WP reports:
''Adventure guru Benoit Sokal of Syberia fame will tackle procedural mysteries with the upcoming effort, Sinking Island. The game tells the tale of Walter Jones, an eccentric billionaire hotel developer who kept all of his heirs at his mercy with the promise of great wealth. He has invited them to the new Jones Tower on Sagorah Island in the Maldives to discuss their inheritance, but he and his grandchildren never get to have that talk, as the elderly coot is found dead on the beach - although his wheelchair is located on the rocky cliffs above. You play Jack Norm, who's been sent to investigate Jones' death. Although you're told that it should be an open-and-shut case, you suspect that some foul play is afoot, so you set out to interview the other inhabitants of the island to uncover the truth.
Like Sokal's prior offerings, Sinking Island is a third-person point-and-click adventure. Double-clicking on a path will make Jack run instead of walk. A ring serves as the cursor, and it glows if you can follow a path, becomes a magnifying glass if you can take a closer look at something, a cog-like hand if you can pick up an item, and a wheel if you can use or interact with it. A talk bubble appears when you hover your mouse over an NPC, and you click to initiate the conversation.''
GameZebo writes:
"In the Agatha Christie-esque adventure game Sinking Island, you play as Jack Norm, a police detective called to a remote tropical island to investigate the not-so-accidental death of Walter Jones, a wheelchair-bound billionaire found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Who did it and what was their motive? This is what you must find out by interrogating the ten suspects, snapping photos and collecting evidence.
While not one of the better adventure games available, this attractive point-and-click detective story might appeal to fans of murder mysteries.
Created by Benoit Sokal, who brought us the awesome Syberia adventure game, Sinking Island is an interactive whodunit that challenges players to piece together clues in order to find a motive and reveal Mr. Jones' murderer. Naturally, everyone on the island is a suspect -- whether it's someone to benefit from a huge inheritance or an angry ex-business associate -- and so you must use logic and deduction to narrow down the list of potential killers."
The Adrenaline Vault : "The pace of the gameplay seems glacially slow. There needs to be a lot more happening to keep your interest while continuously wandering back and forth asking suspects inane questions over and over again. Unraveling the murder mystery has to be accomplished in a relatively linear manner, in which you cannot deviate too much from the predetermined sequence of steps, and this does not help to alleviate the sense of tediousness. The net effect is that it doesn't take too long for you to lose interest, view the gameplay as tiresome, and want to go do something else. Thus, the demands for patience and perseverance are much higher than in most modern adventure titles, and many will not stick with it for the 15 to 25 hours required to make it through from beginning to end."
Throughout all of Sinking Island's faults it still does manage to be interesting throughout the course of the game. This isn't to say that people who aren't diehard fans of B. Sokal should rush out and buy it though. For those not familiar with the Sokal's previous games Sinking Island can probably be skipped. But for those that are willing to overlook the faults and truly enjoy the process of figuring out just what is going on in Sinking Island it is reasonably priced enough to warrant trying out.
