You're in a burning barn, and you need to capture a ghost. Who you gonna call?

Take an audiobook and mix it with a heavy dose of a text-based adventure like Zork, and you've got Soul Trapper, the first episode in a line of games from Realtime Audio Adventures. You play as Kane Pryce, a 27 year old adventurer who wields a device called the Soul Trap. As you'd expect, this lets him trap souls… or basically serve as a low-rent Ghostbuster.

Pryce enters each scene and narrates what's happening. He gives a layout of wherever he is and what's nearby, and you can pull up a simple graphic version of this by tapping the Map button at the bottom of the screen. Once he's done talking or interacting, you control where he'll be going or what he'll be doing next by tapping a direction or an action.

Gameplay is very simplistic, and Pryce will often repeat himself while the program waits for you to make a decision. The controls only pop up on-screen after Pryce has finished his dialogue. Other than tapping to move, you occasionally have to memorize a combination to a safe, follow random audio commands, or perform other simple actions.

As far as graphics go, there's not much to speak of, which is the point. You can play this game without looking at the screen except to choose Pryce's next action. The professional actors do a good job of painting the scene with their voices, so you get an idea of what's happening in the room. Listening to them describe a room, you'll know which direction sounds like a safe exit, and which one might lead to doom. The acting is strong, although some of the characters are slightly over the top.

The main problem with Soul Trapper is the writing. There's a lot of glib dialogue, like when a delivery man brings something to Pryce's house, Pryce shouts, "Hey! You look good in brown, dude!" It wavers between Chandler-esque detective noir, and Dude, Where's My Car? The plot also omits or takes too long to explain information that would be helpful or interesting. Why does Kane have this Soul Trap? How did he invent the IVR--interdimensional voice recorder--unit? How'd he start chasing souls? The plot skips around too much to follow at times. You get 22 chapters, and each one will take around 5 to 10 minutes to complete, totalling an hour or two. However, there's no replay value in doing the exact same things all over again.