I never played the Touch Detective games when they originally came out, but with the release of the collection for the Switch, I decided to give them a try.

Touch Detective 3 + The Complete Case Files does not exactly make it obvious through its title, but it’s a collection that contains all three Touch Detective games as well as bonus content.

(It’s only the English title, so I assume the reason is because Touch Detective 3 hadn’t been localized before and they wanted to emphasize its inclusion. Still a confusing name for a collection.)

The first Touch Detective puts you in the shoes of a young detective named Mackenzie who needs to prove herself as a detective by solving four cases (accompanied by her mushroom companion Funghi). It makes use of the touchscreen controls for movement and interactions, although you can use the buttons and joystick instead. This mostly works, although moving sometimes felt a little awkward.

Mackenzie also keeps a “touch list” of what touching different things feels like, so it encourages tapping everything on the screen to find interactions. I found a little over half of these by playing naturally.

It’s an adventure game, so gameplay mostly revolves around talking to characters for information, finding items, and using those items in the correct way to make progress. Although it’s decently straightforward, the back-and-forth between different characters and areas got tedious at times.

(After the main cases, you unlock short bonus interactions, and there’s also a separate side scenario starring Funghi, but I only did some of the bonus content since I found the formula a little tiring by the end.)

Now, Touch Detective has a pretty unique tone. It’s funny, and it’s also weird. When the first case began with Mackenzie’s ditzy friend claiming someone was stealing her dreams, I thought it would be one of those stories where it turned out to be a misunderstanding, but soon it was a legitimate investigation into a dream thief. It’s that sort of game.

It also has a pseudo-spooky vibe I did not expect, even though it’s fairly lighthearted.

But the character interactions in Touch Detective are what stood out to me the most. It doesn’t matter how silly or weird a case might be, because if Mackenzie’s rival shows up to make some absurd proclamation and then run off without waiting for details, while their friend is off in her own little world like usual and all the other characters are being oddballs in their own way, it’s all worth it no matter what the case is about.

I’ve only played the first game in the Touch Detective collection so far, but I do want to try the others. While I wouldn’t say the mysteries themselves are especially compelling, the characters and charm made up for it.