Fusionsphere Systems Limited, 2006
Playing Secret Files: Tunguska provided me an excellent opportunity to rejuvenate my point-and- click adventure gaming skills, which were totally out of practice from a long period of time. This is quite a dated modern day adventure game with breathtaking graphics, easy to manipulate interface, compelling storyline and not to mention, the game play, which will literally glue you to your computer chair.
The intro shows a mysterious event took place in the Tunguska region of Siberia in the year 1908, where an alien object falls from the sky and explodes with such an enormous force that is equivalent to 2,000 times the force of the first atomic bomb that struck Hiroshima in World War II. The aftermath of the event brought many mysterious changes in the region and many scientific expeditions were made to analyse these changes and to investigate the secret behind these changes. One of these expeditions, which were later banned by the authorities, rolls our story to the modern day Berlin, Germany, where we control our protagonist, a young woman called Nina Kalenkow. Nina's father has been mysteriously disappeared from the museum without any trace and you set foot to investigate his disappearance and go on his trail to find him. During your investigation you travel to many places, meet different game characters, solve many puzzles, and finally unravel and fail a dangerous plot to destroy mankind. In the game you also meet and control another game hero, Max Gruber, who is Nina's father's assistant at work.
Secret Files: Tunguska has excellent quality 3D rendered still backgrounds that are mostly bigger than the screen area and slides left and right as your character walks left or right. The game characters are created in 3D and their movements are very realistic. The only thing that I missed in this linear game was pixel hunting as all the hot spots in every screen can be highlighted by clicking a magnifying glass icon in the bottom of the screen. The inventory is huge and visible all the time in the lower part of the screen, which slides left and right by click the left and right arrow icons. The game interface is the best part of the controls, which shows a mouse icon with two buttons and the red and green color of the each buttons tells the player the options he has while hovering it on an important object in the game. The puzzles mildly hard, but since they are totally inventory based, one eventually finds the solution to them. Overall, this is an excellent game to play and must not be missed by any adventure gamer.
