I'm really starting to like The Adventure Company. They seem to have a continual range of interesting adventure games coming forth, with some genuinely different concepts. If there's one thing I continually pine for in games these days, it's an interesting plot, and what better way to have an interesting plot than to adapt one of the best selling murder mystery books ever into a game? It's an exciting concept for me there is a wealth of quality fiction in the world, so why not use it? 'And Then There Were None' is a possibly thorny choice for a game adaptation though - when the book was originally published in the 1930s, the title was 'Ten Little Niggers' (we're not talking in a 'Word up mah nigga' Snoop Dogg kind of way either), and was only retitled in the 40s when the book was adapted for celluloid.
The story (no spoilers here, I promise) revolves around ten people arriving on an island, and then, as expected in a murder mystery, people die. I won't go any further into the plot because I expect that most readers will either already know it or will want to discover everything for themselves. Whether you have or haven't read the book, theoretically there is something here for you - the story has been 'enhanced' with multiple possible endings, so you'll see something new either way. On top of that, the character you take control of is exclusive to the game, but as he stays largely detached from the rest of the characters, the plot remains quite intact.
The game is a fairly traditional 3D point-and-click adventure where your character attempts to solve a murder mystery after being stranded on an island with a mix of characters. In each section you hunt around for clues, and when you've done enough a little cut scene will happen to move the plot on. Well, that's the theory. In reality, there's not too many points in the game when you've got any specific direction to be working in a prime example is when the character you play gets up in the middle of the night to have a snoop around. I spent 10 minutes creeping around the other characters' bedrooms and found nothing, and then upon leaving the last room my character decides, unprompted, that he should go back to bed. He wakes up the next morning and says Well, I didn't get much sleep, but at least I've got something to show for it!
Oh the irony. While the puzzles in the game aren't obscure, the location of the items to use in them can be there are some clues hidden around the game, but they are obscure, and generally only make sense after you've stumbled over what you're looking for.
The graphics are fair, as are the music and sound effects they're not going to detract from your enjoyment, although the voice acting might just do so. It's the usual problem with voice acting in games although the dialogue is always delivered with feeling, it's not always quite the right feeling as if the lines were recorded out of order, or the actor was not given any context for that line of dialogue.
The thing is, despite finding enough fault in the game to spend the last two paragraphs criticising it for just about every facet, I kept loading it up. Why? Well, which ever way you cut it, the plot is still Agatha Christie at her finest, and so for those that haven't read the book and like a good story, the game is quite bearable, if just for the plot elements. Of course, being Agatha Christie at her finest, I suspect that the book is much more than just 'bearable' (and cheaper), and so I don't think that it's unfair to say that there's more enjoyment in reading the book than playing the story out on a PC.
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