The official outline for the game says that ten years ago Ashley's parents disappeared, when Ashley was just three years old. A single clue leads her to a mysterious island where she must piece together the pieces of her past. As it turns out, Ashley's father is alive and it's up to you to step into her shoes and find out why he pretended to be dead all these years. However, he's apparently holding up on the rather foreboding sounding "Blood Edward Island"…if that doesn't scream "mystery!" I don't know what does.

The story of the game focuses on memories, and can get a little philosophical at times, but is generally pretty straight forward. Crossing lines into a bit of fantasy (Ashley's companion for most of the game is the ghost of a young boy) and science-fiction (Ashley's parents were developing a mysterious device called "Trace" for the government), this game is still primarily a mystery. Find your father, find what happened to your mother, and find out who this ghost is and why he still lingers.

Your father was kind enough to send you a "DTS", a device which looks remarkably like the NintendoDS, which is what set off this entire adventure. This is your interface with much of the world, as it allows you to take photos (useful for solving puzzles and for referencing previous areas) as well as the inventory management and save menu. This game allows you to save anywhere and anytime, an option that will hopefully become the standard instead of the exception for handheld titles.

The interface is excellently done. The bottom screen shows a top-down view of the area you are in, allowing you to wander around at will, while the top screen shows close up details of interesting items or characters. The top screen details for the environment are all pre-rendered stills and are very well done. The objects you can interact with stand out like a sore thumb for the most part, but always fit the environment that they are in.

A simple inventory management system allows you to select an item to use in an area, and your character immediately knows what you want to do with it. No fumbling around trying to get the key in the keyhole manually - just select the key and it automatically unlocks the door. This helps to remove some of the frustration that I often experience in adventure games, and also helps to make it a little more accessible to those unfamiliar with the genre.

Puzzles have become a staple of the genre, and Trace Memory is no different. Through clever use of the DS's touch screen and microphone, the puzzles are all well thought out and sensible. One situation requires you to use a pencil to reveal the impression on a pad of paper from which the top sheet had been removed, by scribbling with the stylus. Another requires you to blow into the microphone to fog up a window to reveal a hidden message. There is even a puzzle that actually requires you to close the DS itself! Developers are finding all sorts of fun and unique uses for the DS, and it helps to add interactivity, especially to a genre which has traditionally been simple point and click.

Unfortunately, the game is rather short and the difficulty not all that complex. Playing through a second time offers some basic dialogue changes, but nothing to really entice you to want to play through again right away, especially since all the puzzles are the same.

This was a fun game and I definitely did enjoy it, but the small amount of gameplay and no incentive to replay the story really makes it lose a lot of points. The rather straightforward story is predictable and, while it tries to surprise you, you'd really have to be half-asleep not to be two or three steps ahead of the plot for most of the way. This is a good title for younger gamers and those new to the genre, but will not do much to win over the more experienced among us. I look forward to seeing more adventure games make their way to the handheld market, but they had better offer a longer and challenging game experience.