Imagine the scene. You're a chipper chap in the roaring thirties with a young bristly moustache, a cavalier tongue and a sports car. Or possibly a cavalier car and a sports tongue. Either way works.

The point is, you've been invited to a mansion on an isolated island by an enigmatic host who doesn't turn up. There are eight such guests plus two servants and, one by one, they come to unfortunate ends, apparently to pay for their misdeeds in the past.

This is the plot from the original Christie novel, but you can't rifle through your grandma's thriller collection and snag her copy to use as a free hints book, as the story has been altered somewhat for this point-and-click adventure game.

Even though the characters and some of the original dialogue remain the same, new plot twists and multiple endings have been thrown in to keep even the most ardent murder-mystery buffs guessing. Naturally, us average clueless idiots are free to do the usual blundering around blindly trying to combine every object in our inventory, while muttering feeble jokes about how it's bound to be the butler.

The player actually assumes the role of an additional eleventh guest - the boatman who is trapped on the island when his craft is scuttled - and your task is to determine who is bumping everyone off. As a Whodunnit adventure, you might expect And Then There Were None to be packed with clever dialogue trees, which branch out and help mould your deductions and theories. But it isn't.

In fact, this is a bog standard puzzle based point-and-clicker. As the murders occur, the questioning process is literally just a matter of talking to each character, going through some set questions (which are largely identical for every suspect) and listening to the responses. Some real interaction on this level would have been welcome. The possibility of saying the wrong thing, then alienating people and so on would definitely make the adventure feel more alive.

The delivery of the dialogue and voice acting doesn't help in places either; the first death is practically comical. As the unfortunate victim flops to the floor, the doctor standing next to him announces, "This man is dead", in a quiet, almost deadpan voice. It's more Python than Christie.

And Then There Were None's biggest problem is a distinct lack of proper sleuthing, not just in the character interaction department, but also with the puzzles. There's the odd bit of fingerprint dusting, but many of the conundrums you must unravel involve oddball tasks like getting into a beehive, or working out how to shift some goats. Yes, you herd correctly (that's the idea, anyway), goats! (These were near the top of our suspect list, as when questioned they responded very gruffly).

And while some of the solutions to the puzzles are logical and satisfying to crack, there are more than a few obscure affairs which are only solvable by the old trial and error method; try every object to see if it fits, try combining everything in your inventory, and when that doesn't work try combining your monitor screen with your fist.

It isn't all bad. The tale is a classic one and the game does build some intrigue and atmosphere, with the island and mansion rendered in a suitably haunting style, backed up by a sinister ivory tinkling sound track. The fact remains, though that this is an at times frustrating and slightly below average adventure.

And Then There Were None is a standard point-and-click adventure which is blighted by some rather daft puzzles and a disappointing lack of any real detective work.