GAME PREVIEW: May’s Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville

Or how a puzzle-game aimed at three year olds put my intellect to shame.

I took a first quick look at  May’s Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville by Mastertronic, a puzzle game aimed at kids. Or is it?

Set to be released on the 12th of August, the game left me with a calculator, a piece of paper scribbled full of numbers, a headache and the question: who is the target group of this game again?

But first things first. In May’s Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville you take on the role of May and explore the town of Dragonville. So far, so obvious. The game doesn’t try to conceal that it is a bit of a rip-off of the Professor Layton-series, both in terms of gameplay and art-design:

And even the puzzle layout (Layton left, May right):

May solves puzzle after puzzle in search of her lost brother, while uncovering more and more of the detective narrative that surrounds the mysterious town, its evil mayor and the missing children of Dragonville.

The fact that May can only move after activating her compass, which shows where she is able to go, takes you out of the story a bit, but you get used to it after a while.

The writing is simple and clearly aimed at kids; the characters look cute, even the ones that selfishly exploit May before helping her. A child asks you for help and you first make her solve a math-puzzle? Shame on you!

Which brings me to those darn math-puzzles… Granted, I’m useless when it comes to numbers. I even forgot my own birthday once. However, even after bringing a friend on the team who studied structural engineering, we needed a calculator and several attempts to solve some of the puzzles.

And this is PG-3. If your three year old child can play and finish this game, don’t even bother sending it to school, it will have an honorary university degree by the age of six. The fact that some of the puzzle descriptions are awkwardly phrased, doesn’t help.

All in all, it is still a fun game and grows on you pretty quickly, if you can overcome the occasional, slightly uber-hard math challenge.

I for one have to say I’d kind of want a similar puzzle game with a more mature narrative now, to help me bring my math knowledge up to speed. And to save me the embarrassment of having to consult my future son or daughter when I do my taxes. At the age of three.