Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge
Cover art
Developer(s)	The Learning Company
Publisher(s)	Riverdeep
Series	Carmen Sandiego
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS
Release date(s)	October 2, 2001
Genre(s)	Educational/adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge (aka Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Carmen Sandiego Treasures of Knowledge) is a point-and-click adventure game in the Carmen Sandiego franchise, released in 2001 (despite some sources saying it was released in 2002). For its title, the game does not use the long-standing formula of the previous Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? titles. Instead, the game seems to be based on the structure of the newest version of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, which The Learning Company retitled Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time.

Plot

The protagonists of the game are Carmen's former partner Julia "Jules" Argent, an experienced ACME detective and new recruit Shadow Hawkins, who is gadget-happy and rather arrogant. Jules and Shadow's personalities frequently bounce off each over the course of the game, similar to how Zack and Ivy were paired up in "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?", and that they had trouble with each other, but in the end, they both got along. The Chief explains that she has paired them together because she believes their personalities complement each other and indeed by the end of the game they appear to have gained some respect for each other's methods (or have at least agreed to disagree.)

Carmen steals a rare Franco-Italian edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (which conveniently has the title written on the cover in English) and then proceeds to steal a Māori wood carving, Incan Quipus and other seemingly random items. Jules and Shadow find that each object Carmen has stolen seems to be tied to a mysterious Portuguese explorer, a lost city with a great treasure and a strange "wheel" design. On the eighth and final case, Jules and Shadow track down the lost city itself. Once inside the city, however, they find Carmen sitting inside a chamber filled with priceless treasures. Carmen suggests that she may be planning to lock Jules and Shadow away in the city, but Jules insists that Carmen would not do such a thing. Shadow captures Carmen by grabbing her wrist with a grapple launcher, but she inexplicably escapes through the use of a smoke bomb. Jules and Shadow debate if Carmen led them to the treasure for ethical reasons or if she is simply a bad person. Whatever were Carmen's true motivations remain a mystery.

Gameplay

The game is divided into seven missions. The goal of each missions is to recover one item of the stolen artefacts, which Carmen has hidden in a puzzle somewhere in the world. The user can only unlock this puzzle by collecting items or clues from other countries, often having to solve other puzzles first. At the end of each case, the item is found and it is announced that Carmen has stolen something else.

Critical reception

A description of the game at Learning Village included that the game "is a completely updated and significantly enriched version of the original... [The] visual animation is state of the art, the story line is new and more sophisticated, and the design details involving your interaction with the story, are much more refined." Various commentary on the game from the same website are: "I really liked the way you could move around exploring and piecing together the clues. The program was easy to work and you could really move around fast" (Henry, age 13), "I had to work on this one. I really liked figuring out how to get the code right in the code machine in the back of the car in Moscow. It wasn't simple." (Sam, age 11), "We had the old version of Carmen Sandiego and liked it a lot. This one is even better." (Jessica, age 11).^[2]

A review of the game at software.com was mixed. Some features were approved of: "over 50 countries are included; each with over 200 non-player-characters and cultural features, geographical information is presented to players passively; and absorbed through direct thinking exercises and clue-hunting activities, and that Carmen Sandiego's software interface is simple, very easy to use, and remarkably slick for an aging PC game". However, some features were not approved of: "Carmen Sandiego isn't a new PC title, and it shows. While the visuals are still usable, they're certainly not impressive."

References