By now, I’ve boasted enough about the iPhone’s excellent array of apps and games that seemingly make the medium, dare I say, perfect. You can do anything with your iPhone, and while match-3 titles or puzzle titles or RPGs or action titles or useful applications are available, I have yet to play a detective game. Good detective titles in general are hard to come by. Most of them attempt to engage you in the story but fail miserably in the “fun” aspect. It’s like, “yes I can read but where’s the fun in just reading?”

Enter MaxMars and their brand spankin’ new iPhone title, Jacques & Stella’s Mystery Files Club. Sure, it sounds cheesy at first because the name is so straightforward, but what the hell else were they supposed to name it? Right now you can find this thing on the App Store for a dollar. The following is an explanation of why this game is worth EVERY single penny.

Gameplay

I’ll admit it, there’s an initial phase of “how the fuck do I do this?” But honestly, past that phase lies one of the most rewarding and original experiences I have ever encountered. The game is based on exploration, you choose to move from room to room and examine possible murder weapons, question suspects, and attempt to gather clues to solve a randomly generated murder. I suggest that the first time you play it, you give yourself some time to figure out everything in the context of the game.

You’re given a PDA which tracks all of your progress, meaning the clues and any other helpful information you may find. That’s excellent news because there’s absolutely no way of storing this information in your memory. Every action that you take, questioning a suspect or even moving from room to room will take up time. You are given 3 hours to complete your investigation (of course you can name the murderer before this 3-hour deadline) and that’s more than plenty of time for solid clue-gathering and the mishaps (screwing up in the minigames).

That leads me to my next point: minigames (or “microgames” as the developer calls them) are flippin’ awesome. You will have to play through these at random to obtain clues. If you’re looking to open up a slew of clues then you’ll have to play them on a harder difficulty. I suggest that you play them and become familiar with them before jumping into solving cases. Or you can do it the way I did and be confused until you finally get a hang of things. In any case, there’s quite a variety, each centering on different exercises for the brain: action games, memory games, and observation games. Action games consist of an ultra-cool “UFO Lander” game, a “Type It!” game which I’m apparently horrible at, and “Hit the Mafioso” which is a whack-a-mole type schtick. Memory games include “Identikit” in which you attempt to recreate a face as you are first shown (for the love of God, buy the game and play it this is so difficult to explain!), “Memorize Sequences” which is self-explanatory and “Find the Couples” which is a matching game. Observation games are “Find a Face,” “Find the Card,” and “Moneybag” where you count the amount collected into a bag full of money.

Telling you what the minigames were has been the hard part, telling you how fun they are will be the easy part. Depending on what type of person you are, you’ll be better at certain games and less effective at others. These games are really fun to play and if you have some downtime, you can skip out on the whole detective thing and go straight to “microgames.” The only complaint I would have is that sometimes the harder difficulty levels are relentless. Overall, solid excellent gameplay mechanics all the way through!

Style

I really enjoy the 2D style of game and the character designs. They remind me of anime/manga and that type of artwork. It’s easy on the eyes and never too complex, something I’m generally fond of. The PDA and method you use to move around and collect information is intuitive for the most part. The game takes a very light-hearted approach and it works well. Not really any complaints in this department.

Story

Well, obviously the story develops as you play through the randomly-generated cases. I will say this, however, that I grew to really enjoy the personality and charisma in the characters of Jacques and Stella. As a matter of fact, if there is a follow-up title it wouldn’t be all that surprising. Maybe next time there will be an extensive story that is centered around a concept? I like the characters and it’s nice to know the story never ends since they have so many cases to handle because, unfortunately, human beings constantly commit homicides.

Everything Else

I also liked the music in the title. I found the songs to be catchy and they stuck with me even after I played the game so kudos to whoever wrote this stuff! Again, my only complaint would be that the difficulty on the highest level is a little much at times, but that’s the whole point of a challenge. Honestly, for me to have ranted for almost a thousand words about this $0.99 App Store title, it really does mean it’s worth the price tag. Give it a shot, you’ve got almost nothing to lose.

If you’d like to find out more information about the game, visit Italian developer MaxMars’s official website.