"Secret Files 3" is a 2012 released, german point-'n-click-adventure developed by Animation Arts and serves as a direct sequel to "Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis" and "Secret Files: Tunguska". As of 2026, it marks the final entry in the main saga centred on Nina Kalenkow and Max Gruber. One last time, Nina sets out to uncover a world-spanning conspiracy and save not only her fiancee, but the entire globe...


The game starts off in the year 48 BC, in the besieged city of Alexandria, Egypt. The thief Menis-Ra is hired by two mysterious, robed figures to destroy papyrus scrolls that are kept within the city's library.
In the present time, Nina Kalenkow and Max Gruber finally prepare for their wedding. Their happiness is only clouded by Ninas increasingly disturbing nightmares, who seem to have a connection to her previous adventures. And when Max suddenly gets arrested and accused of terrorism, Nina settles out to find the truth behind all of these strange occurences....
All in all, the story had some really interesting plot points and kept me engaged, although I must admit that I found it to be way weaker than in previous installments. The reason for this was the convoluted way of presenting it and, paradoxically, the fast pace in which the game proceeds through its narrative. This led to dramatic tension on one hand, but it also made me wish that the devs had taken a bit more time to explore the different plot threads more thoroughly. The way it is now, I feel like a lot of potential in this narrative was unfortunately left untouched. Even the connection back to the first game that could have been an amazing asset, feels incredibly underused in my opinion.
The same can be said about the side characters. Where the first two games and "Lost Horizon" benefited from a cast of likeable, quirky and therefore quite memorable characters, all the characters in "Secret Files 3" are incredibly bland and basically exist only to fullfill exactly one role within the games story. There's no chance of getting to know any of them since the game already pushes on to it's next location and there's no room for extensive dialogue with any of them.


Once again, the game is a classic, 2.5D-Adventure. We accompany our heroine Nina as she travels around the world, collecting and combining all sorts of different items, solving puzzles and piecing together the hints we gather along the way. If we ever get stuck on a puzzle, there's a bunch of ingame help systems to point us in the right direction. Just as with its predecessors, "Secret Files 3" provides us with a hot spot finder as well as with an ingame journal that provides hints for the early stages of the game. On top of that, the difficulty for some of the puzzles can be selected upon approach.
Speaking of the puzzles, they felt very logical and a bit too easy for my taste. I didn't use any of the ingame help and never really struggled or got stuck. The reason for this might be the same as mentioned above, to accelerate the pacing and create dramatic tension, but it also made me wish for more complex and difficult puzzles.... I still remember the cat puzzle from Secret Files: Tunguska" (mean!) and the whole section set in Paris from "Secret Files: Puritas Cordis" (annoying!) but I seriously doubt that I will remember any part of "Secret Files 3" in half a year... everything just felt too simple and went by too fast for that.
On the positive side, the game boasts a roster of five playable characters, although nina is still the main protagonist an the other four are limited to one small scene for each of them.
On top of that, the biggest revolution in terms of gameplay is the inclusion of player choices. On two different occasions during the game, the player has to make a decision on how to continue the game. These two decisions lead to one of four different endings for the game. While this may sound spectacular, it is , again, very underused in reality. The choices have no direct consequence for the game and only result in different outcomes for the text based conclusion of the game. Again, I wish this idea would have had a much greater impact on the game itself.


The graphics were never really outstanding in this series and that stays true for the third installment. The various locations still look clean, but they manage to be less interesting and stunning than in the earlier games somehow. The character models still look worse and lack facial animations during close ups to display any form of emotions, unfortunately. The character animations are clunky as ever and even worse, the devs decided to exclude any display of "special animations". Whenever Nina uses an item within the game world, we never get to actually see it. The screen simply fades to black and we return after the acion has been performed in the off. Even worse, in one occasion, when Nina uses a measuring stick to pull something towards her, she only raises her hand and the item magically floats towards her. We don't see the stick that is supposed to be in her hand at that point. These cut animations are pretty bad for a 2012 game, especially since the predecessors didn't use these kinds of cheap skips.


"Secret Files 3" marks the conclusion for the adventures of Nina and Max and it's a pretty bumpy ride in my books. It is still an enjoyable adventure game with logial puzzles and an interesting narrative. On the other hand, it falls short in comparison with its predecessors and especially "Lost Horizon" by the same devs. THis game sinply lacks any memorable sequences or characters and feels pretty rushed at times. On top of that, it's playtime of around 7 hours is agains way shorter than that of the other games in the series. All in all, "Secret Files 3" is not a complete letdown, but it still serves as a somewhat disappointing conclusion to one of my favourite adventure series.