In tune with the childlike subject matter, Touch Detective has an unapologetically quirky cast of characters. The children in the game—Mackenzie and her friends Chloe, Penelope, and Daisy—have a distinctly anime look, especially in their close-up shots, with big heads, big eyes, and small, often surprised mouths. As for the other characters, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason about them. Some are plain old humans, such as the pastry chef and the circus master, while others couldn't be farther from human if they tried, such as Beatrice (a life-sized bird in an apron), Dover (a tattooed shark who scarfs cake at the bakery all day long), and Funghi (Mackenzie's pet mushroom, who follows her around like a dog). Then there are the passers-by scattered around the town, whose faces inexplicably resemble the ghost masks in Scream.

I've seen a lot of praise for Touch Detective's graphics based on screenshots, but I personally didn't find them that great in the full game. The backgrounds are well drawn but there's nothing truly special about them, perhaps because the locations themselves are very ordinary (i.e. Mackenzie's bedroom, a park with a pond in it, a shopping plaza with a bakery and a clothing store). The characters themselves stand out from the backgrounds, not quite in the same style but fairly detailed, in spite of their tiny size on the DS screen. Cutscenes are handled as a series of sketches, sometimes spanning both screens, in the game's only unique use of this DS feature, which are rendered in the same cartoony style as Mackenzie's close-up.

With a few exceptions, I found the abrasively upbeat music annoying and out of place. One of the themes, which plays in the lobby of the planetarium, worked very well to establish its mysterious and creepy atmosphere, but most of the others were jarring and way too peppy for what was happening on-screen. This probably contributed to my perception of the game as too childish for adult players, and about halfway through the game I had to turn the sound off because I couldn't take it anymore.

Each of Touch Detective's four cases took me between one and three hours. Unfortunately, some of this time was spent wandering aimlessly, trying every item on every character, and experiencing the same conversations again and again, so I wouldn't say it was all time well spent. The game has a few frustrating pixel hunts, which are thankfully limited by the touch screen's small size, but are also exacerbated by the lack of visible hotspots. You can tap the stylus anywhere you want, sometimes getting a response and sometimes not, with no clear distinction between the two possibilities. This was most annoying during not one, but two "Hide and Seek" sequences in the so-called bonus case, but I also had trouble with pixel hunting a few times during the game proper.

Sadly, none of Touch Detective's puzzles make creative use of the DS's dual screens or microphone, which is criminal in an adventure game designed for this platform. The puzzles are primarily item- and conversation-based, with few (if any) stumpers. Aside from the pixel hunting and one annoying stretch where I didn't realize I had to combine two inventory items before asking someone about them, I never got stuck. Not that I enjoy being stuck—I'd rather play a game with a story that flows well than one comprised of a ridiculously difficult set of puzzles—but coupled with the game's lackluster writing, the lack of challenge left me feeling like it was all busywork.

Speaking of the writing, it has a bad habit of missing its mark. Many of the things characters say and situations they find themselves in left me unsure of how we got from A to B. This could be a translation issue, or it could be that the game isn't very well written; maybe a bit of both. Plus the jokes (or, at least, what I think were supposed to be jokes) didn't always translate. For example, if you click on a trash can in the shopping plaza, Mackenzie leans over it and says "King Midas has donkey ears!" then turns to the player and says, "I feel better now." Not only did I not get it, but never knowing if there would suddenly be something in the trash can, I had to hear (see) it over and over. This is just one example; the game is full of little quips that left me scratching my head.

Unfortunately, the novelty of Touch Detective's platform is not enough to transform a flawed game into an amazing gaming experience. In fact, based on everything I've said in this review, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought I hated it with a passion. So you might be surprised now when I do a complete 180 and say that if you're a DS owner and a fan of adventure games, you should seriously consider buying Touch Detective.

Wait, what?

Yeah, it's far from the best game under the sun, but the fact remains that Touch Detective is one of the few adventure games out for the Nintendo DS. For that reason alone, it's worth buying if you are in the subset of people who both own a DS and like adventure games. I played most of Touch Detective on airplanes during a weekend traveling from California to Boston and back. That's more than I can say for any PC adventure game, ever, which made it worth my thirty bucks. It all depends what you're looking for. As a game, compared to most of today's PC adventures (not to mention the classics), Touch Detective isn't that great. It falls into too many of the same pitfalls that plague some of the less-inspired PC adventure games, which just goes to show that making a game for the DS does not in and of itself make that game fun and innovative. At the same time, it's a different experience than most of the games you can currently get for the DS, and I applaud Atlus for taking the chance to bring this type of game to this platform. I can only hope the developers have learned something from the experience, and that their next foray will be better. We're going to need something to play after the next wave of DS adventures has come and gone.