Family Game Reviews, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Game Reviews > Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile Review by Meryl

Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile Review by Meryl

Fans of the Belgian detective Hercules Poirot will delight in this hidden objects game tied with a murder mystery. Put “the little grey cells” to work in finding clues, solving puzzles to get more details about a clue, and questioning the 14 suspects.

The beautiful interface gives the game an early 1900s look-and-feel to represent Hercules Poirot’s time. Little “films” appear in shades of brown (sepia) complete with the lines and flashes resembling the character traits in old films. These films pop up throughout the game to update players on the story as they work through 24 rooms onboard the S.S. Karnak, a ship making its way down the Nile.

The game contains a few challenges. The first is that it takes longer to load than your average PC game. You have to wait for it to load on start up and then wait again when you want to play the game. Part of that could be because of the crisp interface and films.

The second problem is that clicking an object doesn’t always take. You can’t be sure whether it clicked and you got it wrong, or the game didn’t “hear” the click. When I had one object left that I couldn’t find, I used one of my five hints and it showed me an object I had already clicked. But if you click an object a handful of times, the game penalizes you.

The last challenge is following the story and figuring out the mystery. Between finding objects, solving puzzles and questioning suspects — you lose track of the story. That could partially be my fault because I didn’t use the question the suspects feature until more than halfway through the game.

The first couple of times I went into the Salon where the suspect questioning takes place, the game said I could ask X number of questions. The earlier you are in the game, the fewer questions you could ask. So I thought I should wait until I could ask more. By the time, I started asking questions — I was behind in the story and I had to read a lot of questions and answers. They story didn’t stink in well.

Fans of the Agatha Christie novels and the book of the same name will appreciate the game’s capturing the original story and the period in which the story takes place. Having read the book and seen the movie, it didn’t affect playing the game as I had forgotten much of the story and its characters.

If other Christie books come to life as casual games, the first thing the developers need to do is to make the game faster and let us know if we clicked the wrong object by putting an “X” after we click. Despite finding a few faults with the game, Agatha Christie Death on the Nile translated nicely as a fun PC hidden object style game.

Diamond! No diamond!