Touch Detective finally hits stores today, allowing you to do some detective work with Mackenzie and her pal Funghi. After inheriting her father’s business, Mackenzie, a young girl with quite the personality, tries to get cases to keep her business going. As your butler blatantly points out in the very beginning, you do so by using...the phone. Although since you already have a bit of a reputation, your cases seem to come barging in right through your front door. Once you receive your first case, you get to explore the bizarre world of robotic butlers and skeletons. This game is perfect for the DS, especially when all your functions can be done with a stylus. Gameplay is easy to control and very straight forward. The challenge is to find the clues that you need to solve your case by asking questions and touching things. With the help of your mushroom friend, who will “nnf nnf” if something is worth checking out, Mackenzie’s adventures will provide a lot of laughs, especially since some of the games best features are the dialogue and expressions.
You begin with a quick tutorial in your room, which is also known as the main menu. This is where you keep a log of your cases and your touch list. Mackenzie likes to keep a log of everything, so anything that you touch will be kept in a list with descriptions and even a rating. Gameplay involves moving Mackenzie around with the stylus and tapping on various items to see if you can interact with it. The cartoon-look of this game is appropriate, with plenty of detail in the background but not too cluttered or busy to miss an item. The dual screen allows you to maneuver Mackenzie at the bottom, but be sure to read Mackenzie’s thought bubbles as they appear on your top screen. She changes expressions and has some great lines. Sometimes it’s easy to click by and miss them, but it’s worth paying attention to since she’s a funny one.
Cromwell, your butler is very open and honest with you, sometimes to the point of being rather blunt. But he directs you and helps you with your cases and provides you with tea. Penelope is a friend of yours who always seems to be getting into trouble, and Chloe is rather obnoxious and hyper, and will always show up just to give you a headache. She seems to enjoy competing with Mackenzie, but Mackenzie politely puts up with it since she is quite the professional. The characters of Touch Detective are humorous and they each have their own charm. The game wouldn’t be same without the quirkiness. There is one point in the game where you will need to collect various items which include mushrooms and herbal paper. Then you need to find a way to light it. Hmm. Throughout the game, you will be collecting items, touching them and possibly tapping on them a few times to see if they can be used with another item in your inventory. Your inventory is easy to access at the bottom of your screen, and by simply tapping on an item and something else on your screen, it will automatically interact with it. The key is to look at each item closely, and be sure to tap around rooms and different parts of the items to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Funghi comes in handy too, so don’t forget about him.
There are 4 episodes to complete, and after completing each episode, there are also bonus episodes that can be played. There aren’t too many locations to travel to and there are only a limited number of people to talk to. The puzzles aren’t too difficult themselves, but you could find yourself backtracking and wondering what to do next. The locations are a good size, especially for a portable game, so it shouldn’t take too much time to explore everything and continue the story. The length of the game is perfect, it’s not dragged on too long and it’s fun to play over again.
The graphics are definitely eye-catching, with a unique detective noir style but can still be colorful and children-friendly. The character designs are interesting, having a mix of cuteness and then some weird looking monsters. Some of the still scenes are very comic-book like and the music is fun and upbeat. A nice little feature is that you can always access the tracks in the game from your bedroom. The artwork is amazing for a DS game, and it’s hard not to adore Mackenzie and Funghi.
It’s all the little things that make Touch Detective a very special game. The character dialogues are just hilarious, and the cases you get to solve are bizarre but fun in an innocent child-like way. Even though you do play a young girl, it’s not necessarily a “kiddy” type game. Touch Detective is really a different type of adventure mystery game that is rare to come across these days. It was hard for me to not get hooked and play this game all day. I do miss playing adventure games, especially ones with a charming story, fun characters and easy to pick-up gameplay. It’s not so engrossing that it’ll take you forever to complete, but it’s entertaining and simple enough for you to play over again.
I am a Canadian living in California with my husband and my precious baby Bailey (95lbs of labrador fun). I work full time and go to school, so finding the time to play video games is tough. I still manage to sneak some time in, whether it's playing on my GBA while I wait in line or sitting in the back seat of my car so I can use our dvd player to play the Gamecube on long trips. I've always been fairly decent at playing games to give my younger brother some competition. I started at the early age of 6 when I inherited an Atari 2600. I played any computer game I could get my hands on during those Commodore 64 days. Now I'll play anything from RPGs to first person shooters, racing games or basically anything that's fun and allows me to play with at least 3 other people.
