'That is why both the fox and the mosquito are afraid of grass fires.'
     – The Fox Sister (adapted by Heinz Insu Fenkl).

Played with BertKnot.

A tragedy of Western orientalism is that it obliterates the subversive capacity of artistic genres by imposing fantastical representations on cultural identities. In the late nineteenth century, East Asia received a new tradition of detection fiction from Europe, with Sherlock Holmes as its most famous representative: it was seen as an expression of literary modernity. Known as tantei shōsetsu in Japan or zhēntàn xiǎoshuō in China, this trend contrasted with domestic detective fiction – in China, Judge Bao gave rise to a vast number of stories, often adapted into classical operas. In this literary tradition, the case serves as a pretext for moral and ethical lessons: the almightiness of the magistrate is used to guide segments of society in the right direction, and the stories thus appear as a cross-section of Chinese social structure.

     Some considerations on the East Asian detective fiction

The development of detective fiction at the turn of the 20th century should be interpreted as the emergence of a new rhetorical tool capable of highlighting the ills of a society. The predominance of urban settings illustrates a concern with modernity, and the various stories often seek to rectify ethical codes considered archaic through Western science and rationality. In other words, this new detective fiction is a means of expressing a concern for civilisation and enlightenment (bunmei-kaika, in Japan). In Korea, the reception of this genre was filtered through Japanese production, which was widely exported to the mainland during the colonial period. The overthrow of the centuries-old Joseon dynasty contributed to unprecedented social unrest, and the development of the modern press made it possible to serialise the daily crimes that plagued the period. Japanese colonial rule and its violence provided further themes for detective fiction: the emphasis on human relationships in Kim Nae-sung's novels reflects the unease of social hierarchies reinforced by the domination of the metropolis over its colony. [1]

This historical tradition explains why Asian detective stories, even in today's plurality of genres, are generally concerned with social commentary. In Japanese cultural production, the shakai-ha gives voice and agentivity to minorities and marginalised people. Paranormasight (2023) perfectly illustrates these issues, while featuring a supernatural setting, as women are put in the spotlight. It is therefore not surprising that the game is primarily a panorama of female experiences, often invisible and untold. All these cultural considerations are inoperative in the case of Suhoshin and foreshadow its structural problems, as it is a French game. According to its writer, the choice of medieval Korea was made on a whim, only because he is passionate about the country. [2]

     Childish writing and an incoherent mystery

The player assumes the role of Yuri, a young officer who has just completed his training in Hanyang. After returning to his home village, he is confronted with a series of violent murders. It is up to him, with the permission of the village leaders, to investigate and unmask the culprit while protecting his relatives. After an agonisingly slow exposition, seemingly written to artificially introduce Korean vocabulary, the murders begin and Yuri begins to investigate. Whereas the old detective stories featured powerful magistrates who conducted the autopsies and evidence-gathering themselves, Suhoshin's main focus is on the mediocrity of his leading character. Incapable of asking the right questions or conducting a proper investigation, he misses obvious clues that could have prevented many deaths.

This unconvincing writing can certainly be explained by the obvious simplicity of the events that the title tries to hide behind the veneer of mystery. Yuri accumulates questionable decisions and keeps asking Kim and Lee for more time, while one death follows another. The latter magistrate is portrayed as a clichéd, insufferable, cynical bureaucrat, but it is clear that his anger is justified and that his only mistake was to trust the protagonist. Yuri is possessed by the same obliviousness as the average high school student in visual novels, in stark contrast to the intelligence that a gwageo graduate should possess. The way Suhoshin is written is unremarkable at best, with unbearable lengths and an inability to settle on a specific genre. From one scene to the next, the player is unsure whether this is a sightseeing slice of life or a bad mystery thriller.

     Orientalist representations of the Joseon dynasty

The presentation of local myths is deeply artificial, and the game has the bad taste to present traditional Joseon-era rituals in a humorous tone. If baksu wore women's clothes, Suhoshin's portrayal follows a hideous stereotype, making him a kind of crazy cross-dresser that the game contrasts with the wisdom of the Buddhist monk or the Suhoshin. It is difficult to explain such a choice of imagery. The general dullness of the writing does not suggest a subversive portrayal of shamans in a context where the central state was imposing its Confucian reforms; more likely, it is a direct adaptation of the figure of the mad shaman found in Japanese visual novels. Similarly, the title says nothing interesting about the social hierarchies and seclusion of women in medieval Korea: yet the kut ritual, in which they are central, could have been used to show the margins of freedom they possessed, even under the yoke of male domination. [3]

Instead, the game slogs through the worst platitudes of the genre, multiplying hollow conversations and meaningless romantic undertones. Suhoshin is an abysmal detective game that borrows liberally from recent visual novels – Alan Menant cites the Ace Attorney series, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (2007), Steins;Gate (2009), Raging Loop (2015) and Zero Escape games as sources of inspiration [4] – but mostly displays a severe lack of familiarity with the genre and glaring writing deficiencies. The mystery is solved by a crude artifice of writing that struggles to resolve all the narrative inconsistencies. The Flowchart, borrowed from Kotaro Uchikoshi's games, is essential to solving the story, but more than anything else exemplifies the title's inability to present its key elements in an organic way. Suhoshin's main concern seems to be its lexicon of Korean terms, which feel terribly forced and unintentionally reinforce the game's superficiality and unapologetic orientalism.

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[1] Jooyeon Rhee, ‘A Distorting Mirror of Modernity: Kim Naesŏng, Edogawa Rampo, and Detective Fiction in Colonial Korea’, in 出版情報：韓国研究センター年, no. 19, pp. 15-27.
[2] Alan Menant, ‘Suhoshin : Notre interview avec Alan Menant et Ji Yeong (No More 500)’, on Actugaming, 5th November 2021, consulted on 18th April 2023.
[3] Clark W. Sorensen, ‘The Myth of Princess Pari and the Self Image of Korean Women’, in Anthropos, vol. 83, no. 4-6, 1988, pp. 403-419.
[4] Alan Menant, op. cit.