From the makers of the popular Ankh series on the PC and the soon to be released DS version, Jack Keane continues Deck 13’s love affair with point and click adventures, the once staple of PC gaming. As opposed to Ankh’s Egyptian backdrop, Jack Keane is set around the height of the British Empire and its Colonization of Indian territories, where on a mysterious island a mad scientist is plotting world domination and revenge on England. As Jack Keane you will find yourself at first agreeing to escort a spy to Tooth Island to investigate the mysterious Dr T, then stumbling into an adventure all of your own, which unravels the truth behind your orphaned upbringing.

After a brief introduction in London, where our hero is at the mercy of a couple of debt collecting thugs we jump straight into the action. Your first task is to first escape your captors and then find you way to your ship, where you will be met by a representative of the British Secret Service offering you money to escort a spy from Cape Town to Tooth Island. Being in a bit of a bind and on the run you reluctantly take on this offer and immediately set of for South Africa.

At certain points though the game you get to trade places with Jack Keane and play as the equally mysterious Amanda. You first encounter Amanda in Cape Town and agree to ferry her to Tooth Island, it’s not until you reach the island that you find out Amanda is actually one of the bad guys (girl) and that when playing as Amanda you are plotting against Jack and eventually catch him so Dr T can kill him. Playing as Amanda gives you a sense of loyalty to Jack because a lot of the time you are spying on Jack and what he’s been up to, this ultimately boils down to you spying on yourself and heightens your feeling of wrong doing against Jack.

The games’ interface is very simple to use, with every item you collect displayed along the top of the screen and all that’s required to play the game is your mouse and a keen eye (no pun intended). The items you pick up and use throughout the game are conveniently placed right under your nose, the trick is to find said item and work out what you need to do with it.

The game therefore relies heavily on the developers making a game that is both fun to play and challenging on the brain. If the puzzles are too simple then you won’t feel the satisfaction of completing the game and if they are too hard you will give up and stop playing. Generally speaking the puzzles were well balanced, with my progress marred by only a few brick walls that had me retracing my steps looking for more clues or items or having the same conversation countless times. There were off course the odd puzzle that required more than just logic to solve, but sheer guess work as to what the developers intentions were (for example Hot Indian Spice or purple Tooth Island Plant seeds).

Aside from the puzzle aspect the game is also packed with some very unique and funny characters, although unfortunately they are restricted to being NPCs with minor parts, all the larger roles and the ones you spend the most time with feel little stereotyped. The bumbling British spy with the posh upper class accent and Amanda the sassy American girl out for an adventure being the most prominent examples, but it’s Jack Keane who suffers the worst stereotype of supposedly being English but voiced by an American without even the slightest attempt at doing a British accent.

While on the subject of voice acting which is on the whole very good, it is let down by both Jack and Amanda’s dialogue sounding at times flat and uninteresting. The main problem is that both Jack and Amanda have a very limited set of responses and there is no context in the phrases, obviously it’s difficult to achieve this when using the same phrases over and over. One solution would have been adding a confused or frustrated tone for negative responses or excitement for positive, this would have helped to give the responses a more human feel. Yet again it’s the NPCs who redress this balance with more convincing and emotional voice work.

As a whole the game proves there is still some life left in the old point and click genre, even though it is let down by some hammy voice acting. The puzzles were nicely balanced with tricky multiple item challenges spread out between the more common easier types that only required a few items to complete. For the observant players there are also special items dotted around the game that will unlock bonus content in the form of a rogue’s gallery of all the main characters which encourages obsessive collecting.

The switch over to Amanda is one of the stand-out parts of the game, it’s not often you get to play as both hero and villain within the space of two acts, the idea of trying to hinder your own progress made for an exciting scenario. This role reversal is unfortunately limited to following the game’s story arc, what would have made the game far a more dynamic would have been if the reversal had a bigger impact on the remainder of the game, with multiple story branches.

The biggest draw for this game will probably be mature gamers who have grown up playing the Lucas/Monkey Island games in the nineties and are keeping the genre alive. Which is ironic given the title’s looks and feel which was undoubtedly intended to draw a younger crowd, these same kids will probably too busy playing their Wiis to notice it; which is a shame because if any genre is worth saving it’s this one.