing with dames. You comfort yourself in your sublime fantasy by now and then saying things into the phone such as, "Now calm down a second, toots..." and "Hey, take it easy, sweetheart. I can barely understand a word you're sayin'..."
Puppet Gun: Pickle Inspector aims the CLOCK TOWER SNIPER CANNON via the SNIPER RIFLE.
Reality Warper: Pickle Inspector, in the Imagination realm
Recap Episode: Two of them (the first one by Death, The second one by the Devil), and a third one on the wiki.
Red Herring: Several items are presented to the reader as possible scopes for the SNIPER RIFLE before Pickle Inspector finally gets one.
The Swain makes a valiant play for his eyepiece, which in no way shape or form could ever be used in conjunction with a sniper rifle, and possibly could serve as one of numerous red herrings to this effect.
Role-Playing Game Verse: All of the detectives and the Mobster Kingpin have (weirdly named) stats and hitpoints — towards the end more and more bizarre bonus powers also appear.
Imagination: Magic, intelligence, and bonus to power in Imaginary areas.
Pulchritude: Evasion and Diplomacy/Charisma.
Vim: Strength and Health.
Each also has a expendable item that temporarily boosts it much in the manner of potions. Imagination is boosted by alcohol, Pulchritude is boosted by candy, and Vim is boosted by hotsauce.
Early in the game Vim is boosted by coffee, so really any hot drink will do.
Rube Goldberg Device: A puzzle so particularly difficult that it's solved by loading a save state from a point after the puzzle is solved. It is later revealed that a time traveling Pickle Inspector did it.)
Running Gag: Items switching back and forth between weapons and completely unrelated objects (e.g. a revolver becoming keys or a chainsaw becoming lipstick), responding to characters attempting to ride something like a mechanical bull (at times something about to explode) with "Wow, what a fucking waste of time!" and weasels "flipping the fuck out".
Ace Dick punches X in the snout to establish superiority. Xhearst is particularly enamored by your rowdy, no-nonsense brand of ruffianism.
And of course: "Quickly retrieve arms from [X]." "You've already got arms, [another word for idiot]!"
"Throw hat down in disgust."
Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: "Complain that the MASS of the OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE is only thought to be 3x10^52kg. DMMK, at 100x10^100kg, weighs about thirty trillion trillion trillion trillion times MORE than the MASS of the OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE."
The bottom line is I just started rattling off numbers without even realizing how big I was making them.
A while ago I went back and changed the volume exponent, just so the number wouldn't indicate that he was almost infinitely tiny. I left the mass as it was, because I didn't think it mattered too much if it was just indicated as "VERY BIG".
Stout Strength: Ace Dick and his various forms, as well as Mobster Kingpin.
Strange Minds Think Alike: A command suggested switching hats with an enemy to disguise Problem Sleuth, but to no avail. Later, Mobster Kingpin does this successfully.
Theme Table: Each detective has a certain body type (which in turn are each associated with a type of food, a truck carrying that food, and a district of the city that is named after the makers of that food, a gentleman with some sort of optical accessory, and a room in the Sleazy Brothel in the sky), an office, something keeping them from escaping their office, a different kind of window/portal to the World of Imagination, a stat in which they excel, a standard weapon/key, a candy weapon, a type of candy armor, a Super Mode based on both a classic movie monster and type of candy, a Distaff Counterpart (each of which have their own weapon/other object, two of which get a weapon/object used in painting and a undergarment that warps their physical properties, and one of which is just a clone of one of the detectives wearing a wig), an ultimate move, and a non-human race they go on a quest for (each of which terrorizes another of the races somehow, and each of which has some kind of emissary and a champion that represents a Fantasy Character Class). Mobster Kingpin gets in on most of this as well.
Unusual Euphemism: All of Problem Sleuth's gun attacks are named for negotiation techniques-the longer and more complicated, the more powerful.
Useless Useful Spell: BELLY OF THE WHALE!!! Ace Dick's Operandi is basically an instant-KO move, swallowing the enemy whole . . . only problem is whenever its used its either completely ineffective or simply extorted and turned against him. The only time it DID work was when he used it to swallow himself.
I beg your pardon? I'm fairly sure that there's nothing resembling a thick-skinned, orange, and woody-stemmed gourd here. The very idea is as incredulous as it is silly.
Incidentally, Word Of God has stated in the published edition that he had no idea "get ye flask" was a reference to Homestar Runner.
is the third webcomic under the MS Paint Adventures banner, written by Andrew Hussie, and was arguably the one which first brought Hussie and his work into the limelight. Written and presented in the style of an ersatz text/point-and-click adventure game, it details the antics of three especially hardboiled detectives — Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick, and Pickle Inspector — in their attempts to get out of their offices, all the while working to aid the turmoil-stricken Kingdoms of the Weasels, Clowns, Hogs and Elves, and to foil the dastardly plots of Mobster Kingpin.While initially presented as a take on the Film Noir genre, its strength is in how it parodies numerous point-and-click adventure and JRPG mechanics and tropes, and in its ever-increasingly complicated story which still neatly ties up all loose ends. Much like its successor Homestuck, it also demonstrated a very steady level of Art Evolution up until the end, evolving from relatively crude static panels to featuring increasingly complex Animation Bump panels depicting Super Move Portrait Attacks, Summon Magic and Wave Motion Guns galore.
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