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Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Touch Detective

Touch Detective
by Cary Woodham
November 30, 2006

Touch the screen, get a clue.

Reviewed for DS.

Also available for DS.

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Scroll down for our Kid Factor.

GamerDad Seal Of Approval - 10+.  Click to learn more about our review seal. The ESRB says:
Comic Mischief: GamerDad found several instances of Looney Tunes style violence and mischief involving anvils and baseball bats.
Drug References: GamerDad says that one of the things you do in the game to enter people's dream worlds is smell the fumes of a mushroom.

In Touch Detective, you play as Mackenzie, a young girl who has just inherited the family detective business. In order to prove her worth to the detective agency, Mackenzie must solve four cases. Guide Mackenzie around her neighborhood with the touch screen, gathering items, inspecting clues, and interrogating witnesses and suspects. Tap on the touch screen to make Mackenzie walk, talk, and pick up and use items. A good tutorial at the start of the game explains the controls in further detail.

Gameplay is very similar to old PC mouse point and click adventure titles like Myst. The graphics and characters in Touch Detective have a very unique and quirky vibe about them, which is both a blessing and a curse. The uniqueness really makes Touch Detective original and appealing. However, these types of games require a certain level of logical thinking, and some of the weird things you must do don't exactly make sense sometimes. For instance, in order to make some people sleepy in the first case, you must use butterfly dust on them. But there are hardly any clues that tell you to do that, so the game focuses more on experimenting than detective work. Touch Detective is short, but charming, and fans of laid back sleuthing should investigate this game.



Click to learn more about GamerDad's Kid Factor review section. Kid gamers will get a kick out of the quirky characters and crazy cases to solve. There is hardly any violence either. Someone gets bonked on the head with a baseball bat, and some fleas get hit with an anvil, but nobody gets hurt because of the cartoon mentality. All the cases are resolved with fairly non-violent means. Even the murder case is only about the murder of some fleas from a flea circus, but they turn out to be OK anyway. The ESRB says there is a drug reference, but the only thing that it could refer to is a mushroom whose odor lets you walk in people's dreams, so it's pretty way out there. Speaking of way out there, the cases are so weird and unusual that logical thinking won't win out as much as thinking outside the box, so some may get frustrated at the non-intuitive cases. The mysteries are short, but tricky to figure out. Strong reading skills are a must. Older kid detectives are best suited for the Touch Detective case.


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Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Touch Detective
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Game Info:
Platform(s):
DS, DS

ESRB rating:
E10+ - Age 10 & Up

Comic Mischief, Drug Reference

Score:






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