Artificial Detective closed out the latest Xbox Partner Preview with a world premiere trailer, where a robot detective tries to solve a missing humanity mystery in a city ruled by machines.
The game launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
It is the debut game from Vivix, a new studio built from developers and artists whose involvement spans Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Control, Dead Space, and Love, Death & Robots, among other things.
This third-person action-adventure is set in a dense retro-futurist city with a strong visual identity and a much larger production budget than is usually the case for any given studio’s very first project.
The player character is AD 2846, a robot detective who wakes up in Conglomerate North, a metropolis that has survived the collapse of human civilization only to be taken over by rogue machines. Humanity is functionally gone, except for one major exception, a single human child left behind. That child, Mowgli, becomes central to both the plot and the game’s structure.
Conglomerate North is one of the game’s immediate draws. It is built around the 1930s Art Deco influence and stacked vertically into districts linked by skybridges, trains, elevated parks, and flying transit. The city is supposed to feel pristine, but wrong, continuously and meticulously maintained by machines long after the people it was built for disappeared.
AD 2846 travels with Mowgli and D.A.W.G., a combat-capable robodog whose damaged battery kicks off the story. Missions flow out of a flying streetcar that acts as the crew’s moving base, upgrade hub, and investigation center. From there, players head into locations including police stations, underground corporate labs, and a RoboZoo while piecing together the larger case.
What’s notable is that Vivix doesn’t look to be trend-chasing. It’s a curated experience set in a dense city, companion-driven progression, and a clear central mystery.
