New York Mysteries 1 CE is an appealingly fast-paced, streamlined version of a classic point-and-click adventure game. It begins with a surprisingly strange mystery: the city's most notorious gangsters are turning into goo, leaving only butterflies behind. The people of New York might have been able to overlook a few missing gangsters, but when kids start disappearing too, they bring in ace detectives to solve the case.
The core gameplay loop should feel pretty familiar to anyone that's spent time with adventure games. You'll enter rooms, click on objects to add them to your inventory and use those objects to solve puzzles. After you've used an item, it disappears from your inventory, so it's usually pretty easy to figure out what you have to do next.
There's a good variety of puzzles here, including pictograms and some number puzzles. You can also search for collectibles in each chapter, which adds an element of hidden object gameplay.
Since you quickly move from one puzzle to the next, New York Mysteries 1 CE can be hard to put down. It probably won't challenge avid adventure gamers, but it's a zippy little title that's worth checking out.