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Danger By Design is the 14th in the ongoing Nancy Drew series of games by the American company Her Interactive. In this part of the series Nancy is working undercover as an assistant to Minette, one of the best fashion designers in Paris. Recently Minette hasn't been herself, taking to wearing a mask and throwing temper tantrums never seen before. It's up to Nancy to find out just what's behind this mysterious change of behaviour.

The game is rated as suitable for children of seven years old and above, although the difficulty of the puzzles means that the game is aimed at a much higher age group. I found several of the puzzles very tricky, such as the dark room puzzle where you have to develop the photographs without spilling explosive chemicals - in pitch darkness. There's also the possibility of dying during certain puzzles, but there's a second chance button, which puts you right back in the action before Nancy died.

I liked the little in-jokes in this game, like near the beginning of the game, when Heather tells Nancy "I'd let you have the item if you were a private investigator, but you aren't, are you?". One downside of this game is that it's not possible to skip the dialogue sections. I'm a quick reader and found myself getting bored and distracted waiting for the speech to finish as I had already read the written dialogue underneath. If you're revisiting certain parts of the game, due to forgetting to save your progress, this can quickly get annoying.

Travelling around Paris can also be a little repetitive, with the moving map of the Metro every time you change location.

The graphics are okay and the game itself wouldn't tax any but the oldest computers.

Overall an acceptable game which, though tricky and frustrating at times, is good to while away the hours. It's a good, interesting game that can leave you frustrated at times.

Price: £9.99
Manufacturer: Her Interactive
Website: www.herinteractive.com
Required spec: 1GHz Pentium 3 or better, 650MB HDD space, 128MB RAM, Windows 98 or later, 32MB DirectX compatible graphics card, 16bit DirectX compatible sound card, 24x CDROM drive, mouse and speakers