I’ve been asking ‘Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?’ since I was a kid, and I bet I’m not the only one. I loved playing these games on the PC when I was younger, travelling across the world and through time in order to find Carmen and learning at the same time. It was a brilliant way of disguising education, something that our friend Chris Kohler at Digital Eclipse is still managing to do with gamers like me to this very day.
In a new trailer posted over on IGN, I’ve discovered that Carmen Sandiego is returning in the first quarter of 2025 in a game from Gameloft & HarperCollins Productions and that for the first time in history, we won’t need to search for her… because we’ll actually be playing as her!
This is amazing news for retro nerds like me – the whole premise of those PC games was to find out where she was, and now here we are, getting to control her in lots of stealthy situations across the world. The graphics have certainly had an update since I last played too; what used to be a pretty simple-looking point-and-click now looks like a mixture of Thief and Pokémon (which I know is the cocktail for how to make Team Rocket members, but you know what I mean). It resembles the animated TV Series that has also been on Netflix, but the gameplay is based on Carmen’s antics from the 80s. Gameloft & HarperCollins have even hinted at a live-action movie being in the works too; it looks like this is Carmen’s time to shine!
As the world’s greatest thief Carmen Sandiego, players must track thieves, use new gadgets that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tomb Raider game, and stealthily gain information on VILE members. It all looks amazing to me from what I’ve seen in the trailer, with stealth jets, gliders, and Carmen even dropping her usual get-up for a hoody and jeans to blend in with other civilians.
Can you imagine playing this new game on Nintendo Switch as you travel across the world in real life? Now that would be something! It still seems to be based on finding clues and solving puzzles, just with more of an adventurous streak that looks like it will make for exciting, fast-paced gameplay… like Professor Layton meets Assassins Creed, which is definitely a mashup I didn’t think I would write today! Check out the trailer above and let us know your thoughts over on our socials!
