Wonderbook: Diggs Nightcrawler

Unique. [Issue#137, p.120]

The perfect game for the youngest detectives.

A fun but short detective game that utilises the Wonderbook in great ways.

Watching my kids play through Diggs Nightcrawler it was interesting to see how strong a connection they had to both the genre and the play style. Certainly, playing a game with a book feels a very different way to spend time that sat staring at their handhelds.

Diggs Nightcrawler is a really good new interactive story for the Sony's Wonderbook. It's built upon a really good Augmented Reality engine and is full of fun ideas, characters and backgrounds. Maybe it is too short, but you will love to read it more than once.

Diggs is an alternative and original product, with many courageous choices. Simply brilliant.

It would have been perfect with a little more polish and gameplay variety, but it still manages to be enjoyable, not too hard or scary for younger kids, and a nice looking game that adults hopefully shouldn’t find too unbearable to play with the young ‘uns.

Wonderbook is great ‘game’ for kids, but for adults it’s too short and too easy. Children will enjoy the unique atmosphere of the game, the great story and the humour.

A fine noir fairy tale for the whole family.

Wonderbook has finally another game! Moonbot Studios created an interactive cartoon aimed to the younger audience, with compelling and funny characters and a nice "film noir" plot. Game dynamics were more varied in Book of Spells, but here the gameplay is more active, with the book rarely sitting on the floor doing nothing. Pity that it is over soon: just a couple of hours to play it from start to end.

Tightly woven story, great use of the tech - but, at a paltry two hours, it's brief. [Aug 2013, p.68]

Diggs Nightcrawler is a successful mix of video game and cartoon. The augmented reality works splendidly and is both novel and exciting. The adventure is in itself short and somewhat repetitive. The lower price still makes it a great buy for younger wannabe detectives.

Its humorous tone, combined with recognizable characters and loaded with personality, make this an excellent choice also for adults who want to play with the kids at home.

It sucks then that getting Diggs out of the frying pan takes a scant three hours, tops. Do that and you’ll unlock the option to replay and use the Move as a virtual camera to scour the augmented environments for hidden objects and other goodies – but that gets old pretty damn quick. While it lasts, Diggs Nightcrawler is full of surprises. If you’re looking for what Wonderbook can do it’s the best eggs-ample out there. [September 2013, p75]

Diggs Nightcrawler is a really charming story presented in an awesome way. Though some game play elements are kind of bad, the funny characters and a smart integration with the Wonderbook makes up for most of the flaws.

In Diggs Nightcrawler Sony have definitely hit on something, even if whatever it is doesn’t fit comfortably within any particular art-form and it will be interesting to see whether or not the high production values on show here can be sustained for future Wonderbook releases.