Secret Files Tunguska review (iOS / Universal)

10 word description: Point and click adventure. Over 100 locations. Full voice acting.

10 word review: Enhanced touch screen experience, no IAPs. Pretty graphics, challenging puzzles.

You will like this if you enjoy: Point and click adventures. The classic genre tradition of combining item X and item Z from location A to use in location B to solve a puzzle.

The good news: Touch screen conversion and enhancements are very good. Full voice acting for all characters. Lots of varied and atmospheric locations. Cute protagonist – I know, I know, but she is. 3 separate save slots; save any time. Cloud sync saving so you can play on multiple devices. Decent tutorial plus in-game walkthrough (if you need help). 

The bad news: Although it is universal, playing on the smaller (iPhone/iPod Touch) screen is fiddly despite some great efforts to optimise the screen layout on those devices. Some items (that were already borderline invisible on the PC version) are extremely hard to see on the iPad screen, resulting in a fair amount of full-screen fingertip exploration in order to detect essential items. Some of the puzzles are not particularly logical, for example the sequence involving the cat in one of the early locations.

Arcadelife verdict: Secret Files Tunguska was originally released on PC and later ported to both the Wii and the DS. It’s a very attractive looking game that sticks to the point and click genre standards; the iOS port has obviously been handled with a good deal of consideration for how the game will play on this kind of device. The puzzles are frequently challenging and you’re not going to breeze through this game (unless you frequently resort to the built-in walkthrough guide). I will quite happily recommend this game for fans of the point and click genre but if you have already played through it on another platform you are not going to find anything new in this version.  

Arcadelife rating

Presentation – 9/10
Visuals – 8.5/10
Controls – 9/10
Content – 10/10
Fun – 8/10
Final rating – 8.8/10

GREAT

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0.0

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
5th gen iPod Touch (iOS 7.1.2)
4th gen iPad (iOS 7.1.2)

This review was typed on a Das Keyboard Model S mechanical keyboard – check them out, they’re really rather groovy.