Treasure on the Tracks also has plenty of traditional puzzles, ranging from the incredibly simple to the slightly perplexing. Clearly keeping younger players in mind, the puzzles are fairly interesting and can be fun, designed in a way that will help inexperienced adventurers cut their teeth on the genre. If there’s one complaint, it’s that several puzzle types repeat themselves. For example, once you’ve found all the necessary scraps of paper in each city, you will need to reassemble them by means of a jigsaw puzzle. That’s one of three kinds of puzzle which are repeated in each city, the only variation being a slightly harder difficulty in later stages. Fortunately, there is also a healthy mix of inventory puzzles where you need to collect objects and perform certain actions in sequence in order to get results. There is one section I found a little odd, which saw the boys having to fill in as cooks, requiring you to dice vegetables and add ingredients to a cooking pot. These tasks have little to do with the plot, and seem designed simply to make some motion-based use of the DS touchscreen. Any such digressions are few and far between, however, and overall I think the puzzles will be enough to entertain younger adventurers without being too easy.

The interface is fairly simple, as you merely drag the stylus around the screen to discover hotspots. Once a hotspot appears, a smart cursor will indicate what kind of action can be performed, and you just tap on it to execute the default command. To move around you similarly need to find the forward, left or right arrows and tap those. When you talk to others, their portrait appears in the top screen, and any questions you can ask appear on the bottom screen. To use an object you’ve collected, you have to tap it in inventory to make it appear in a small box on the main play screen, then tap it again to activate before selecting the object you want to use it with, which seems like one step unnecessarily too many.

Using the X and Y buttons will bring up not only the inventory, but an adventure game favourite in the form of a PDA. This records important information, acts as a menu for loading and saving, and if selected as an option at the start of the game, will offer you hints on what to do next. There’s also a button which allows you to see the tasks you have yet to complete in an area, which could be handy if you ever get stuck. The game even features a notepad on which to make handwritten notes, which I never used but is always a good thing. With all these helpful features, the only problem is that the PDA itself can be a bit clumsy to access sometimes.

Graphically the game isn’t stunning, but the train carriages are nicely designed and each has its own unique identity, especially the gallery which has plenty of displays to investigate. The backgrounds are all static slides with 2D characters, which gives it a nice ‘classic’ adventure feel. Surprisingly, the only time you see the Hardy Boys is in the few cutscenes, which are presented in a hand drawn comic book style. The various cities aren’t as interesting to explore as the train, as they’re all pretty similar, though each features a photographic background of a famous landmark accompanied by some information about it. The top DS screen is mainly used just to extend the environment you’re currently in. For example, when on the train it displays the ceiling of the rocking train carriage, which is a little odd as the bottom screen remains still. The music is a typical soundtrack laden with synth strings and helps to add suspense throughout the game, although it does get a little repetitive. As it is the only audio apart from the odd sound effect, it could quite easily have become annoying if overdone, but I quite happily played through the game with the volume turned up.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Treasure on the Tracks, somewhat to my surprise. It overcame my sceptical assumptions of what a game aimed at younger players would be like (I played a few stinkers when I was a child). As an adult, the four hours it took me to play through, if that, didn’t add up to the most satisfying gaming experience, of course, but the resolution of the storyline and enjoyable puzzles were enough to make it feel like a pleasant diversion. Sometimes I found the puzzles too easy, sometimes repetitive, but they do require the same kinds of thought processes one uses in more challenging games. I’d recommend this game for any 10-12 year olds (or thereabouts) who want to get into adventure gaming, or any parent who’d like to introduce their child into the genre. The Hardy Boys are reliable protagonists, the slightly but steadily increasing challenge of the puzzles will be an excellent primer for more difficult adventures, and who knows, they might even learn something in the process.