The Adventurers Guild

Written by Joe Pranevich

The butler did it! (Again.)

I think it’s become something of a joke how excited I get when I’m about to start a game, but I am excited! I’m not sure that I’m about to play a fantastic game, but I am sure that I am about to play an influential one. Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective will be the first adventure that we’ve played that is firmly on the CD-ROM and “full-motion video” bandwagon. Other games have included a bit of video here or there or audio narration (although the latter often enough only in a subsequent update of the game), but this one is-- I believe-- video from end to end. I only know this from brief research, but we’ll be finding out soon enough.

ICOM Simulations, the game designer, has a history of making influential (but not necessarily good) adventure games and we’ve already played four: Déjà Vu (1985), Uninvited (1986), Shadowgate (1987), and Deja Vu II (1988). The clearest way to see how industry-leading these games were is to look at their numbers: Déjà Vu and Uninvited are games 4 and 9 on our blog, respectively. Will this one live up to those legacies? Or will this be a speedbump on the way to the 7th Guest (1993) and the CD-ROM adventures yet to come? I have no idea! I honestly had never heard of this game before volunteering to play it.

This is what I do know: this is a game, based on a gamebook, based on a fictional detective, and created by an influential game development house. It’s probably going to be a long introduction...

I wear a deerstalker. Deerstalkers are cool.

Let’s start with the stuff you probably already know: Sherlock Holmes is one of the earliest and most influential fictional detectives, inspiring generations of authors and real detectives. It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that modern police forensics owes more than a little to this fictional forebearer! Holmes was created in 1887 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; his first novel was A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton's Christmas Annual. In all, fifty-six short stories and four novels were published between 1887 and 1927. Doyle’s works have been adapted into stage, screen, and television as well as dozens of computer games. While this is the first Sherlock Holmes game that we have played for the blog, I’ve found at least eight reasonably professional text or illustrated adventure games that preceded this one that we might get to cover some day as Missed Classics. Of those, Melbourne House’s Sherlock (1984) and Infocom’s Riddle of the Crown Jewels (1987) are the most famous. I had given some thought to playing both of them before this game, but time slipped by me.

I should mention that I am not coming into this blind. While I am not a card-carrying Sherlockian, I have read nearly all of the short stories and novels and have a very nice collection with the original Sidney Paget illustrations on my bookshelf. I’m a big fan of Steven Moffat’s recent Sherlock adaptation, but I haven’t seen Elementary yet. In other words, I know enough to know who Mycroft and Moriarty are, but also enough to know that Mr. Doyle hardly ever had recurring plots; elements like these-- so common in adaptations-- are almost completely absent in the original stories.

Original 1980s game cover.

Until I started to dig, I did not realize that this is a double adaptation. The original Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective was a series of gamebooks, the first of which was released in 1981 by Sleuth Publishing. Calling it a “gamebook” doesn’t quite do it justice and it is very difficult to describe. The whole package arrived at my house in a three-ring binder with pockets. The main text looks a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure with sections that you can jump to easily, but there is a separate smaller rule book, a clue book, newspapers, a map, and other things. My copy came with ten separate Holmes adventures, three of which appear to be the same as in the computer game. I’ll take a look at the pen-and-paper game later, once I experience what the software version has in store. The original game was designed by Raymond Edwards, Suzanne Goldberg, and Gary Grady-- although I can’t quite tell whether those are the original designers of the concept, whether they contributed some of the initial cases of the game, or both. The gamebook series released several updates with new cases over the years, but they are exceptionally rare today. West End Adventures, Mansion Murders, and The Queens Park Affair are all selling for upwards of a hundred dollars each on the secondary market. Ystari Games purchased the rights for the original books a few years back and released an updated version in 2012. I’ve ordered a copy and will compare it to the original at some point down the road. New material and reprints of old modules are still being released, but Ystari is releasing them in French first and translating them to English later.

Our first acting credits in an adventure game?

Although this is our fifth ICOM game, it is the first made without the collaboration of their founder/designer/CEO, Tod Zipnick. He passed away in 1991, before this game was released, and his name does not appear in the credits. Instead, the three leads on this game are Ken Torolla, the director; Laurie RoseBauman, the scriptwriter; and Kathy Tootelian, the designer. All three of them would return for both sequels, but at that point they started to go their separate ways. Ken and Kathy would work together on Dracula Unleashed in 1993, but only Ken would remain in adventure gaming after that point. We’ll get to the rest of his games in 1994 when we close out MTV: Club Dead and Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of Orpheo's Curse. Most of Laurie’s game credits from here will be educational games, while Kathy will make her career in large part building Scooby Doo games. The lead actors in the game, Peter Farley and Warren Green, have only worked on this series, according to IMDB. The only “famous” actor that I am aware of that participated in this game is Bill Corbett, Crow and Brain Guy from Mystery Science Theater 3000. He plays a character named “Philip Travis” and I will watch for him with anticipation!

