Princess Isabella: Witch's Curse (Nintendo DS) Review

What would you do if one day you returned home to find that a curse had been placed on your humble abode thanks to a devious witch? In Princess Isabella’s case she enlists the help of a little magical fairy and subsequently decides to not only rid each and every room in her castle of the darkness that has taken root, but also goes on a mission to free her fiancé, Prince Adam, and the rest of the Royal Family and castle staff from the bonds of evil. Hardly your everyday situation, but nonetheless a reasonable plotline for the adventuring that takes place in Princess Isabella: Witch’s Curse! The game takes place in a first-person adventuring viewpoint, with players moving from room-to-room by tapping the on-screen directional arrows first to see the name of the location, and then repeating the process to actually move there. Alternatively, when a larger amount of rooms have become available, thus making room-by-room navigation slower when backtracking, a handy map can be found on the inventory sub-screen that allows for quick warping around the castle, as well as access to a journal for keeping track of story updates.

Visually Princess Isabella is a treat, with the attractive PC graphics being carefully scaled down to the smaller DS format by the Beast Studios, who have become somewhat of an expert group for translating PC content to Wii, DS and mobile phones without much, if any, degradation in features and appearance. There is even speech included, with the fairy helper talking to you when entering a new location. Upon reaching somewhere covered in darkness, the aim is to cleanse it in whatever manner necessary, which can range from using the various powers that the fairy acquires over the period of the journey to despatch ghouls floating around, finding numerous hidden objects, solving different puzzles, deciphering riddles, and using items collected along the route in an appropriate way when the time is right.

This is indeed the most important aspect of Princess Isabella: Witch’s Curse; it is not a mere Seek-and-Find title, but is actually a pleasant mix of varying styles all brought together in a smart, tidy package that is full of entertaining moments. Using the fairy’s powers of strength, wind, and eventually the duo of water and fire later into the game, adds an intriguing twist, with players being given the task of using her skills to kill plants blocking the way, make flowers bloom quickly to expose items trapped inside their buds, or even break certain objects in the nearby area, again to reveal key components for the rescue of the Royal Family and staff from behind mirrored walls. These ‘components’ are actually shards of mirror, and when a set number of pieces have been recovered, they can be placed back together in a jigsaw-fashioned puzzle in order to break one person free and set about saving the rest.

The top screen shows an overview of the 135 magical scenes that can be visited, whilst the cursor on the touch-screen can be dragged around the zoomed-in viewpoint for closer examination of your surroundings, attempting to find and crack over 40 challenging puzzles, with some impressive hidden object missions included and 15 mini-games to try out, as well as a fantastic final showdown with the witch that caused all the havoc in the first place (developers of Hidden Object games should definitely take note of the seek-and-find battle, which proves to be a great conclusion to a highly enjoyable puzzle adventure romp). With it becoming harder and harder to distinguish the cream of the crop due to the DS market becoming heavily saturated with PC adventure titles, at least fans can put their minds at ease if considering Princess Isabella: Witch’s Curse, because it is indeed one of the finer efforts on the platform and fully justifies the awards it won in both 2009 and 2010.