Many adventure gamers are already familiar with Runaway: A Road Adventure and its sequel on the PC, but when I picked up Runaway: Dream of the Turtle for the Nintendo DS, I was a newcomer to the series. Since the original game was never released on the handheld, I assumed the lack of a ‘2’ in the title meant that this was a game that could stand on its own and be experienced without any knowledge of its predecessor. Thankfully, this is exactly what I found, and better yet, it’s a highly enjoyable game that’s surprisingly well suited to the tiny platform.

As Dream of the Turtle begins, Brian Basco is on holiday with his stunning girlfriend Gina in Hawaii, where they charter a small plane to Mala island. Suddenly, the pilot has a heart attack and the plane starts to go down. There’s one parachute. The selfless (or not-so-selfless) Brian gives it to Gina and pushes her out of the plane, but bullets start flying at her defenseless descent. Brian, meanwhile, manages to land the plane himself in the middle of a dense jungle. Dazed and confused, with the pilot now missing and only a drunken lemur for company (that’s only the start of the weirdness), Brian realises that it probably isn’t the best idea to push one’s girlfriend out of an aeroplane mid-flight (who knew?), and so he starts a search for his missing partner, which leads him to uncover government conspiracies, a buxom barmaid, and awesome alien technology.

It turns out that Gina landed smack bang in the middle of a top-secret U.S. military camp. Its officials aren’t eager to help Brian, so he’ll have to use all of his wits to find another way to locate her. The game is divided into six chapters, and the first four form part of a backstory that Brian is narrating after the fact, at which point events resume in current time. His quest starts on Mala Island but soon leads him to Alaska and on to the high seas in search of sunken treasure that will help him save not only his girlfriend, but possibly the world. The intentionally silly plot can be confusing at times, but that’s largely due to the number of different factors involved: aliens, scientists, a Rastafarian with a telepathic helmet, the a.m.e.b.a project, and finding a certain stone which is crucial to everything.

The plot borrows a lot from, or pays homage to, traditional comic adventure games of yore, but there are lots of references to famous adventurers from film and television as well. These can sometimes be amusing and sometimes fall flat on their face. For example, there’s one part where an Indiana Jones-like skeleton is trapped under a boulder. While pop culture references to things like “Mulder’s sister” or Captain Haddock’s infamous catchphrase “Blistering Barnacles” may delight some people (it did me), there are plenty of opportunities where humour based on the actual game scenarios could have been a lot funnier. That being said, there are some genuinely amusing moments when the game hits its comic stride, such as the lemur, Little Devil, demanding a beer in return for his help.

Unfortunately, the main characters come across as a bit shallow, not least Brian Basco, who’s quickly swayed to ‘point-and-click’ with the local barmaid to supposedly aid his quest of finding his girlfriend. The girls in the game are pretty, the male characters often have one thing on their minds, and there are some jokes worthy of a certain teen movie about fruit-filled pastry. This doesn’t detract too much from the story, as most of the supporting characters are more interesting, like the evil villains and unhelpful military personnel. One of the drawbacks is that the game is a sequel, so there are times when characters seemingly have some kind of history that’s alluded to but never fully explained. It doesn’t really affect the enjoyment of the game, but will leave new players scratching their heads when Brian makes a nerdy reference, or mentions that he’s got a degree in physics, which seem out of place in the context of this game. One character in particular, Joshua, an eccentric technical wiz who has a central role in helping Brian on his quest, clearly has a backstory from the previous game which is relevant to the unfolding plot. In this instance, it would have added welcome depth if Brian offered a bit more exposition as to how they knew each other. A short introductory movie, or even narration, explaining what happened in the previous game would have been nicer still.

It’s clear from the start that Dream of the Turtle closely adheres to the classic style of adventure gaming, but it’s rather uniquely adapted for the DS. The game is presented from a third-person perspective, with 2D backgrounds that scroll as you walk across them. Moving around is simply a case of touching where you want to go with the stylus, with accessible areas indicated by the presence of arrows at the sides of the screen. The playable scene is presented on the bottom touch screen, and holding the stylus down zooms the camera in to offer a closer view that shows how you can interact with the environment; you then remove the stylus to perform the ‘click’ action. You can simply tap objects on the main screen for Brian to comment on them, but more often than not I found myself zooming in, as it’s hard to pinpoint everything at a distance. When an interaction is possible, an icon appears to tell you the options, and pressing the Y button cycles through any other choices available. This control system works well, and the zoom feature is a good idea given the limited size of the default viewing area. This allows a far greater amount of detail than would otherwise be possible.