Doctor Who - The Adventure Games: City of the Daleks

Doctor Who fans have waited a long time for a new game based on everyone’s favourite Time Lord and his famous blue telephone box, the Tardis. Now, the BBC has finally granted their wish with this, the first of four downloadable adventure games based on the Doctor’s adventures.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t simply hand you the keys to the Tardis and let you go gallivanting through space and time. Instead, City of the Daleks works something like an interactive episode of the TV programme, leading you on a relatively linear path through a classic Doctor Who plot.

The story begins as the eleventh Doctor (played, as he is on TV, by Matt Smith) decides to whisk his assistant, Amy Pond, back to the Swinging Sixties. Instead of Beatlemania, red busses and miniskirts, however, the Doctor and Amy discover a London that has been reduced to Dalek-infested rubble. As the Doctor, it’s your job to work out how time has been altered so radically and put things right.

While the TV show itself has a fairly broad appeal, this spin off is aimed specifically at the younger end of the fan base. The game is fairly simplistic and can be broken down into exploration, equipment collection and puzzle solving. There isn’t much action to speak of, direct confrontation with the Daleks is instant suicide, so a stealthier approach is required. The puzzles, meanwhile, are all fairly basic, requiring you to match symbols, navigate simple mazes and so on. It’s all over relatively quickly, too. As long as you manage to avoid getting exterminated, you can whizz through the game in around an hour.

The game developers have done a good job replicating the look and feel of the show. The graphics are somewhat cartoon-like, but this suits the game well. Authentic voice acting from the cast regulars and instantly recognisable Doctor Who sound effects help to build atmosphere.

There are even some educational elements and a few amusing lines of dialogue to enjoy along the way. Besides anything else, City of Daleks is free, so if your household is home to a younger Doctor Who fan, then you’ll definitely want to download this.