Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile

Hercule Poirot travels to Egypt, only to get sucked into the politics of someone else's bad romance, but on the bright side, there's a lot of murder.

With Death on the Nile, Microids Studio Lyon has settled into a great formula for a Poirot adventure: a supporting playable character brings novelty and gives the moustachioed star room to ham it up as a lightly comic persona. Some mildly disjointed pacing and a dozily relaxed speed might put some people off, but if you want the cosy feeling of curling up with a good mystery novel, then this is absolutely the game for you.

Microids brings a fresh take on Agatha Christie's classic Hercule Poirot story.

While it's difficult to adapt a story that people already know so well, Microids has done a great job of making sure that it feels fresh with new characters, plot beats, and an updated setting.

Death on the Nile isn’t a must-play adventure, but it’s at least generally tolerable – which is more than can be said about it as an Agatha Christie adaptation. On that front, it fails, so if that’s why you’re interested in it, prepare for disappointment. Still, if you’re fond of point-and-click mysteries, there’s probably enough here to be interesting.

Death on the Nile may not be a big-budget spectacle, but it’s a well-crafted mystery with charm and ambition. If you enjoy piecing together clues, catching liars in their contradictions, and unraveling classic stories in new ways, this is a cruise worth boarding.

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Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile translates its '70s setting into a fun audio-visual package. The mysterious characters (fully voiced) are well-developed, giving the game a page-turning quality. You'll want to see them reach their conclusions, no matter the outcome. A few well-meaning but ultimately unfortunate choices knock the game down from great to just good, and I suspect this will fare less positively with Christie purists, given some of the liberties. But I think most players will get their money's worth at $39.99, and the game's replay value only sweetens the deal. The overall experience delivers an uneven, albeit high-quality, memorable mystery adventure.

Agatha Christie has created works that I like so much that she is my favorite author. The film adaptation of her novel Death on the Nile, starring Sir Peter Ustinov, is still my absolute favorite movie. I also really liked the combination of traditional and modern elements in the previous title, Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express, which is why I immediately wanted to see Death on the Nile adapted as the follow-up title. Now that this wish has been granted, I have been incredibly excited since the first trailer was released (my husband will certainly confirm this). Naturally, my expectations for Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile were correspondingly high. Microids Studio Lyon did not disappoint me in any way. Once again, the developers have skillfully expanded the traditional story with creative, more modern elements. There is classic content from the original novel that is recognizable, but also completely new plots that do not appear in the original at all or are only touched upon. In Jane Royce, Hercule Poirot once again has a capable co-detective at his side, whose sections provide a welcome change of pace with a slightly more action-packed approach and are also very exciting. Due to the split, the focus on the events directly surrounding Linnet is initially less pronounced than one might be accustomed to from the novel or the film adaptations, until the two storylines ultimately come together nicely. The colorful 1970s setting continues to set it apart from other adaptations and is beautifully integrated into the narrative. The characters, once again designed in a somewhat comic-like style, carry the story credibly, but some of them have minor weaknesses in the animations. The environment, on the other hand, shines with beautiful panoramas and appropriate, varied scenery, even if some of the details repeat themselves when you look closely. As befits a detective game, the puzzles, which are the focus of the game, are not too easy, but also not too difficult to cause complete despair, and are definitely fun. Furthermore, the museum offers a nice feature to make you even more motivated to tackle collection tasks. All in all, Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile presents itself very well and delivers a really nice implementation, just as I had hoped.

Murder is afoot in Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile, the latest adaptation of the celebrated crime author's mysteries from developer Microids ...