GC 2008: Dirk Dagger developer Jadestone details detective delight

Detective game Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol has just been released for N-Gage. If you've got the N-Gage application on your phone, you should be able to download it from the store now.

The game sees you playing hard-boiled detective Dirk Dagger, in a mobile reworking of the classic point-and-click adventure genre. It's got a stolen statue, a grisly murder, and penguins. What more could you ask for?

The game's been developed by Jadestone, working closely with Nokia since the start of last year. We talked to Jadestone's research & development manager Tommy Palm here at GC 2008 to get his thoughts on the game.

"Basicaly I'm a huge fan of point-and-click games," he said. "They're something I've been thinking about ever since getting into mobile, and when Nokia had the idea for Dirk Dagger, it fitted perfectly with our ideas."

According to Palm, the team behind the game were big fans of LucasArts' adventures in the 1990s, complete with their humour and hand-drawn visual style. It shines through in Dirk Dagger for N-Gage, which has already been winning acclaim for its visuals.

Film noir is the inspiration for the game's plot. "Nobody in our generation saw the real film noir films, but we have connections to modern films like LA Confidential, which took the good parts of film noir," says Palm.

The game is also innovative in the way it uses your handset's camera to 'look' around the locations, complementing the regular keypad controls. "We were aware the camera wasn't a very precise tool for moving, but we still felt it was a cool feature to move around an environment and scroll over the maps," he says.

One of the most interesting things about Dirk Dagger is the way it aims to be more accessible than some of the original point-and-click adventures.

"We have played a lot of point-and-clicks, and they were very hardcore," says Palm. "Few of us finished many of the games, because they were so hard! So we wanted to apply some modern game design thinking to Dirk Dagger, making it easier and ensuring the content was highly polished and well thought through."

He smiles: "We didn't want anything like the monkey wrench problem in Monkey Island!"

(Baffled by that reference? Trust us, you don't want to know.)

However, Palm is at pains to stress that games like Monkey Island were otherwise big inspirations for Dirk Dagger. "The humour in particular is an aspect that we integrated into the game," he says. "When we see people playing it and laughing, it's really satisfying."

So, now the game's out, what next? Nokia has ambitious plans outside the game, for example turning it into a mobile comic. But Dirk Dagger surely also lends itself to sequels, or an episodic structure.

Palm sensibly points out that it's too early to say. But with the effort and care that's gone into creating the character and world of Dirk Dagger, we reckon it's definitely a possibility. In the meantime, stay tuned for our full review of the game itself.