I’ve had a lot of chances to try out a lot of old-school RPG point-and-click games, such as Quest for Infamy and The Last Door. The other day, I tried out the first game of the Blackwell series.

I have played a lot of point-and-click adventures, and as I have said before, I know the format. Go some place, get something, use it someplace else, unlock a mystery which will inevitably lead to another mystery until the game is solved.

These games are usually targeted for male audiences, featuring a lot of sword, sorcery, and spaceships. However, there are several point-and-click games that are designed for the female player. There is a huge series of Nancy Drew games if you don’t believe me.

Like the Nancy Drew games, the hero, or in this case heroine, is a female lead. Rosa Blackwell is a starving writer living in New York City, and she has recently had a tragedy in her life as a loved one has died. Apparently, Rosa’s aunt was haunted by a spirit, and now this spirit has become visable by Rosa. The spirit is Joey Malone, who looks like a hard-boiled detective trapped in the wrong kind of mystery story.

Rosa has the ability to talk to dead people, kind of like the kid in The Sixth Sense. Like that “I see dead people” kid, Rosa has to make things right with the spirits before they can move on into the afterlife.

It is a good premise for a game, and I’m not certain if I have seen anything similar to it. Since most games are action focused, Blackwell is a refreshing change. I played the game for a few hours, and I found that I never once used an object to find a clue. Most of the game involved me using information in order to find more information.

In fact, the character has a notepad that you can use to combine info, so you can find stuff that doesn’t add up. Like one character who says one thing and then says another. So the game is probably the closest there is to solving an actual mystery in a game.

If you want to give these Blackwell games a chance, head over to Steam or the iOS store and pay $4.99 each, or more for Bundles of it.