Today I had a chance to sit down and go hands-on with Disney’s Guilty Party for the Nintendo Wii from developer and publisher Disney Interactive Studios. The game promises a “Family Mystery” experience that you don’t find in many other game. I’ll have to admit that I was a little skeptical about the title based upon what I’d read, so I welcomed that chance to see it for myself. I’m glad I did, because this is shaping up to be a solid title that everyone in your family can get into playing.

The game has similarities to Clue in that you’re given a cast of characters to interrogate and to determine who committed the crime. We were assured that each scenario is randomized, so you shouldn’t have to worry about encountering the same mystery twice. Now, acting as the main puppetmaster is a fiendish character named Mr. Valentine who is the brains behind every crime, and will show up on occasion to try and thwart your efforts. There is a story mode, and you can also do one-off investigations as well. The difficulty can be adjusted so that you can do a quickie before bed, or a longer, more involved mystery on family game night. To help even things out for the little ones, not only can you set the difficulty for the mystery, but you can also set it for each individual player, so that the interrogations are easier or harder depending on the skill of the player.

All gameplay is turn-based. You can choose to play with up to four players (which I was told was the optimal number), and you can also decide whether you want to play co-operatively, where you all work together in turns, or competitively, trying to be the one to solve the mystery before the others. Once you’re in the mystery, you see the results of some dastardly deed, and have a number of rooms with a number of suspects. Draw a power card (which can be used for various things like summoning a suspect to your location, or giving you extra interrogation tokens), and choose the clue you want to investigate.

When investigating, depending on the clue and your difficulty level, you’ll partake in a mini-game. Beat the mini-game and you get your clue, which is usually a statement from a person in the area, though it could be an object. Luckily, you also get a lie detector which you can move over highlighted statements to see if they’re telling you the truth or not. Once you run out of tokens, you pass your turn to the next detective.

Based on the information (which is all recorded by the game so you don’t have to try to remember anything or write it down), you can start to figure out the characteristics of the culprit, like hair, body type, height, and gender. There is a bit of thinking involved, which ends up being most like a logic puzzle. I appreciate the thinking that will have to be done, and it’s a good way to teach kids how to think logically.

Once you think you have it, you can summon the suspect and accuse them. Of course, things don’t end there. They aren’t exactly going to cop to the whole thing, so you’ll need to prove it’s them by presenting your evidence to eliminate the other suspects based on the clues you’ve collected. Once you’ve successfully nailed them, you’ve won. If you were wrong, you get three false accusations (or a certain number of turns) before you lose.

All in all, I was quite impressed with this title and the potential it has for providing fun gaming opportunities for the whole family. Disney’s Guilty Party is scheduled for release on July 27^th.