Hotel Dusk: Room 215 shows the darker side of DS

Now here's something worth looking into: a gritty graphic novel style adventure game that sees you hold your DS sideways, like a book – hence the odd appearance of the screenshots to the right.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is essentially a detective game. You play Kyle Hyde, a former cop on the trail of a missing friend, and your investigations have led you to Hotel Dusk – a creepy boarding house rumoured to have a room where all wishes are granted, and populated by a host of odd characters for you to interrogate.

But put down your gun soldier! Here you progress by gently probing your fellow guests with clever conversation, rather than blasting their heads off or running them over in a car or any of the other staples of modern crime games.

The screenshots above show how distinctively the hand-sketched characters peer out from the 'pages' of the DS; you grill them using the touch-screen, which also enables you to explore the game's environments for further clues.

Nintendo often talks about widening the reach of games, but usually that amounts to getting more adults to play its ultra-cute games. We'll therefore be watching Hotel Dusk: Room 215 very closely; the game's developer, Cing, previously created the noir-ish thriller Trace Memory so the early signs are hopeful.

Click 'Track It!' to check us out when we next check into Hotel Dusk: Room 215.