Maupiti Island

Maupiti Island is a graphic adventure created by Lankhor in 1990 for the Amiga and Atari ST, later ported to MS-DOS.

It's the second detective/mystery title created by the French studio based in Paris. The main character is again the famous detective Jerome Lange. In the previous game, which was released 6 years before, the location was an ancient manor. In this case, the game is set on the tropical island of Maupiti, where the detective has to stop with his ship to avoid a cyclone. If you have watched enough episodes of Murder, She Wrote, you know that if a famous detective ends up randomly in a new place, the inhabitants have good reasons to be worried. In fact, a woman called Marie mysteriously disappears. Lange will have to solve the case by exploring the island, and talking with the people.

The best aspect of this game is clearly the atmosphere. Thanks to fantastic visuals - probably some of the best graphics ever seen on an ST/Amiga adventure - and excellent music, the feeling of being on a tropical island is real. You can interact with many objects in every location, which enhances the sensation of realism. Still, the adventure is not based on inventory puzzles but rather on conversations with the NPCs, as you might expect from a detective investigation. Solving the case is not easy, and if you are not a hard-core adventure gamer, you might need a tutorial. But this is an extremely polished game, and if you have never played it - which is probable since it's not so popular - it will be a nice surprise.