Vampire Moon: The Mystery of the Hidden Sun (Nintendo DS) Review

Reporters and journalists are always striving to get their mitts on the next big story, sometimes even with the long-term goal of winning a much-coveted Pulitzer award. For Emily Davis, an attractive young lady with high ambitions, nothing is more important than the latest news scoop and heading towards achieving the greatest accolade in her field, which is why when her boss tells her to jump on the next flight out to the undeniably terrifying terrain of Transylvania she does not even hesitate before proclaiming her agreement to the proposal. After all, how could she pass up the chance to investigate the recent phenomenon of a prolonged solar eclipse (hence the game’s subtitle ‘The Mystery of the Hidden Sun’, naturally), as well as why the scientist attempting to analyse the problem has gone missing.

Vampire Moon is the latest in a throng of Hidden Object games where the player works through a graphical novel depicted on the top screen using extremely impressive and atmospheric visuals (for a DS game), whilst collecting a set amount of hidden items around the different locations visited. With the DS screens being considerably smaller than that of a PC monitor, the fear is always that objects will be almost impossible to find. The way City Interactive has circumvented this issue, though, is by providing the gamer with impressively clear landscapes that have been drawn from scratch in order to retain the high amount of detail required to ensure objects are expertly tucked away from direct view, without making the experience a frustrating tap-a-thon affair (thus leading to the game dishing out penalties for 'cheating').

Therefore, once a story segment has passed and Emily has interacted with various unusual characters from the land she now temporarily resides in, a list of objects appears on the top screen and they must all be located within a set time. Vampire Moon: The Mystery of the Hidden Sun uses a special random generator that ensures that each level plays differently. During Emily's journey of discovery, she sometimes needs to pass back through areas previously visited, so having to find a whole batch of alternative objects prevents the procedure from growing stale.

On top of this, whilst Vampire Moon is quite a short title compared to the likes of Crime Lab: Body of Evidence, there are some interesting touch-screen puzzles thrown into the mix to add longevity, with players having to guide Emily through labyrinths or uncover symbols masked by dirt using the stylus, for example. Unearthing all the hidden objects in a stage is not always the end of a level either, with certain ones remaining in your inventory for use with something else located in that particular area (for instance using a shield as a means of blocking a gap in a bridge). With secret scrolls on offer (that give background information on Dracula and vampires in general), as well as the chance to collect emeralds (upping the number of hints available) or rubies (for extra points), and the lure of 1,000s of ingeniously hidden objects around Transylvania, Vampire Moon: The Mystery of the Hidden Sun will keep players engrossed and eager to come back for more, time and time again.