Uh-oh, it's a graphical adventure from some people who have absolutely nothing to do with Lucasfilm! The temptation is to kick offf with lots of unfavourable comparisons with a certain The Secret of Monkey Island, but i'll try and resist it. Better not to get bogged down in a compare and contrast syndrome, but give this French yarn a fair hearing in its own right.

As with all point and click 'thrillers', the plot is nigh impossible to avoid, so I may as wel start with that. You play a leisurely seafarer skipping around the Indian Ocean in the early 1950s. All's going swimmingly until you stop off at (surprise, surprise!) Maupiti Island for a cool shandy and get yourself embroiled (surprise, even-more-surprise!) in all sorts of intrigue.

The first thing you discover is that some poor girl's been kidnapped. Naturally, being this adventurous type, you get straight down to a spot of detective work, exploring the locality and interviewing the dozen or so inhabitants of the island. You discover the usual group of suspects - mad communists, raving homosexuals, gorgeous housemaids, disillusioned young men from Europe and, of course, the obligatory mysterious old fisherman.

There's not too much searching to be done, since at least one of these bonkers characters shows up at every turn. Interaction is good though - you can talk to them by picking any of about twenty questions, you can follow them, you can bribe them, you can even indulge yourself and give them a good old fashioned beating.
We wouldn't recommend it though - the latter option might be a lot of fun, but you're running a huge risk of ending up with the contents of your head plastered all over some barroom wall. As you might expect, Maupiti Island falls short of a five star rating in the hospitality stakes.

It all sounds suitably intriguing, doesn't it, but how well does it actually work as a game? Well, the first thing you have to say is that it's illustrated deliciously, punctuated with some charming effects and music which give the whole affair a leisurely, almost holiday-like feel. It certainly rates highly in the atmosphere stakes.

Gameplay-wise it works quite well too. I usually have a big problem with graphical adventures - they rarely let you do just what you want, and I tend to get frustrated. Here, however, if you want to look at something (even the most humdrum object) you usually can. Just bumbling around the locations in the game checking everything out can be nearly as much fun as unearthing deadly secrets or whatever.

Of course, there is a downside to all this. There's no way that Maupiti Island is going to give you more than (maybe) a dozen hours entertainment - it's simply too small. Still, for mellow types who get their kicks watching Sunday afternoon movies or walking in parks, this provides an excellent alternative to rabid death rushes or sugary platform games.

To sum up, here is a small and almost perfectly formed game full of lovely visuals, interesting characters, and providing a limited smattering of action and suspense. Yes, I'm afraid it can be summed up by one of the blandest words in the dictionary - it's nice. (And no, it's not as good as Monkey Island).

Murder mystery games on computer have been much neglected. It's a genre ripe for exploration, especially with the new era of CDTV just around the corner. In fact, the only recent attempts - which include Vera Cruz, Cruise for a Corpse and Operation Stealth (displaying a predominantly French slant to the genre) - have been graphically impressive, but lacking in the all-important gameplay area.

In addition, the games often lose a lot in the translation with some very odd phrases turning up - a trait that seems to have been carried through with Maupiti. For instance, the box blurb says: 'When we arrived I immediately knew there would be a heated ambiance... a very heated ambiance.' There's nothing I like more than heated ambiance - whatever that might mean!

Fortunately, though, these lingual 'oddities' don't detract from making this one of the best whodunits I've played. It's impressive graphically, superb in the music and sound effects department and plays simple and easily.

The plot revolves around one Detective Jerome Lange, the gumshoe who first made an appearance in Lankhor's Mortville Manor back in 1989. His return sees him investigating odd goings-on at the eponymous Maupiti Island. A girl named Marie - or Mary if the contradictory box blurb is to be believed - has been kidnapped, so Jerome sets about solving the case by roaming the tropical paradise, and scouring for clues.

During this time, several characters, both dodgy and seemingly normal, can be interrogated and clues are liberally dropped during the course of these conversations. However, someone is out to stop your investigations and most of my sleuthing ended in murder - namely mine.

The game opens with Jerome in his cabin, and above this a series of icons and secreted within an attractive bamboo border. These are then accessed with the mouse, and enable Jerome to talk, take, read, argue, and question, along with a whole host of other options which appear as and when they are needed.

There are some very nice animated touches, such as moving fans and butterflies, which add to the claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere really well - you can feel the heat of the tropics coming off the screen! Couple this with some amazing music and sound effects, and the development team have created a quality that's often lacking in computer games and vital in whodunits - the all-important atmosphere. Occasionally, though, this atmosphere is punctured by the aforementioned bad translations, one of which informed me that, while searching my own cabin and trying to lift a desk lid I was, 'badly raised'. Quite what it meant, I'll never know.

On entering a new screen, the game informs you of who else is within the room. And from here, the collection of clues begins. Anyone who is present has their name shown at the top of the screen, and simply by clicking the pointer onto their sprite, a conversation can be struck up. As their face appears in close-up, their answers come across via some rather robotic synthesis, and anything useful that is said can be committed to memory.

Once again, though, these conversations fall foul of the dubious translation. Take my questioning of Bruce, a rough-looking sea dog type, for instance. From the start I was thrown by his greeting: 'Hello, sailor'. Was I hearing things? Rather worried, I pressed on. What did he think of the island, I asked? 'I like stopping at Maupiti. I have my little habits there,' he replied. I decided I didn't want to know about his little habits and moved on.

For the tougher characters, an option allows you to lay into them, but the manual recommends that you avoid this avenue as much as possible. In addition, as an undercover sleuth, it will also draw attention to your movements and make your task even harder. Although not up to the standard of Operation Stealth, Maupiti Island is a neat game let down by the dodgy translations. OK, so this is a minor point, but it can get annoying and I would have hoped that more care could have been taken.

Even so, solving Marie's (or Mary's) kidnapping should keep all you would-be Philip Marlowes and Mike Hammers busy, and is recommended for its novelty value alone.