Released earlier this month, Nikki Holiday and the Pirate Star is yet another point-and-click adventure game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Available for only one dollar, the application takes you through the few days leading up to main character, Nikki's, fame as a singing celebrity. There are currently a whole bunch of similar titles able to be purchased on the App Store, but this certainly takes the cake.
Despite the popularity of other games soaring high, I have to say that Nikki and the Pirate Star was undoubtedly the most amount of fun I've had with point-and-click games as such. I'm not a huge puzzle buff nor am I a fan of such titles, but this truly won over my free time over the past few days.
In the game, you will play as the main character Nikki Holiday, who has recently had her dream of becoming a famous singer come through. You'll be running back and forth on one specific island working through multiple mysteries in order to ultimately throw a hit concert.
The storyline starts as Nikki is preparing for her debut. Her PR manager is nowhere to be found, due to a death threat, and your first task is finding him. After some tutorial text, you'll be on your way; this is where the interactive adventure stars. One problem leads to another, and yet another, and so on. Throughout the span of the game, you'lbe able to interact with a ton of different in-game characters, digging up information from each.
And, to make this more interesting, a dueling system has been incorporated within the game - as you move through the story, you'll collect cards of all of the people you have interacted with. These will go into your deck of cards that will be used for settling arguments with antagonists in the plot. Based off of stat points for each card, you must strategically place your cards against an opponent's cards in order to finally take away all of their 20 base points. It's not the easiest system to explain, but I'll say this: this system is the deciding factor when you're defending someone, proving you're worthy and escaping from...places that should not be revealed without giving away the story.
I'm not sure why the developers managed to cook up a pirate within the story, but then did and, regardless of its randomness, the story ties together nicely in the end.
Apart from the few typos in the game's script, each character's attitude, mood and personality is accurately and consistently portrayed through their according lines. Also depicting a character, are the wonderful graphics that make up the game world and character's sprites. The modern cartoon drawings are extremely well done, they're bright, smooth around the edges and give a relative feeling of realism.
If you're not such a seasoned point-and-click gamer or are simply not good at solving puzzles, then Nikki Holiday and the Pirate Star is without doubt meant for you. It's easy enough to be solvable for the aforementioned type of person, and is also at the same time not too simple where you're solving puzzles without challenge; it's smack-dab in the middle. For only a buck, it's worth the overall day's playing time you'll receive out of its seven chapters and wonderfully executed gameplay.
