Future Games, 2005
NiBiRu: Age of Secrets is a mystery adventure game that will definitely brush up the playing excitement and fun of a Broken Sword adventure game, except that you control Martin Holan and not George Stobbart. The game is developed by the company that formerly served us with their excellent dark mystery adventure game, The Black Mirror and this is the reason that NiBiRu also displays similar quality of graphics and animations found in The Black Mirror.
In this game our hero, Martin Holan is a young archeologist and a linguistic who has been contacted by his uncle to examine a mysterious World War II tunnel unearthed by the construction workers while building a new highway in Bohemia. Upon arriving in Prague Martin finds out that the girl his uncle arranged to meet and brief him the details of this mysterious tunnel has been murdered in cold blood and the motive behind the murder somehow seems connected to this mysterious discovery. From here onward, for Martin Holan, this short expedition visit to Prague seems like taken a dark turn to the most dangerous and thrilling journey that will take him into the very heart of the ancient Pyramids of Mayan valley. The adventure that involves outwitting cold-blooded mysterious gang of murderers, overcoming problems, solving logical as well as inventory based puzzles and finally discovering the deep and dark secret powers of NiBiRu, an unknown planet in our solar system, which was first discovered by the Nazis and they hired scientists in order to work on these powers so they could utilize them to dominate the world, which as per their finding was also the main cause of the demise of Ancient Mayan civilization.
Graphically, the game's 3D environment is a reminiscent of The Black Mirror with over eighty locations to explore and dozens of interesting characters to meet and interact with. The musical score and sound effects are quite charming and mesh well in the game environment. Game puzzles vary from not-so-hard to very hard and challenging while they are mostly inventory based. Despite the games linear storyline the exploration and puzzle solving is non-linear within a particular location. In the ending lines, I would say that this is a game that no adventure gamer should miss for it is all fun and entertainment than anything else.
