Toads hop, some toads make you see things. This toad crawls like a snail and solved my insomnia. You take on the role of a detective from the Blue Toad agency and have to solve a series of puzzles to gain clues as to who committed whatever it is you’re investigating. In Episode One it’s a murder and so you have to question potential suspects, find out what current events are happening in the town and solve puzzles along the way, as well as answer some questions about what you’ve learned.

The game is extremely slow-paced as you must sit through every single animation and conversation, even if you’ve already got what you need out of it. It’s so slow in fact that it could, at times, be a cure for insomnia. That doesn’t make the game bad, it just makes it boring in places. Plus many of the puzzles aren’t all that difficult and the only real pressure seems to be time usually.

The graphics on the game are reminiscent of something like Wallace and Gromit except all CGI instead of claymation and the game is set in the English countryside which adds to that feeling I guess. The voice acting is way over the top and at times can be on the  annoying side. It’s not to say that it’s all bad but more like, uninteresting.

That is sort of the problem with the whole game I think, it’s just sort of uninteresting. Each of the puzzles that you need to solve can take up to a whopping minute or minute and a half. The time that it takes to get through the game is mostly sat watching the rather drawn out cut scenes that set up puzzles. It’s sort of like watching a lame cartoon series and while the commercials run you hop over and play a quick game or two. The first episode shouldn’t have taken perhaps more than an hour to play through but once I put the game down, I had problems even wanting to go back and finish that one episode.

There are six episodes in the Little Riddle adventure for the Blue Toad Mysteries game of which three are already available. They weave together a larger story about some sort of conspiracy, but to go and find out what that is would require a lot of patience. Staying fully awake during the games is a bit of a task as they are rather tedious and it’s basically an adventure game on rails. Even if you fail many of the puzzles along the way you’ll still manage to make it to the end it seems. Of course the slightest detail missed, due to a mid-game snooze, could have you without the vital information needed to solve the mystery. No worries though, the game will carry on without you I think. I didn’t play with other people (which is suggested) but I can’t see how it would add to the game aside from giving you someone to talk to instead of listening to the bad voice acting.