Introduction: Agatha Christie's: And Then There Were None is a detective adventure based on the novel of the same name, with this Wii version being a port of the 2005 PC version with added motion sensing features. Following the classic point & click style you take the part of Patrick Narracott, who, in a deviation from the book, is stranded on the island with the rest of the guests when his boat is sabotaged. As the murders mount, your task is to try to discover the murderer (who incidentally is not the same as in the book) before you are added to his list.

GamePlay: It's your role to find the murderer and save yourself from a grisly death by wandering the house & the rest of Shipwreck Island, solving puzzles and interrogating the other guests. Along the way you will collect several armloads of items which can be used, combined and disassembled to assist you in your quest.
Occasionally you will do something that will trigger the game to move on in time to a key event - such as a murder, or the progression from day to night. This might be for example picking up a specific item - indeed at several points i have been confused as to what i needed to do to progress, left wandering the house trying to find what i've missed. One such trigger was just the picking up of the record that plays out U. N. Owen's list of accusations after the first meal the guest have. Another time it just seemed to be time based - or maybe I'd spoken to enough of the other characters for the game to progress.

The interrogations of the other characters can get a little tedious and seem to break the atmosphere: after a key event you must ask every guest a largely identical set of questions and as they are usually all in the same room this just doesn't work very well. While in the book & film the information they have to divulge comes slowly, you get it all here within a few moments and because of this it all seems superfluous - why would i be interested who each person thinks will be the next victim? Maybe I'm missing something but it all just feels like padding in the way it's done.

Although at times Narracott will claim he is not a 'packrat', refusing to pick up a highlighted item, he will just as willingly carry step-ladders, baskets of apples, hosepipes and a multitude of other items in his TARDIS-like inventory.

One rather annoying feature was the game's highlighting of objects that are not actually useable in any way & play no active part in the game. While i can understand being told i would look like a maniac walking around with an axe, when that same axe is later used as a murder weapon, i really don't need to be prompted to look at an ashtray / picture / radiator / clock only to be just given Narracott's rather droll comments about how he doesn't like the style, or that 'you can't have enough radiators'. This might have seemed somewhat amusing & is maybe there to try to add some depth; i found it irritating that i was effectively being forced to click on it (in case it was important).

The game also features optional puzzles which you can solve in order to make the other guests more amenable to your questioning - for example making a nice glass of apple juice, or getting the broken radio working. Treat them right and they may offer up a few more tit-bits of information to assist your investigation.

Control: This is a port of a classic point & click PC adventure and suits the Wii's controls well, with the WiiMote used to control the on-screen pointer, D-Pad for dialog selection, and A & B for interaction control. Some other reviews have mentioned the inability to skip dialog, however this can be done with the B button. Some Wii specific additions have been made: the controller must be twisted to 'turn' door handles for example (though i admit this irritated me after a while); scooping, shovelling, spinning and other movements are also required at various points and although you're never actually told what movement to make it will be pretty obvious (or just randomly flick the controller around until you get it!).

Graphics: Good in parts (for example the outside scenes with crashing waves & fog drifting across the landscape), the game does however seem very dated in others. The character detail is fairly poor, with sausage fingers, poor lip-synching & inadequate facial expressions; and Narracott sometimes has no physical connection with the object he is manipulating. Some more realism might have been provided had at least some of the guests changed their clothes during their stay - with one wearing the same evening dress day after day whether she's strolling along the beach or dining in the house. While it's fine for the men to stick to their suits, at least they could have popped a coat on when out & about - the weather was pretty dire after all!

Sound & Music: As can be expected from a detective style adventure there is an awful lot of dialog in the game. Most of the voice work is done pretty well, with the actors bringing the on-screen character to life. I found Narracott just a little too snobbish though: i wasn't convinced that the character matched the voice. The game is played to constant background music which, although fittingly atmospheric, does loop continuously so that i found it getting on my nerves after a short while & resorted to turning the volume down in the game's options screen. Other than that, the background noises of the raging storms that seem to constantly pound the little island, crashing waves and so on are all nicely done.

Final Comments: I'm in a bit of a quandary over 'And Then There Were None'. On one hand it seems a well written and involving adventure game, drawing well on Agatha Christie's classic detective novel. On the other hand it is sometimes a tedious, dated & graphically inadequate port of an already dated 2005 PC version. There is a good adventure yarn in there if you persevere and that may be enough for adventure game veterans: but it may just be a bit too frustrating for others.

Pro: Good vocal work, some interesting puzzles and good use of the original classic book.
Con: Poor graphics, some tedious sections.
Final Score: 5.5



Reviewed by: Douglas Andrews