Gameplay
The player uses point-and-click controls [5] to guide the Pink Panther around areas to interact with characters and objects, solve puzzles, and advance the story. Pink stores useful items he finds in a pouch in his fur, and the inventory can be accessed by clicking on him. The player can also access the PDA ("Pink Digital Assistant") at any point to read information on the indigenous people, languages, clothing, entertainment, art, history, nature, and foods of each country Pink visits. Each main topic page in the PDA is hosted by at least one character from the 1993-95 TV series in a cameo. [4]
Plot
The Pink Panther works as a secret agent for the Inspector, who teleports him to Camp Chilly Wa-Wa, a prestigious international summer camp for the gifted children of powerful and influential people at a top-secret location, to ensure the campers stay happy in order to prevent global conflict. Once there, he meets a group of multiethnic youths as well as the counselor [a] . The children include Nigel, Chione, Yung-Li, Ananda, Indrani, and Kumoken. Pink also encounters his scientist friend Helmut Von Schmarty, who shows him his newest inventions, including the Dial-a-Day, which can alter the local weather and time of day. The sinister Dogfather and his henchmen, Pugg and Louie, soon arrive, disguised as agents of the "Better Camping Bureau" and threatening to close the camp if anything goes wrong.
The Dogfather spies on Pink using a secret code to access the basement under the counselor's cabin and find a fishing rod for Nigel, then sets the Dial-a-Day to nighttime and sneaks into the basement while Pink is asleep. When Pink awakens, the children start acting strangely and contradictory to their nature, hating the camp despite Pink's efforts to reason with and comfort them. Von Schmarty gives him a PDA ("Pink Digital Assistant") serving as both an information repository and a communication device, and Pink travels to the children's home countries to fulfill various tasks based on their needs and whereabouts while Pugg and Louie attempt to thwart him repeatedly.
Pink first flies to London to retrieve Nigel's Guy Fawkes dummy, dressing up as a nobleman to converse with Nigel's father, Sir Manly MP. [b] In the family country house, Pink finds a postcard from Nigel, a champion speller, riddled with spelling errors. Though Pugg and Louie steal Pink's fur, he stuns them with reflected sunlight and takes it back at Stonehenge. In Cairo, Pink makes a chain of deals to get provisions for a local man and receive his help in searching along the Nile for the missing Chione. He discovers a hieroglyphics letter to her parents saying she is enjoying the camp and never left, then goads the dogs into falling into a pit trap.
After returning to the decaying Chilly Wa-Wa, Pink flies to Beijing to find out why the normally multilingual Yung-Li is only speaking Mandarin and keeps repeating a phrase. He is mistaken for an opera singer, survives a mock-kung fu fight with the dogs, and helps one of Yung-Li's brothers retrieve his pet parakeet before learning the translated phrase from Yung-Li's father in his rice paddy village. On Pink's subsequent flight to India, Pugg and Louie hijack the airplane, prompting him to escape by parachute to Thimphu. Gaining the favor of Ananda's father, the King of Bhutan, in an archery contest, Pink travels by helicopter to Bombay, then by train to Varanasi, where he places flowers in the Ganges to honor Indrani's late grandfather.
Pink returns to the camp again to find the Dial-a-Day tampered with and Von Schmarty acting unusually irritable and short-circuiting like a robot. He tries flying to Australia to identify an anthropomorphic crocodile that also left the camp but ends up parachuting into the Pacific Ocean when Pugg and Louie seize the plane again. Kumoken's Aboriginie father rescues Pink and ferries him to the Outback, where the crocodile, Kumoken's spirit totem, silently warns him that the children need him back at the camp, now in a dystopic state with parts of robotic clones of the children strewn about.
Ultimately, Pink gathers enough evidence to prove that the Dogfather replaced the children and Von Schmarty with robots programmed to hate the camp so he could ruin its reputation and open a "Dogburger" fast food restaurant in its place. The dogs and the counselor, who was blackmailed into working with them, pursue Pink around the camp, but Pink uses one of Von Schmarty's powered vacuum cleaners to capture the four and drain the lake, freeing the real children and Von Schmarty. With the camp restored, Pink quits working for the Inspector after being told his next mission is an undercover cafeteria worker.
