Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: Ep. 1 - A Deadly Business

The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle is a game for anybody who has been overshadowed by somebody smarter, faster or just plain luckier than you. That's how Bertram feels. He may be a famed adventurer that has explored the most hidden parts of the world, but he's still stuck playing second fiddle to a certain detective named Sherlock Holmes. Now is your chance to turn the tables and help our elderly hero get the better of the world's most famous sleuth in this delightful new Switch game from UK-based developer Rumpus.

First released on mobile devices in late 2014 and then ported to PC a few months later, Adventures of Bertram Fiddle is an episodic point and click adventure game starring a dimwitted explorer and his incredibly strong sidekick, Gavin. Unfortunately, Bertram is in a bit of a rut and his nagging wife is demanding he finds a steady job to maintain their lavish lifestyle. Things are not looking good for our hero.

As luck would have it, there's a murderer on the loose. I mean, that's not good for the innocent people who have been sliced to pieces by this maniac, but it does give Bertram Fiddle a chance to stumble his way into some important evidence that could break this investigation wide open. It's now up to Bert and Gav to follow the clues, investigate the evidence and put the pieces together. And maybe, if he's lucky, he'll be able to do all that before Sherlock Holmes shows up to take all the credit.

Bertram's investigation plays out like most classic point and click adventure games, with players moving a cursor around the screen and picking up items that will later be used to solve puzzles. This first episode is split up into four brief chapters, each giving you a different location to search and new characters to interview. There's nothing especially new or groundbreaking about the gameplay here, so if you're not already a fan of this style of adventure game, then you might as well move along.

For those of us who grew up loving Sam & Max and Monkey Island, there's a lot to like in Adventures of Bertram Fiddle. This is a delightfully charming quest with a lot of sharp writing and a perfect voice cast. It's also funny, especially when you dig deeper into Bertram's past exploits. Rumpus has done a great job of giving the city a personality and letting the colorful cast of characters bring it to life.

At the same time, this first episode feels a bit scaled back when compared to many other point and click adventure games. There aren't that many items to pick up and the puzzles are about as easy as they come. It helps that each chapter is contained to a small part of the city, so even if you can't figure out the solution, you know there are only a handful of places the item you need could be hiding. If you tend to avoid this type of games because of the challenging puzzles, then Adventures of Bertram Fiddle may be a good entry point to the genre.

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It's also worth mentioning that this is yet another point and clicker that is best when played using the Switch's touchscreen display. Simply pointing to the object you want to interact with is substantially easier than using the analog sticks to move the cursor around the screen. Although it was a little finicky, I wish Rumpus would have incorporated the type of motion controls we saw in Old Man's Journey a few weeks ago. With no shortcut keys or help in any way, this is a game that was not designed with a gamepad in mind.

Here's another thing I don't understand: Considering that the second episode has been available on PC since last August, it's a little disappointing that the two weren't packaged together on the Switch. As you might imagine, the first episode leaves us on quite a cliffhanger, so it would have been nice to jump right into the next part. As it is, we're stuck waiting for the as-of-yet still unannounced port of episode 2, which is not a place you want to be when that second episode is already available on other platforms.

Although a bit on the simple side, I was completely won over by the quirky story and funny writing. Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: Episode 1 - A Deadly Business sets up a compelling mystery with a cast of colorful characters and a twist around every corner. I loved hanging out with Bert, which is all the more reason why it was disappointing when the all-too-brief adventure concluded with a cliffhanger. I hope the wait isn't long, because I'm excited to see where Bertram's adventure takes him next.