When I was asked to review “Jenny LeClue Detectivu” I thought it looked like a really pretty game with loads of Professor Layton elements that would keep me entertained being a detective for a few hours and gave me an excuse to dig my switch back out.
After a few hours though, I thought to myself. At least I was right about it being pretty… but then it infected me and for some reason I couldn’t put my Switch down, thinking to myself, just one more scene… one more puzzle and I will go to bed.
Jenny LeClue starts off promising enough with you rowing across a pitchblack river and then activating a device and generating enough mystery that even Scooby Doo would be able to run an episode or two on it. Then the game shifts tone completely and you suddenly follow a writer in the fictional town of Arthurton (I think? It may just be Jenny who lived there but I might have missed a couple of things…) who receives a phonecall from his publisher… you are then “treated” to a one sided argument on how the writer would never do this to his characters and it is totally not his style.
The game then has you focus on the desk of the writer and you pick out a few items on the desk to analyse – and thus the main bulk of the gameplay rears it’s head.
After this, you take control of Jenny herself as her mother teaches a class on forensic science, her mother using her as a pretend cadaver in order to teach. Jenny proceeds to show off that she is a brilliant detective at such a young age, uncovering the pretend mystery of her own death that even these University students have struggled with.
In order to deduce the mystery of Jenny’s “death” the player is tasked with picking out clues from the “crime scene” and then piecing them together in order to tell the story of how the crime has happened. The gameplay does vary a fair bit after this point and follows a similar style to Professor Layton but none of the puzzles really challenged me all that much, for better or worse as I have distinct memories of throwing my DS across the room after failing a Prof Layton puzzle for the 30th time.
I think there is a lot of promise with Jenny LeClue and those of you who really like twee little puzzle based adventure games, I think you will find a lot to love (Basically if you backed the game on Kickstarter and viewed the trailers you probably know exactly what you are in for and will have a lot of fun)
Jenny LeClue is a game based on choices and puzzles and given the choice I would absolutely play Jenny LeClue all over again. I have tried in this review not to spoil too much of the story or too many of the cool puzzle-y gameplay elements as I did not expect them and that was the best bit.
Overall, If you like puzzle adventure games you will have a lot of fun and for me I did have fun but I felt the experience was a little shallow at times and could have been expanded upon (given more budget to the developers so go back this game you lot!) and in it’s current state I give Jenny LeClue Detectivu: 7/10