Sometimes the most aggravating indie gaming experiences are those that feel like they get off to a great start, but then quickly lose steam and can’t seem to get it back. Unfortunately, in the case of Jennifer Wilde that’s how I felt, in particular digging the game’s black and white art style and enjoying its generally playful dialogue choices at the start. However, once it got into its more adventure-oriented mechanics and working through solving various mysteries, I bumped into enough issues that my initial enthusiasm chilled.

Starting with what works, I do really appreciate the game’s art style, in particular with regards to the various characters you’ll encounter. While they may not be in color, the hand-drawn look really works nicely, and actually suits the various spirits you’ll interact with quite well. I also tended to enjoy most of the game’s dialogue options, with many that are perfectly sensible, but including some more playful and sassy choices at times. Sometimes it can be small things that make you smile, but I appreciate the effort to not just be predictable all the time. Where I was disappointed though was with the spirit of Oscar Wilde that you’ll often work with, or even inhabit at times over the course of your adventure. As a fan of his work, I actually found him terribly underwhelming as a character on the whole, and an unfortunate case of missed potential.

Where things aren’t so positive, aside from the weak characterization of Oscar Wilde, tends to be on the mechanical side of the experience. For one, whether it's your characters moving around, or sometimes trying to work out what feels like the arbitrary order the game expects you to place clues in your journal to be considered correct, the pace of things can be plodding. I suppose the move from using a mouse on PC to controller-based controls could be a contributor, but just in general performing actions that would seem like they should be simple are often clumsy and feel finicky at best. Sometimes just trying to layer a new clue onto an incomplete one can feel unnecessarily arduous, and with some of these problems being quite persistent they end up becoming hard to ignore.

Overall, this just ends up being a frustratingly uneven experience, seemingly ripe with potential, but then struggling to make it all work out well. Even with as many adventure titles as there are on Switch, this does at least feel somewhat unique, though there are some other mystery adventures with unconventional partners needing to work together out there in the eShop. If you’re willing to be patient with it, and overlook some shortcomings, there’s still a reasonably-good time to be had here, it just unfortunately leaves itself open to some picking apart.