Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle: Episodes 4 - 6 concludes the first season of this intriguing casual adventure title.

Like the first three episodes, both the members of the Blue Toad Murder Club and the inhabitants of Little Riddle have a very distinct, slightly out-of-portioned look to them that can easily make the visuals of the game immediately appealing to pretty much anyone. While these last three episodes do introduce a couple of new characters, like the baker and the hotel chef, most of the characters you will run into were previously introduced. That being said, both the look and feel of these new characters, as well as the voices behind them, fit perfectly into the Little Riddle backdrop and really helps to tie the two halves of the episodic series together. These new episodes also introduce a couple more locations in the town like the cemetery and the water mill, and much like the new characters, these added locations fit right in.

Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle: Episodes 4 - 6 not only finally reveals who is behind the string of murders and thefts, but also involves the insuing weeding out of said culprit and finally bringing him or her to justice. Actually, it's in this collection's first episode, "Death From Above," where you find out exactly who is behind the drama. It just takes another two episodes to convince the Inspector of the character's guilt and to finally bring him/her to justice. "Death From Above" starts off at the funeral of the local librarian who didn't make it out of the previous episode alive. This time, though, the murder victim is The Colonel and when he drops dead, we find out that he isn't exactly who he claimed to be. In investigating the latest murder, you not only learn more about the town's history, you learn that Lady Snobbish might not be the last member of the rich family after all, and it would appear that whomever is behind these crimes is really after some long-lost Snobbish treasure.

In the series' fifth episode, "The Riddles of the Past," you not only have to figure out what the fake Colonel knew and why he had to be killed, but it seems someone has made a mess of the hotel right outside of your room and the Hotel Manager won't let you in until you can tell him who exactly did it. Unlike the other episodes, the whodunit if "The Riddles of the Past" doesn't deal directly with the series of crimes in the town, but instead a major portion is focused on finding the person with the dirty shoes. While enjoyable, a good bit of this particular episode feels like filler since the crime doesn't feel worthy of the team's time, especially when you are trying to convince the local law enforcers that your suspect is the real culprit, as well as find out exactly what the Snobbish Treasure is.

The season's final episode, "Flight of the Felonious Fugitive," starts off with your team, as well as the lanky Constable, in a rather dire situation, and even when you get out of that, you have to figure out where the main villain is hiding. In this episode, you learn that there are four possible locations where the criminal is hiding, and you know that someone in the town is keeping him/her secreted away. As always, you will have to use your powers of observation and deductive reasoning to work out exactly where the bad guy is and get him/her under lock and key once and for all.

While Blue Toad Murder Files offers a good and amusing mystery story, the real gameplay comes in the dozen mini-games and logic puzzles each episode throws at you. While there are a couple that are only re-skinned tasks from the first trilogy, most of these puzzles feel brand new and offer up a solid challenge. There are challenges involving finding your ways around maps, determining how liquid is in a tilted pitcher, various letters to decipher and a ton of logic puzzles where you are supposed to put objects together based on a given set of rules (things like A must have 3 times more of something than B and so on).

Basically, each episode has you going to various locations of Little Riddle, and at each stop being tasked with some kind of challenge. Every now and then, the Narrator will stop and ask you a series of questions to see how observant you are, and at the end of the episode, you are supposed to be able to say who the culprit is for that episode's particular crime. If you've played the first half of this season, or read the previous review, there shouldn't really be any surprises in this department.

Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle: Episodes 4 - 6 definitely feels like a tougher trio of episodes than the first half of the season. While there are a few tasks taken straight out of earlier episodes (like watering flowers or following paths down a map based on what the person talking heard), there are also a few new varieties. A prominent puzzle presents the player with a game board of sorts with tokens that need to be gotten rid of, and the only way to do that is to have one jump over another. The goal in the three or four of these that show up is to find the jump-pattern that will leave only one game piece on the board.

Another new puzzle type that shows up twice involves labeling items on the screen based on the jumbled word labels given to you, while easier ones return like simply counting the number of something on the screen while various forms of movement makes it hard to keep track of what you've counted and what you haven't.

One flaw in the game's design that returns is the lack of replayability. Basically, there is no difference between different play throughs of a challenge. The solution the first time is the solution every time, so if you either solved it yourself or let the game tell you the answer, you will most likely be able to zoom through it the next time you try and play the game. While it might be a fun challenge the first time, there is essentially no challenge any subsequent time. The only time this really doesn't matter is if you are using the game's multiplayer capabilities to play with a group of people who haven't seen the solutions before.

So how does Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle: Episodes 4 - 6 handle multiplayer in an adventure game? Basically, it takes a turn-based strategy. At the beginning of each episode, you tell the game how many people are playing and as you move your way through Little Riddle, the active character switches in and out. As you complete challenges and answer questions in pop quizzes, you are awarded gold, silver, bronze or no ribbons (based on time to complete the challenge and number of attempts). At the end of the episode, each player selects who they think did the job and all the points are added up to determine which player was the better sleuth.

What I like about the way Blue Toad Murder Files handles multiplayer is that it doesn't lock you down to any particular controller configuration. You can play just as easily if you have one controller as you can if you have four. The game essentially treats all input from every controller as the input for a single controller so if you don't have enough for everyone to have their own, you can simply pass the controller you have around. Of course, this wouldn't work as well if the game wasn't as turn-based as it is, and you have to use the honor system to make sure no other players are messing with your input, but it all works out nicely.

Like the first three episodes, Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle: Episodes 4 - 6 is a fun experience that puts an interesting twist on adventure games. While there isn't anything keeping you from jumping into the series right in the middle (they are all self-contained episodes), to get the maximum enjoyment, it's best to start The Mysteries of Little Riddle from the beginning, unless you are the type that likes to read the end of a mystery novel first, that is.