Graphics: The quality of the visuals in Sinking Island is highly uneven, with really nice depictions of physical environments and structures, but really deficient models of human characters. In terms of physical settings, the island is beautiful, with lush beaches and attractive topography. The inside and outside of the tower/hotel/palace are breathtaking, with a coherent art-deco style that is a joy to view. Even with all the desolation and the constant presence of a raging storm, you cannot help but appreciate the aesthetically pleasing qualities of what you see. The camera angles consistently make humans appear to be small and insignificant in the context of the natural wonders you behold. The emotional impact of the graphics is to make you feel isolated and alone.

The special visual effects, primarily rain and wind, are very well done. The depiction of the storm’s impact on the trees and the ocean makes you feel as if you are really there. In contrast, the people look a bit awkward and unnatural. While static images of characters are not bad, and they look fine from a distance, any close-ups involving animation reveal the flaws. Characters’ lips do not move properly when they speak, during which they engage in wild over-gesticulation. It is as if an artist hired for Sinking Island was an expert when dealing with nature and buildings and a novice when dealing with humans. It is noteworthy that the best depiction of a person is that of Walter Jones’ dead body.

Interface: Sinking Island utilizes a standard third-person, mouse-based point-and-click interface. The menu screen is really elegant and attractive, with a sense of style absent in many adventure titles. Conveniently, you may save your progress wherever and whenever you wish. The mouse serves to move Norm around and the cursor changes appropriately to indicate what options are available to you at a particular time and place. Taking a photograph is literally a snap, as is viewing close-ups or interacting with an object. The Personal Police Assistant is quite well designed, and contains a list of the suspects and information relevant to their guilt or innocence in a nicely organized fashion. Its clues database keeps a comprehensive record of every piece of evidence you find. The only downside is that, when you are far along in your investigation, you truly have a mountain of information to evaluate.

Gameplay: The pace of the gameplay seems glacially slow. There needs to be a lot more happening to keep your interest while continuously wandering back and forth asking suspects inane questions over and over again. Unraveling the murder mystery has to be accomplished in a relatively linear manner, in which you cannot deviate too much from the predetermined sequence of steps, and this does not help to alleviate the sense of tediousness. The net effect is that it doesn’t take too long for you to lose interest, view the gameplay as tiresome, and want to go do something else. Thus, the demands for patience and perseverance are much higher than in most modern adventure titles, and many will not stick with it for the 15 to 25 hours required to make it through from beginning to end.

Sound FX: The sound effects are adequate but not outstanding. There are several ambient environmental noises, such as the pounding rain or the fly buzzing around Jones’ corpse, but there’s not enough variety in what you hear to maintain your attention. Although the voice acting is fine, with lines delivered convincingly with the right tone, the localization is so poor in spots that you wonder who was in charge of the English translation. The result is frequently stilted dialogue, which is especially problematic because speech segments are so repetitive. Also, occasionally there is an injection of foul language, which seems inappropriate in this kind of release.

Music: There is very limited music in Sinking Island. Occasionally you hear soft tones in the background, often involving a piano, but the impact on gameplay is minimal. Although this design decision has the advantage of never having the soundtrack overpower the story and dialogue, it gives lots of play sequences a look of desolation and loneliness, while the audio mood is one of complete silence. A melancholic score could have contributed to a more emotional immersion in the play experience.

Difficulty: The biggest challenge in Sinking Island is not using your brain to figure out who killed Jones, but rather finding all of the clues in their proper sequence. Even for an experienced virtual adventure addict, there are numerous places where you just cannot discover a cleverly hidden vital piece of evidence. As you progress in your quest to identify the murderer, the mandates you encounter—and finding the evidence you need to answer these mandates—become more challenging. For this reason, you can be confident at the beginning that you can manage the detective work successfully, but then come up short later in the game. Thus Sinking Island is better suited to those with considerable adventure genre experience.

Overall: I am a big fan of Benoit Sokal, as all of his work reflects great imagination and highly provocative underlying themes, but Sinking Island represents a squandered opportunity. The game combines a whodunit with an adventure experience and a clever and effective interface, but ultimately fails because of gameplay implementation. Perhaps more play testing and feedback from those most attracted to and experienced in the adventure genre would have helped to improve the final product. But, as it is, we are transported to a beautiful, mysterious island and soon, long before the mystery is unraveled, we have no desire to stay any longer.