Players have the chance to join "Team Barbie Detective" in Mattel Interactive's Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise. Like the earlier PC releases Detective Barbie and Detective Barbie 2, this game is a mystery adventure designed for girls (and mystery-loving sleuths of all ages). Unlike its predecessors, however, Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise was designed specifically for the PlayStation console.

The game supports two players who are encouraged to explore a large cruise ship and three tropical ports-of-call in search of clues that will help solve the mystery of some valuable missing artwork. Luckily, players will find many vehicles and gadgets in Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise to help them along the way.

Three pieces of valuable artwork have been stolen from a cruise ship's art gallery. Now it's up to Detective Barbie to catch the brazen art thief.

To catch the thief, Barbie will search for clues throughout the ship and also on three tropical islands equipped with gadgets, the most important being the infra-red lipstick. The infra-red lipstick reveals clues when Barbie looks through it. Barbie can also speak to the passengers of the cruise ship in an attempt to get information on the case.

Barbie can even take a break from her formidable detective work by racing her friend on jet skis in the water or air racers in the sky. The jet ski mini-game is the usual get to the finish line first competition, but the air race is decided by which competitor can fly through the most rings and fill a meter first. There is also a shuffle board mini-game. Each of these mini-games can have their difficulty settings changed from easy, medium and hard.