Consulting Detective marks another turning point for ICOM. After this, they will take the Adventure International route and concentrate almost exclusively on licensed properties: two Consulting Detective sequels (in 1992 and 1993), Dracula Unleashed (1993), MTV: Club Dead (1994), and Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity (1995). All except the last of those appear to be FMV-based adventure games of some sort and I look forward to seeing how the company progresses. ICOM will be acquired by Viacom New Media in 1993 and a number of team members will transition onto their games. (Orpheo's Curse, for example, will be a Viacom game rather than an ICOM one.) Viacom will spin them back out in 1997, but their independence will be short lived as they closed in 1998. In more recent news, some of the original developers managed to acquire the rights to this and other ICOM games in 2012 and formed a new company, Zojoi. Remastered editions of Consulting Detective and a reboot of Shadowgate (2012) have been released and are available on Steam and other platforms. I’ve been in contact with Zojoi and I’m hoping they can shed some light on the development of this game and its remake.

The Manual & Introduction

Mirror, mirror, on the wall… who is the greatest detective of them all?

The game features a fairly vanilla manual as well as a great video introduction. There’s a lot in there about the interface, but I’m not sure I understand it yet as it’s not like any adventure I’ve played before. I’m sure it will make sense when I’m actually playing, so I’ll cover it when we get there. The intro begins with a short message from Sherlock Holmes himself, explaining that, “London is not a beautiful city… four million souls just trying to survive, mostly off of each other.” It sets the stage, then transitions into Holmes discussing his most important resource: the London Times. He claims it has an “unbiased eye and razor-sharp accuracy”-- if only we had such wonderful newspapers today! Other than the newspaper, Holmes says that we will need to take advantage of two groups of individuals in the city: the Baker Street Irregulars and the Baker Street Regulars. The former appeared in three of the original stories, but the latter seems to be an invention for the series.

A cast of original characters!

The Regulars appears to be a group of NPCs that I can turn to in my investigations. Inspector Lestrade is the only one I immediately recognize from the stories (he appeared in thirteen); all but two of the rest are inventions for the series. The two real characters from the canon are “Porky” Shinwell (a criminal-turned-informant from “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”) and Langdale Pike (a gossip from “The Adventure of the Three Gables”). The rest of them are:

O’Brien - Contact at the Office of Records
Ellis - Foreign news editor for the Times
Murray - Scotland Yard criminology lab
Hall - A young barrister, whatever that means.
Hogg - Crime reporter for the Times
Meek - Chief Medical Examiner

There’s also the London Library that I can visit and some place called “S.H.” that has records such as wills and deeds.

Unbiased journalism!

The final element of the game is a set of newspapers that represent Holmes’s personal archive. They aren’t just “feelies”, they contain critical clues for the plot! Just reading them straight-through would be tricky as there are nearly 300 mini-articles in there spread across eight “days”. The date range on the papers go from 1888-1890.

One final bit of clarification: I will be playing the final patched version of this game (“Release 4”) from 1993 rather than as it originally appeared in 1991. The upgrade appears to be limited to bug fixes and adding “VCR-like” controls to allow you to pause, fast-forward, and rewind the in-game videos. The manual addendum with that version clarifies one other thing: the “score” to the game is essentially backwards! The goal of the game is to complete each mystery with the lowest score. The score is really just a timer; the faster you solve the case, the better.

With that, it’s time for me to make some predictions and for you to guess the score. To help you out, here are the scores for the ICOM games so far: Deja Vu (45), Uninvited (30), Shadowgate (35), and Deja Vu II (33). That gives us an average score of 36, but a trendline that is not quite in the positive direction.

My Predictions:

Three episodes, but they will connect in some way.
Mycroft, Moriarty, Irene Adler, or some other minor Holmes character will get a role.
The butler will do it in at least one of the stories.

At this point, I don’t feel like I know anything: I don’t know how this game will play, I don’t know how like a traditional adventure game it is, nor do I know how like the gamebook it is. The manual and introduction are a bit confusing and so the only way to see what happens next is to play. Onwards to the first case!

