Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (Gameloft)

This game sees the titular thief Carmen Sandiego and her VILE gang steal jewels from museums around the world and to try to find out the famous confession of Leonardo da Vinci's brother Ruperta.[3] The player's goal is to stop Carmen and capture her thieves. Starting as an inexperienced rookie, the player's first quest is to retrieve the Napoleon bowl that was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris and apprehend the thief.[4] It is discovered that the bowl has spaces for 8 jewels and it is the players task to find these treasures.[4]

The game is an arcade game combined with an adventure game, but it also contains didactic elements, focusing on geography.[4] The adventure mode must be completed first before another mode is unlocked.[4] The adventure consists of 12 cases to solve, and the difficulty level slightly increases as the player progresses through the game.[4]

Each investigation sees the player wind up in various cities around the world. Their task is to interrogate witnesses, find out what the perpetrator looks like (you need to detect three clues to be able to obtain an arrest warrant), and obtain clues about their whereabouts.[4] Players have 7 days to solve each case, which is taken up by actions such as interrogating a witness. The player chooses the next destination on a map - if they choose incorrectly they lose time.[4]

As the game progresses and gains new experience, they gain access to on two useful gadgets - the almanac (which contains detailed information about the city) and a scanner (which helps to find clues in the city).[4] The game includes 3 mini-games: "World Chase" - selecting the capital of a given country, "Flag Quiz" - recognizing the flag of a given country, and "Face Match" - remembering then indicating facial features.[4]

On July 10, 2009, Verizon Wireless and Gameloft in partnership with The Learning Company (Carmen Sandiego rights holder via Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), announced that "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" was now available on Verizon Wireless phones.[5]

Gameloft released this game in 2009 for mobile phones such as Nokia, running on Java.[2] Development was completed by August 2009.[6]

Gameloft preserved the educational tone of the game, and during the game required players to answer several questions about science, geography, and politics.[7] The games were designed to teach children geography through clues and riddles, and offered tongue-in-cheek humor throughout the game.[5]

Komorkomania felt the game was "terribly boring and monotonous"; while they liked the graphics, they disliked the music which was in midi format and couldn't be separated from the game sounds.[4]