I downloaded Agent Alice to my phone a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing it intermittently. It has a Warehouse 13-style supernatural detectives type setup and is very clearly being marketed to women with ad slogans like, “Sometimes it takes a woman to get the job done.”

As Alice, you help solve mysteries by solving puzzles and finding hidden objects. Alice is assisted in her endeavors by the other two members of her team, Korean war veteran and all-around good guy Ben and flirtatious cad Pete. The gameplay is straightforward as are the narratives. The game makes fairly good use of the touch screen interface, the graphics are interesting if mostly static, and the supernatural mysteries have their own appeal.

An advertisement for Agent Alice.

What’s best, though, to me as a player is how very neatly the game fits into little caught moments of time — I can play it while waiting for the bus or riding up an elevator. In a minute or so, I can make some progress in the game. Further, unlike Candy Crush, which I basically abandoned in frustration, standards for progress are pretty clear. If you’re not very good at the game, you won’t be stalled entirely, you’ll just progress more slowly.

The “energy” needed to complete searches is replenished over time, although you can always buy more. But, now having played the game a few weeks without making any purchases, I feel comfortable saying the game works quite well without needing to make any in-game purchases. If you’re the kind of player who likes to have a game to occupy the time spent waiting in line for coffee and you enjoy puzzles, I definitely recommend it. The story line and graphics are an added bonus to the simple, appealing gameplay.