One more announcement: the nice people at Zojoi has suggested that they will provide a contest prize for our guess-the-score competition: a copy of the remastered game on Steam! We’re still working out the details, but all the more reason for you to think hard about your guess. Good luck!

Our first case! Looks spooky!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 20 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

By Ilmari

The name “Muriel Tramis” might not ring any bells with you, but when you hear that she is the creator of the dreaded Emmanuelle, you might get a certain impression of the quality of her games. Thus, it might come as a surprise that one of her earlier games, Mewilo, won some sort of award (la médaille d’Argent de la ville de Paris or the Silver medallion of the city of Paris. Since I will play Fascination, another game by Muriel Tramis, in the future, I wanted to have a more balanced view of her earlier games, beginning with Mewilo, which was also her first game according to Mobygames.

First, a few words of the designer herself. She is definitely not the first female game designer we’ve met, but it certainly wasn’t that common in 1980s to have women making computer games. What is even more remarkable is her ancestry. Muriel Tramis was born in Martinique, an insular region of French, located in the Caribbean. Furthermore, her ancestors were part of the African slave population, which was forcefully transported to the island starting from the end of the 17th century.

Reading the manual reveals that the game is situated in Martinique, which makes the whole thing that much more personal. I should probably point out that I am reading the manual in French, since I couldn’t find an English version. For the exactly same reason, I will be playing a French version of the game. I do have passing knowledge of the language, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Well, at least I can’t blame a bad translation if I don’t understand anything.

The manual begins with a kind of eulogy to Man Kalinsia, written by Patrick Chamoiseau, a Martinique novelist, who is also responsible for the dialogue in the game. I tried at first to understand every word, but the whole thing has too much of an artistic feel, the author using all kinds of allegorical phrases. I did manage to understand some basics of Man Kalinsia’s life. She was originally named Octavianus Citronelle and was a daughter or Artagnan and Elmire. Because she is called a mulatto, she must have had both European and African ancestry. Her husband, a noted communist, died quite early, which made her quite melancholic. Her final day was full of cries and cinder - a volcano, Mount Pelée, erupted in 1902 and destroyed the largest city of Martinique, Saint-Pierre. Her body was found couple of decades later, intact and preserved by the ashes.

Now, I really have no idea whether Man Kalinsia is a real person or work of fiction, but the volcanic eruption is definitely a true historical event. Interestingly, the game appears to be set just around the time of the eruption, and I am curious to see whether it will play any part in the game.

The manual also contains a recipe for calalou, a traditional Caribbean dish. Specifically, it recounts a version from Guadeloupe, which is missing one important ingredient in comparison with the Martinique version. The manual helpfully tells me that I should find someone called Man Cécé and tell her this special ingredient to gain her trust. To make the matter clear, the missing ingredient is not mentioned in the manual, so it’s not a form of copy protection. Instead, I am meant to do real life research on my own and find out what they use for calalou in Martinique. Does this sound like a really bad design choice? I’ll make a more detailed comment on this later.

The original game box also contained music from Malavoi,

Martinique band. Just to get in the mood, I listened to their songs. Not bad

A commenter on Trickster’s playthrough of Emmanuelle criticised his ratings, because he didn’t take into account that French game designers had not had so much time to get used to the technology of computers. I am guessing that the commenter was especially concerned about the low graphics and sounds score Trickster gave to the game. I think that the problem was not so much lack of experience by French game developers (Emmanuelle wasn’t the first game by Muriel Tramis or Tomahawk), but simply that they had experience on different computers than PC - the screenshots of Amiga and Atari ST versions of Emmanuelle look far better than what Trickster had to endure. Since we are more relaxed with Missed Classics, I’ve decided to avoid the PC versions of these old Muriel Tramis games, and after some tinkering with emulators, I’ve chosen to play the ST versions.

It doesn’t look that special…

... but boy does it sound pretty good for a game from 1987. There’s real music playing, a decent violin riff that might well have been played by the local Martinique orchestra in 1902, and what makes it eve more authentic, it sounds like it’s coming from a real gramophone, with all the scratches. Far cry from what PC games offered at the time.

But let’s recount the plot before going further into the game! Apparently I am meant to be a well-known parapsychologist, asked to investigate the appearance of a zombie. No, we are not dealing with those moving, rotting brain-desiring half-corpses here, because zombie meant originally just any living dead and was quite close to a regular phantom (perhaps a tad more corporeal, though).

As a parapsychologist, I can obviously change into other living things (what you say about that, James Randi!), and I have chosen the form of colibri, so that I can make my way more easily around Martinique. Yeah, it’s all just a pretext for the creators to use a colibri cursor…

Above you’ll see the main map of Mewilo. The game is apparently limited to the Northern Martinique - or at least when you try push the arrow at the lower left corner of the screen, you essentially quit the game.

Pressing my colibri on the mountain gave me just an info piece that a hell is about to begin 8th of May (tomorrow, in game’s time), killing 30 000 persons and destroying the whole Saint Pierre. Trying to press the box called Pitt did nothing. Pressing the box to the Cocoa farm just showed me a pretty picture… The game is beginning well.

Plantation Green Lily

Next, I tried to go to savanna. The results were not satisfying.

Trigonometry? I did pretty well with it in school…

I knew I should have studied more biology instead of mathematics…

The death screen. There’s a nice piece of animation,
with the bat flying around, and some decent “game over” music

The place called Parnasse had more to do. At the veranda, I met the persons who had invited me to Martinique, Geneviève and Michel Hubert-Destouches. I was instantly engaged in a conversation. That is, I clicked through a number of text boxes - I had no opportunity to direct the course of the dialogue myself. The manual told me that I should take good notes of all the dialogues, since I would be seeing them only once.

Listen to me carefully, I shall say this only once

Michel welcomed me in the house and told me that there had been weird things going on since “that fateful day” in 1831 (in case you are wondering, he was talking about a slave uprising). Some familial ghost had taken over one bedroom, items left alone changed their places, sobbing could be heard through walls. And the poor owners had lived here for only four months. Geneviève added that the latest series of events had began at the night of 6th, with a heart-rending cry. She also surmised that it was all doings of a zombie wanting to revenge something (I guess this zombie is a different person than the ghost).

I couldn’t get into the salon, but I could enter the bedroom with the mysterious ghostly occupant. The room seemed quite peaceful, but I could invoke a spirit of person in a picture hanging from the wall, if I just knew his name. I had no idea and a failed attempt was deadly.

George? No? Perhaps Peter?

Next, I tried to go to Rue Case Nègres, which is also apparently a name of a movie situated in Martinique. A pig-like animal greeted me, but the occupant of the only shack nearby was less helpful.

I got the impression he didn’t like me

Next place to visit was kitchen. Clarisse, the cook, told me that the zombie had come from the mountain, and its arrival was probably the fault of Geneviève, who had turned around too many graves in her attempt to remodel the farm. Clarisse also advised me that the local seer, Papa Echevin, who lived in the shack I just tried to visit, would like something to quench his thirst.

What is it with French games encouraging abuse of alcoholics?

Having gone through all I could at the Parnasse farm, I returned to the main map and tried a box with some sort of bottle. This took me to the local distillery. The man operating the place wanted to ask me nine questions about the Martinique. At first, I thought this was a terrible puzzle, although simple googling gave me all the answers I needed. Sure, the purpose was quite understandable - the designers wanted to force the players to get acquainted with the history, nature and culture of the island. Yet, the puzzle seemed also quite unfair in the days before WWW - what if your local library didn’t contain any information about Martinique?

I confused this with décollétte

Reading the manual revealed that the puzzle wasn’t that unfair. Back in the days, French people had something called Minitel - a kind of precursor to World Wide Web. It appears that Coktel Vision had set up its own Minitel site for the game, containing among other things information about Martinique. In a sense, the Minitel site worked as an expansion of the game and its manual, providing the player with all the facts he needed for completing the game. This seems quite ingenious mechanism, and I wonder whether more modern games could use their own Wiki pages for similar purposes.

My first inventory item!

The prize for the quiz was a bottle of rum, which I immediately took to Papa Echevain.

“Rhum is a key to my throat” sounds kind of icky

In addition to telling me how good the rum of the local Caucasians is, Echevain had only some mysterious warnings for me. Apparently, something is brewing in the volcano and the zombie is crying over his white hands and over his proper family. Not very enlightening.

By the way, if you are wondering why I am not using Steam’s own screenshot function, it’s simply because I can’t seem to make it work - or at least the results are really bad. Instead, I just take a regular screenshot of my Steam window, paste the picture in Paint and return back to Steam. It’s a slow process, but it has actually helped me to get forward. You see, when I return to Steam and activate my colibri, the game supposes I have just pressed a button. Thus, I usually try to place the cursor to some place where pressing the button won’t do anything, while I am busy transferring my screenshots. Now, when I had just saved my screenshots of Echevain and returned to Steam, I pressed the image of a flower on the lower left map I thought was just decoration. To my surprise, I found myself in a garden.

How did I get here?

Geneviève was also there, and she started telling me that Parnasse had originally belonged to her great-grandfather. On wake of the slave revolts, he had sent her wife and her daughter, Octavie (Geneviève’s grandmother), to safety at a plantation of their neighbour, du Banville. He followed them later, body full of burn marks, and died of an unexplained state of melancholy a while later. But at least something good came out of this - Octavie had now met her future husband, Raoul bu Banville.

I also found out that I couldn’t anymore access the veranda, but I could now get into salon. At first, I thought this was just due to some annoying pixel hunting, but testing with different save states showed that it really wasn’t so - when plot had progressed, new places had become accessible and others were not anymore. This meant that after every turn of events I might be forced to go through every potential hotspot and try to click it - not quite what I expect from an adventure game, but reminiscent of another French detective game.

In the salon, I met again Michel, the master of the house. He was not very thrilled to hear I had seen Papa Echevain and was quite annoyed of the supposition that there’s something fishy in the family lines of his wife. Still, he told me that his wife wasn’t the only living descendant of Octavie, but there was still a banker Valentin de Ronan, who lived in St. Pierre.

I also found a magnifying glass, which I will most likely use in the future

That seems to be enough for my first post. I still haven’t explored the city of St. Pierre and since my only clue is pointing to it, I’ll probably head there in my next post. Don’t forget to guess the score before that!

Written by Reiko

Adam Greene Journal #2: "I thought I'd never see Delphineus again after I opened the gate, but he's back and now I get to help him with his quest! His city is SO COOL! But it's all full of garbage and oil that people have dumped. I've cleaned up some of it, but there's only so much I can do by myself. I also got to meet the Oracle, who told me a prophecy of a boy who's going to save the kingdom. Is that me? Either way, I'm gonna try!"

Days later, Adam is hanging out in the pool room again when Delphineus shows up again! He says things are worse and King Cetus is still missing. He wishes Adam could see his city, so Adam pluckily volunteers to join Delphineus.

Good thing we've got great diving equipment, then!

Actually, the first time I played this scene, I hadn't gotten the equipment earlier, and Delphineus says there's no way Adam could survive with him, and if he wants to come, he'd have to get prepared. I restored back and found the equipment before pulling the lever, and the second time Adam volunteers that he's checked out on all the new diving equipment, so Delphineus doesn't have any complaints. So all I have to do is put on the equipment [5], and then we head out into the ocean.

The game makes a comment that Adam empties his pockets before we leave. Apparently this means I lose the dolphin certificate and membership cards and the frisbee, but I keep the experimental fertilizer. Also in inventory now are oxygen tanks and one of the special transmitters.

Yuck! Can't swim through that.

I swim forward and on the next screen encounter a cruise ship. When I swim closer, I find that the ship is dumping its bilge, which includes all sorts of trash. Before I can deal with the trash, a boy standing on deck loses his grip on some balloons, which Delphineus comments could drift hundreds of miles before sinking. (Ecological messages +2) I click my trash bag on the bilge junk and collect a recyclable jar [2] which goes into inventory. I continue clearing as much trash as I can [5] so we can keep swimming. We can't go forward because the bilge current itself is dangerous, so we have to swim to the left.

On the next screen, we see an island in the distance, but it's not important, as Delphineus says it's time to dive. I put on the oxygen tank and we start descending. Almost immediately the dolphin complains the garbage he swam through is interfering with his sonar-based direction sense, and he needs help navigating through the maze of seaweed that separates his kingdom from the open ocean.

Navigating in this was just trial and error.

The seaweed is visually confusing, but it's not much of a maze. From the first screen, I traveled down but didn't make any more progress, so I went back up and then went right instead. From there I was able to travel two screens down and then I was free of the seaweed [15].

Pretty, but even here there's some human trash visible.

I get a brief glimpse of a sunken city from a distance, and then we swim right down onto a submerged street. Delphineus takes off for the Fish Apartments after suggesting I should visit the Oracle. I take a look around and find quite a lot of human trash that's ended up down here. I trash a TV, a shopping cart (collapsible, but still), a teddy bear, a desk chair, a radio, a tricycle, a pipe, and a collapsed beach ball (Ecological message +1). I don't know how I'm managing to tote all this junk around with me, but whatever. When I trash the last item on the screen, I get a message about having finished cleaning up the place [10].

