Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle

Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle is a one to four player murder /mystery adventure written in six episodes. The story is not fully revealed in episode one and solving the murder is only the beginning. Throughout the game a narrator sets the scene, reveals the story, asks questions and makes disparaging comments should the player struggle with a puzzle.

Though the game can be played by up to four players, only one player is active at any one time. The game starts with Player 1 and the story progresses through to the completion of the first puzzle. After this if more than one player is taking part Player 2 takes over through to the end of the next puzzle and so on. The puzzles are simple and varied, they include brief quizzes about the game so far, deductive puzzles where the player must use clues to determine the correct answer from a set of five offered solutions, mental arithmetic, and tile based puzzles.
All of the puzzles are timed. Completing them within the 'Gold Standard' time without any errors earns the player a gold medal, making a mistake or being too slow results in either a silver medal which the narrator describes as 'The award of mediocrity', or a bronze medal, 'Yes you really were that bad'.

If a mistake is made the player is given the option to replay a puzzle or to skip it completely. At the end of an episode the number of gold, silver and bronze medals are totalled and are used to award trophies and to compare the performance of the players.

This game has no inventory. It is not a point and click adventure, nor is it a hidden object game, its style is more akin to an interactive storybook. There are points within the game where the player is presented with multiple locations to visit but the sections are self contained and can be played in any order without affecting the story arc because they are not inter-dependant. At the end of any scene the player has the option to replay it or to continue to the next.

The PC version of the game is entirely mouse controlled.

The game automatically saves the players' progress at key points in the game. There are no save game slots to choose from when resuming the game, the game automatically restarts from where the last gaming session ended.

The game has been released in many different packages though all releases have been by electronic download. Apart from being released as a full six episode game each episode has been released individually, episodes 1 & 2, 3 & 4,and 5 & 6 have been released as pairs, episodes 1,2,& 3 and 4, 5 & 6 have also been released as two separate groups of episodes. There have also been Special Editions of the game one of which was released for Christmas 2010 and which featured additional artwork in the form of an Advent calendar.

The episodes that comprise this game are ;* Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 1: Little Riddle's Deadly Dilemma

• Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 2: The Mystery of Riddle Manor
• Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 3: The Mystery of the Concealing Flame
• Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 4: Death From Above
• Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 5: The Riddles of the Past
• Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Episode 6: Flight of the Felonious Fugitive

Special Editions of the game are * Blue Toad Murder Files: Mysteries of Little Riddle - Christmas 2010 Edition