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In the last line of game, the main character Mackenzie says “Touch Detective….. what a terrible name.”  She makes a good point.

Despite its unfortunate title Touch Detective adds to the nearly empty adventure game genre on the Nintendo DS.  Point and click adventure games are mainstream on PCs and occasionally breach the console world, but scooting an arrow around the screen with a dpad can be cumbersome.  Now Atlus is giving us the chance to point and touch through mysteries and puzzles armed only with our stylus. 

Townsfolk are skeletons

Touch Detective follows the story of Mackenzie, a young girl that inherits a detective agency from her father and hopes to become a real detective.  She has a gang of equally mischievous little friends, who for some reason all live together in a condominium at the edge of town.  Conviently your butler, Cromwell, constantly gives advice and makes tea, but he hangs around the office and never actually gives any concrete tips when you are about to throw your DS against the wall.  Mackenzie, in keeping with the cute tone of the game, also has a friendly little… mushroom-man fungus-thing, named Funghi that follows her around.  I don’t know why either.

Your time is spent poking around town, chatting it up with witnesses, collecting items and solving cases.  Every action is easily controlled by the stylus, or you can use the dpad for extra precision.  The main quest is broken up into four episodes, but there are a slew of bonus cases to be solved in between episodes.  The episodes have titles such as “Robbery” and “Assault” but don’t expect this to be the DS version of Law and Order.  Mackenzie’s friend Penelope always seems to have a new problem for you to solve, but they consist of her complaining about her dreams being stolen and helping sad snow fairies.  No murderous bloody knives at crimes scenes in this town.

The secondary characters have their own stories which never dive too far past the first layer.  Dover eats cake at Sweet Mountain.  Beatrice, the landlady at the condos, used to have a freakishly lame act in the circus and Daisy is just bitchy. These characters all seem to talk a lot, but you never get to find out too much about them.  The town these guys live in is small and you will be familiar with all of the characters usual locations quickly as you will be constantly revisiting each of them many times during each case.  Items and people are strewn between the condominium, Park/Skate rink, Shopping Plaza, Office, Planetarium and the Circus. 

The cutsey graphics lend to the overall feel of the story as well as the varied character design and animation.  Unfortunately the background looks like a flat picture you are walking around in instead of an interactive storybook. 

Butterflies make people bleary eyed

The puzzles range from “I can’t click through this conversation fast enough because this is so freaking easy” to “How in the world was I supposed to figure that out?”  The items you find don’t carry over episode to episode and most puzzles can be figured out with a little common sense and trial and error.  Some items need to be combined such as putting the green gem into the eye of the skull box just to get out of the tutorial.  Others make more sense, such as adding in a spare photo to complete a photo album.    Luckily the story and light-hearted jokes will keep you investigating for awhile but some puzzles involve too much aimless walking around just hoping for a clue.

Most of the action happens on the bottom screen, while the top screen shows a blown-up version of Mackenzie. This lets you see some of her reaction to events and also serves as a cute way to read into her thoughts.  Often times Mackenzie is thinking about other things while the characters on the bottom screen are talking.  These comments are usually much funnier then what they others are discussing.  Yet as cute as the conversations are you will find yourself taping your screen trying to get through them quicker ala Phoenix Wright.

After each episode is complete there are few reasons to replay, unless you want to fill up your Touch List.  This is a list of fifty things Mackenzie has ‘touched’ in the game.  Some are episode specific but through Mackenzie’s office you can re-do any episode.  The ‘touches’ range from Penelope’s hair to a sticky railing (ew).   At first it may seem like a good reason to go traveling through the world again, but in practice you end up just mashing around the screen with your stylus in hopes of just landing on something for your Touch List. 

The answer is ‘Petite Hippo’

Point and click newbies may find some of the puzzles challenging but most people will be wishing for more adventure and depth to Touch Detective.  The bonus cases are not enough to keep you coming back since some side-cases can be simply be completed just by clicking through a conversation, which is not the criteria of a ‘case’ or ‘puzzle’. In the end, if you manage to fill up your Investigation Report or Touch List you will be granted a few extra songs to your music selection as well as A bonus artwork.  Yes, singular.  Not a gallery, but just one screen.  For all that touching you would think you would get more in return.

Article by: Jess Reed
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin