Junior Mystery Stories (Nintendo DS) Review

Junior Mystery Stories impresses right from the off with its well drawn, impressive visuals and interesting characters, as well as its surprisingly strong soundtrack. With the initial positive foundation already laid, the story begins to unfold, with the adventure taking place around an old, mysterious manor house in which a young girl by the name of Rachel lives. Her Uncle Albert is a well-travelled archaeologist who returned from a successful trek across the South American Jungle where he uncovered the lost ancient Mayan village of Tikaca, only to then disappear when back home. As it happens, Albert’s mistake was to remove a sacred tablet and strange looking toy doll from the Tikacan temple…and so the mystery commences.

Players take on the role of the niece, Rachel, who must work her way around the eerie mansion with the help of Mooki, the doll her uncle brought back, which conveniently talks and offers advice about how to hunt down her missing relative. Whilst wandering around may seem like a simple task, the curse that has been drawn towards the manor has led to almost all of the rooms becoming locked with only special keys able to prise them apart once more. Therefore, Rachel and Mooki must first of all clear lots of clutter from different areas they encounter, search out key items that fix broken lock mechanisms, and uncover elusive symbols that are craftily tucked away into the surrounding scenery. The overall objective is to find all the segments of the sacred tablet that has been scattered around the house, in the hope of bringing back Uncle Albert in one piece.

Everything is set against the clock, with an initial sixty minutes on offer, making it seem like Junior Mystery Stories is an extremely short title. However, in reality, each time a piece of the stone tablet that Uncle Albert is trapped within is found, more time is added to the clock. Players must err on the side of caution, though, since too many incorrect taps on the screen results in the time running down faster. Hints are available via the Y button, which shows exactly where one item is hidden, but they are not open for use immediately in each stage. Instead, the magic ball on the upper screen must fill completely, with its progress being slowly updated on the top screen.

Hints cannot be used in some places, though. For example, when moving to new rooms there are special keys that must be located, and to add challenge you cannot simply tap the hint button to progress. Another aspect related to the room changing process is how one of 16 mini-games must be tackled, all of which are appear very basic in nature to start with, such as having to tap notes as they fall down past the specific line on a musical score sheet. However, they quickly become far more entertaining, with, for instance, players needing to guide a butterfly’s flight across a side-scrolling stage filled with obstacles, or even take part in an enjoyable version of the classic mobile phone game Snake.

Even though Junior Mystery Stories is predominantly aimed at the younger generation, there is actually enough variety and challenge included to appeal to any age group that has a penchant for the hidden object genre and engaging mini-games. With 19 hidden rooms, 90 hidden object scenes, 10 chapters to work through and 16 mini-games to tackle, Junior Mystery Stories’ curse of the manor will actually prove to be quite the blessing in disguise for DS owners everywhere!