iPhone Review: Secrets of the Mysterious Island
by Jennifer Allen
Publisher/Developer: Chillingo
Genre: Point and Click Adventure
Price: $6.99
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: Challenging point and click adventure that provides plenty of value for money
Pros: Interesting storyline especially for Jules Verne fans
Cons: Rather buggy at times and a bit heavy going for newcomers to the genre
To be very British for a moment: Blimey, this game’s huge! I’m used to reviewing small little games that are essentially glorified flash games, but this time round I’m dealing with a behemoth of a point and click adventure in the form of Jules Verne’s Secrets of the Mysterious Island. It’s huge in every sense of the word with me quickly realising that downloading it directly to my iPhone was a mistake. At over 700 MB in size, downloading this took forever! I strongly suggest if you do purchase this, you buy it through iTunes and wait out the download. Of course you don’t know yet whether you should buy this…well, to solve it quickly: if you like point and click adventures then you need to buy this game, just expect to be slightly overwhelmed at first, there’s a lot to explore!
Secrets of the Mysterious Island carries on from where its predecessor Return to Mysterious Island left off. Just as main character Mina was about to leave the island, a sudden volcanic eruption brought her plane down and trapped her on an apparently uninhabited island. Without really spoiling anything, the game begins with you playing a monkey by the name of Jep who saves Mina, and so begins your adventure! This time around you must restore a shield which saves the island from the threat of pollution. For those of you who have played the previous title, there are also a number of twists and secrets unveiled as things progress.
Controlling the action works reasonably well, although it did take a little while to properly adjust. Each scene is a static image where you can tap on things to investigate and interact with them. You start out playing as Jep the monkey, but at various other opportunities you can take control of Mina, with the crucial difference being that Mina can combine items in the inventory. Jep can’t, as he is a monkey after all. Combining items quickly becomes useful as any experienced Monkey Island or Myst players will know. It was a bit of a shame to see that occasionally you could combine items that are then needed at a later date separately, causing some game breaking problems and forcing you to resort to older saves. Hopefully this will be rectified in a future update. Switching from screen to screen involves a sweeping movement of your finger unless you’re a 3GS user, in which case the internal compass can be used to change your direction. This is a fantastic feature and one that makes the game infinitely simpler to navigate around.
As a final neat touch, Chillingo have included a link to the online walkthrough which is extremely useful, especially in the early stages when you might find things a little overwhelming. Rightly so, considering the game will take you a good 15 hours or more to complete and will certainly tax you at times with both very lateral puzzles and some slightly illogical ones, which is to be expected in this genre.
If you’re a point and click adventure fan then this really is a no brainer. It’s a challenging adventure game and provides plenty of entertainment for its $7 price tag. If you’re a newcomer to the genre though, I would suggest that something like Secret of Monkey Island which is a bit more newbie friendly and light hearted.
Upon first glance, that first screenshot looked like Michael Jackson and Bubbles.
The game is lots of fun except for the items that disappear from the inventory. But I'm stuck painting the symbol that the monkey Leonard shows Jep. I have all the paint colors but nothing to paint with. The guide itsn't clear at all on this section. Any help?