This is not a new game. It has been "out there" since October of 2007. Developed by White Birds Productions - known for Amerizone and Syberia - and written by Benoit Sokal (who got his start as the Belgian comic book author of Inspector Canardo, it has been published by Microids in the UK and France, and MicroApplication throughout Europe. It will finally be released in the USA on August 12, 2008 by the publisher Encore Entertainment.
This is your basic, run-of-the-mill, point-and-click detective Adventure. Go here; go there; ask questions of everybody until there are no more questions left to ask. Spot/pick up clues along the way. Cross index motive, means, and opportunity, and eventually the culprit will become obvious. As the player's only character, police investigator Jack Norm, you might have found this a daunting task. Instead, expect that all difficulties are manageable and what you will actually be doing is just going through the motions to see how the story unfolds.
GameZebo writes:
"In the Agatha Christie-esque adventure game Sinking Island, you play as Jack Norm, a police detective called to a remote tropical island to investigate the not-so-accidental death of Walter Jones, a wheelchair-bound billionaire found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Who did it and what was their motive? This is what you must find out by interrogating the ten suspects, snapping photos and collecting evidence.
While not one of the better adventure games available, this attractive point-and-click detective story might appeal to fans of murder mysteries.
Created by Benoit Sokal, who brought us the awesome Syberia adventure game, Sinking Island is an interactive whodunit that challenges players to piece together clues in order to find a motive and reveal Mr. Jones' murderer. Naturally, everyone on the island is a suspect -- whether it's someone to benefit from a huge inheritance or an angry ex-business associate -- and so you must use logic and deduction to narrow down the list of potential killers."
The Adrenaline Vault : "The pace of the gameplay seems glacially slow. There needs to be a lot more happening to keep your interest while continuously wandering back and forth asking suspects inane questions over and over again. Unraveling the murder mystery has to be accomplished in a relatively linear manner, in which you cannot deviate too much from the predetermined sequence of steps, and this does not help to alleviate the sense of tediousness. The net effect is that it doesn't take too long for you to lose interest, view the gameplay as tiresome, and want to go do something else. Thus, the demands for patience and perseverance are much higher than in most modern adventure titles, and many will not stick with it for the 15 to 25 hours required to make it through from beginning to end."
Throughout all of Sinking Island's faults it still does manage to be interesting throughout the course of the game. This isn't to say that people who aren't diehard fans of B. Sokal should rush out and buy it though. For those not familiar with the Sokal's previous games Sinking Island can probably be skipped. But for those that are willing to overlook the faults and truly enjoy the process of figuring out just what is going on in Sinking Island it is reasonably priced enough to warrant trying out.