Adam’s such a good helper.

I also pick up a wire cage [2], which Adam appears to stuff into his swim trunks. Okay then. I then examine a bronze statue of Poseidon with a trident that looks like it might be useful, but I can't get it yet. The description suggests another object might be used later to acquire it, because there's a bronze servant as part of the statue that appears to be holding something but there's no object in his hands. I move on into the ruined temple of Poseidon.

This is a pretty weak excuse for a fifteen-puzzle.

I examine a pedestal with a conch shell on top and a relief of a man blowing into a conch shell. I can take the shell [2]. The back wall has a picture of three large eyes, which all seem to need to be pressed simultaneously somehow (I'm guessing the trident will be useful here), while the side wall holds a 4x3 sliding tile puzzle. Good thing I practiced recently in Dr. Brain's castle! Actually, for some reason, there's a HELP button at the bottom that will switch a piece into the right place for you. I test that out just to see, and it will, by repeated clicks, solve the whole puzzle for you, and points are still awarded. That's really lame. I restore and solve the puzzle properly [15].

A poetic prophecy, even. How very classic.

I swim back out to the street and put the conch shell in the servant's hands [10]. Somehow he "comes to life" and blows the shell, which causes Poseidon to release the trident [5]. Now I can go back in and use the trident on the eyes [10], which opens a panel to reveal the Oracle, a beautiful golden fish who talks in riddles. She reveals a prophecy of a boy destined to save the kingdom (of course) and sets me three riddles whose answers can be found in the mosaic I fixed.

Cetus, of course, as the city's protector.

Creepy. We don't find out right away what this is.

The first one asks whose "march of progress dooms us all" and of course the answer is Man [5]. The second one asks who "feels the hook's pain but cannot cry" so the answer is Fish [5]. The last asks what "reaches out to those in need" and the answer is Love [5]. The third one was trickier as the heart was split across tiles; I initially thought I'd checked every tile for possible answers (other wrong answers present in the mosaic include Dog and Frond) and didn't find it at first. Each riddle correctly answered results in a vision that reveals a small piece of the situation.

The third riddle: love.

A clue about what happened to Cetus.

According to the visions, King Cetus once protected the kingdom, but has been caught by a human trap and can't protect the kingdom from a poison infecting the seas. Once I've answered all three riddles correctly, the Oracle asks me to help others nearby and obtain a Sign of Trust, and then she will give me the rest of the prophecy that will show me how to save the kingdom. Standard quest format, really.

The first part of the quest: help everyone else first.

When I swim back out to the street, Delphineus comes back and suggests I talk to the mayor and the "guardian of the greens," whoever that is, and then wanders off again. So that's my next subquest. Of course I have to spend time wandering around helping everyone else before I can complete the main quest.

I'm up to 216 points now (out of 725), and next time we'll deal with a cranky crab and a large lobster.

Inventory: fertilizer solution, steel cage, trident, glass jar, transmitter
Ecological messages: 3 (6 total)

Session Time: 1 hours 15 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 0 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Before I begin with the rating work, I'd like to say that my investigative work has proven that.. well, there wasn't actually a lot more to Heart of China. What they managed to put together at Dynamix was, pun not intended, a dynamic interactive movie. Reading the manual the first time, I more or less thought that they were trying to put together a game that had so many gameplay elements it might as well have shot for the stars.. and included some intergalactic travel while they were there. And sure enough, they did. What happened as a result of this is they put together something far too grandiose and couldn't follow through properly, so the only real 'gameplay changes' are of the 'go back and try again' variety, for the most part. Taking one path over another makes no particular difference, though it does seem as though the path I took was the only one that gave the 'best ending', with the rest all taking too long to have Eugene Lomax be willing to pay the full amount and as such not giving the 'Chi survived actually!' end. They clearly put heaps and heaps of work in, though, and this is shown nowhere better than the auxiliary supplements that come with the game.

