Slowly but surely, adventure games for consoles are picking up speed. Besides the planned ports of games like Runaway 2 and Secret Files: Tunguska, dtp has commissioned an original game, Undercover: Dual Motives, that is now being developed exclusively for Nintendo DS by the Austrian studio Sproing Interactive. By expanding into handheld adventures, the Hamburg company is hoping to unlock new markets for the genre. We were recently able to thoroughly test play a near-complete version.

Undercover: Dual Motives is not a direct sequel of its predecessor that was released for PC, but is more of a spin-off done especially for the DS. This time, someone's broken into the office of physicist John Russell, foisting mysterious documents onto the professor. It doesn't take long for him to be suspected of espionage, and he's given no choice but to figure out what happened by himself. At his side is his secretary Audrey, who can be controlled as a second playable character. The active character is always displayed on the lower screen, and the other on the upper DS display. The player can swap between the characters with the simple push of a button. The world of the game, meanwhile, is mostly limited to the research institute and its immediate surroundings. A few scenes also occur at night.

One thing can already be said for certain: Undercover looks very fancy despite the low resolution of the Nintendo DS. The designers have taken plenty of care getting the lighting and textures right, giving the adventure much depth even on a small display. As such, it hardly matters that background animation is sparse. During multiple-choice dialogues, the game switches to close-ups that reflect the current emotional state of the characters with convincing freeze-frame artwork. In fact, Undercover flaunts the charm of old adventure classics: story, setting, characters, even the animated walking-animation in three directions (horizontal, vertical and diagonal). Once you begin, you'll quickly feel sucked back into the mid-'90s.

Unfortunately, this 'charm' also applies to the MIDI-like music that tootles about in an infinite loop and can become vastly irritating over time, but those getting sick of it can disable it in the main menu. One must do without voice acting, too, as the size of a regular Nintendo cartridge simply doesn't allow for it. On the other hand, given the mobile nature of a handheld, many players probably wouldn't be able to understand much of voiced dialogue anyway, especially if playing during train rides or in other public places. Besides which, longtime purists might even take joy in having to read like back in the good old days. It should also make international localization much easier than fully voiced PC games.

There's not a lot of text, since descriptions are kept short — sometimes even a bit too short. In such cases, the dialogue appears rather abrupt and doesn't give the characters the necessary depth that they may have had otherwise. In Undercover, gameplay is more important than the story behind it. Pleasantly, the player is granted many freedoms, as a large part of the research institute is available right from the start, inviting exploration. Plenty of hotspots create a good amount of interaction, and dtp promised that most of these will also be relevant in the game, and not just there for decoration.

Interactions that don't work prompt characters to utter one of a set of standard replies. It would have been nice if, every once in a while, more elaborate reasons were given. Perhaps this will change before the game's version is final.

The point-and-click format of Undercover: Dual Motives works very nicely. As expected, the character is moved across the display with the aid of the stylus. Those who are used to a mouse will understand this control instantly. Since one clicks directly onto the display, it's even a touch more intuitive. A button activates an optional hotspot-display, which was also integrated into Undercover: Operation Wintersun for PC. Here, though, it is rather important, since one can't drag across the screen with the stylus as one would with a mouse, looking for anything you might have missed.

Since you move two characters simultaneously in Undercover, obviously the puzzles have been designed accordingly. The characters don't have the same abilities. Audrey complains about actions that might ruin her fingernails, while John has an intense fear of parrots. The perceptions of the protagonists differ, too: examining items via Audrey will provide different descriptions than you'll get from John. Assuming it doesn't clash with the personality of the respective characters, each item can be swapped between the two characters. For this to work, Audrey and John have to be in the same room. Naturally, there will be cooperative puzzles in Undercover: Dual Motives, in which both characters must work together to reach their goal.

Beyond the classic adventure design, a few DS-tidbits freshen up gameplay. There are a few puzzles intended specifically for this console. One example: in a puzzle involving a cog, the player has to hold the DS close to their ear until a soft snap can be heard. This is an indicator that the cog has reached the right position. A small mini-game involves playing darts. The actual throwing of the darts is done with the stylus and is a great deal of fun. All instructions are described on a small help page, keeping the learning curve very short.

The strengths of Undercover: Dual Motives are without doubt its classic charm, the great implementation of point-and-click control for the DS and the successfully designed cooperative gameplay. Epic stories or deep studies of character are not to be expected, though.

This article was originally published on the German website Adventure-Treff. It has been translated and reprinted here with permission. Translation provided by Neike Taika-Tessaro.