They also give a clue as to what Almira, the 'crazy plant lady', is actually up to

Starting off with the 'travel guide', they reuse quite a little bit of the game's art assets and the like, including plenty of images that I've seen already by playing the game (like a shot of the insides of the Orient Express which later has either Lucky or Kate superimposed onto one of its seats for the game's climax). There's also a couple of misdirections, including a huge piece about hats and what they mean socially speaking in Turkey, along with quite a bit of chatter about Parisian luxury spots which doesn't really come out through the game, so they did at least put a little effort into giving the impression there was more to come of the game. Oh, and it was a person named Bojon, so it was good to finally get that sorted. The hint book? Well, it comes with a couple of really quite cool pages that essentially equate to a 'making of', letting us know that the game took the better part of a year and a half for all of the actors etc. they had to cast. A funny little tidbit – the actress who played Kate Lomax, Kimberly Greenwood, was cast just before learning that she was three months pregnant mid-shoot. Oops! (This does give a fair idea of why Kate's section of the game felt fairly linear, short and didn't involve any other actors interplaying with her save the 'escaping prison' sequence, which I imagine was shot early on in the piece.) The clues are pretty ho-hum, though, and don't really give out much in the way of fun fake clues, though one did at least make me look up the meaning of 'sphygmomanometer'. (Blood pressure testing bag thing, if you were wondering.) The most important thing I took from it, though, was that the 'other paths' would indeed have been largely 'red herrings', with only two things I missed. I could have given the kid in Kathmandu a makeshift toy created with a cigar box I missed to give him a 'toy' which would have gotten the petrol siphoning hose instead of just rushing through to not lose a day due to his mother's rage.. and if I'd not found the keys for the tank, the knife in the cook's den would have let me hotwire the tank. So, without further adieu (and the foreknowledge I'll be referencing previous Dynamix titles)...

If I were to have bought the hint book, I definitely would have picked it up for the 'behind the scenes' stuff – not so much the actual game hints

Puzzles and Solvability
This one is probably the easiest category to look at for this game. Were there puzzles? Sure, there were! The majority of them were even fair, really. There are a few 'dead ends', admittedly, but they're all ones which pretty immediately hit home. It's obvious that you're not going to do well if you go back to bug Eugene Lomax a dozen times, for instance, and if that's what you lose on after Lucky literally gets told off for it twice, you're kinda the one at fault. I don't mind that the puzzles were fairly 'easy'. In truth, this is as much the fault of the length of the game as anything. Every other game that has given multiple puzzle solutions in the history of this blog has scored well, and while I would have enjoyed perhaps having another option in Kathmandu (I legitimately felt just a little uneasy leaving a gun with Sardar, the over exuberant Kathmandu local, but I did like that they gave me plenty of ways of getting to that point) everything made sense. Except perhaps getting a flower from an orange salesperson for.. knocking over his oranges? It wasn't a difficulty in any way, though, so I can forgive that. As there wasn't more of an 'ah ha!' vibe at any point where I really felt I'd solved something, I hesitate to be too nice to it here – but the fact that there was the additional little play around of having multiple characters to interact with people in different ways to make for a little more complexity, it's probably a little better than Rise of the Dragon in this much.

Rating: 5

It gets this because there were a few red herrings that felt obvious, like feeding chickens to the dog or this passport which was a trap all along

Interface and Inventory
What can really be said about the Dynamix system? Rise of the Dragon and Willy Beamish have already explored this pretty well in the past, I think, though it's definitely more of a positive side than a negative. Admittedly, I am being a little forgiving here as the game simply never had any real point at which I felt at all limited by what I had in front of me – there aren't a great deal of inventory puzzles to deal with, though each time I had to deal with them it was simple enough as I had a fair idea of what I was doing. The times that items needed to be used on one another, it was necessary to pull up a full screen image of them by first interacting with and then dragging them together in inventory. It was fairly simple to interact amongst the different characters, which I have to give credit for as I imagine it would have been easy to mess up. All of the minigames were winnable, even if they were annoying to a small degree, and using the 'gun' required a special action just as in Rise of the Dragon. However, as this didn't involve a keystroke and instead holding right click, it was easy enough to stumble upon even if you didn't read the manual.

I can definitely say that interacting items with characters felt consistently annoying, though, with you needing to click on the inventory menu, right click on the item, which then shows a picture of your character. So to have Lucky equip his gun (or Chi wear his ninja hood), it required a click that was completely unintuitive. The fact that I only have one real gripe with the interface means it's on the better side of things, so I'll follow Joe's thoughts of it as being much like Willy Beamish in ease of use, in spite of not exactly being elegant.

Rating: 6

One somewhat annoying thing is not enough to call this interface 'bad'. And the game literally lets you dress up like a ninja, so there's that.

Story and Setting
If I'm looking at this game as in any way historically accurate, I could probably get really flummoxed and angry with it. Truth is? It's not. And I don't think they were ever really trying tor it to be. This game is very much what it sets out to be – a light hearted romp with the feel of an action movie straight out of the 1980s. The only thing that would have made it moreso would have been if Sylvester Stallone or Kurt Russell had somehow played a bit part. Thankfully, they managed to avoid this temptation. The actors are for the most part well dressed for the '20s' era vibe that they were going for, and the story, while it is quite clichéd as the 'save the girl and run to safety from the evil villain', it is effective. There's one thing I do feel was a missed opportunity in better characterising Li Deng, the evil warlord – he felt less involved than Tong, his henchman, with just a couple of cutscenes showing him off.

The henchman on the far right also looks just a little like Daniel Pesina, a.k.a. the original Johnny Cage from the Mortal Kombat games – looking at the credits, not so however

So, the real issue is that while it's a compact story, it's a simple one. The setting has a few historical inaccuracies, but this game is not a game that is attempting to be historically accurate – they're just trying to seem 'close' to correct. As that's all they're really down to do, they do that admirably – all of the places feel individually unique in their own way, which I think speaks well for the setting. The story.. eh. You've heard it before, it's hackneyed.. but I enjoyed all of the Indiana Jones movies, and the same could be said of those movies too in spite of being classics.

Rating: 6

Boy meets girl, girl meets ninja, boy, girl and ninja run away in a tank. It's pretty much Hamlet.

Sounds and Graphics:
I will preface this by saying I normally completely abhor the 'people interposed onto drawn backgrounds' style that this game goes for. I thought it looked tacky when I first saw it in the early 90s as a youth, and still feel that it doesn't work. It's a personal thing.. but it's just not true here. It actually fits quite well. All of the cutscenes are drawn well, and while there are a few points at which the clearly untrained majority of the actors (as I mentioned in the opening post, Dynamix employees press ganged many of their family into roles due to budget restraints) do look a little silly, it again fits the style. Really no complaints! The music and sound effects were never impressive, but nor were they ever bad. I don't remember them, honestly, which speaks well, as I made certain to play the entire game with headphones on and listened to it the whole way through. None of the sound effects failed the game, so I'll have to be generous as I think this is likely to be the only game of this graphical style that I have ever seen to play to its strengths outside of Jones in the Fast Lane.

Rating: 7

The consistent use of cutscenes fits this graphical style fantastically. You can feel free to say it doesn't look great, but it's clear what's happening and fits as a whole

Environment and Atmosphere
There is no point in this game in which I feel there is a notable disconnect, but there are a few obvious limitations which did hurt them a little. Having so many of these huge, sweeping areas take place over only a couple of screens really made them feel underpopulated, which is fine for a fortress in the middle of China.. but not quite so fantastic as it comes to the sprawling suburbia of Hong Kong. Again, this is the technical limitations of the game at fault. What is the fault of the developers is the fact that while I can forgive an awful lot of things for the feel they were going for, there was simply too much in the way of stereotypes. I could very easily put this in the 'well, they were going for that feel' category too, but while it's fine for Lucky to want to be Indiana Jones, I may not want to be. As we are playing as all three of these characters, I don't like that we're sometimes forced to have them fight over bigotries and the like (Kate and Lucky fighting at the end of the game, for instance). Lucky has his past as a bit of a womaniser and we get to redeem him through the game, but having him only really dreading time with the Nabob's daughter because she's put on some weight? Not so happy with that. Sir Mix-A-Lot and he are going to have some words, if nothing else. He had a few moments of humanity, but this definitely impacts negatively here and in several other places. The game managed to find its way past a lot of potential racist overtones, though, and I can at least give it props for that. It fit, but I can't gush over it in any way – it was good, but it definitely had points which made me feel uncomfortable.

Rating: 5

I do legitimately enjoy a couple of the characters in it, though – Ama in Kathmandu definitely stands out

Dialogue and Acting:
There's another issue here. The dialogue.. well, I don't want to say it's terrible? But it's certainly not fantastic, either. You all probably noticed my repeated complaints over Lucky's dialogue choices never really giving me the options I wanted – but throughout the entire game, it's again the art of the stereotype that really hurts the game. I'm okay by the characters speaking broken English given that the majority of them would not use it as a primary language, but again.. it was never inspiring. I got a couple of chuckles here and there – some of the bickering between Lucky and Kate was actually down-right entertaining, even some of what was between Lucky and Chi – but really, I was never happy with the dialogue. 'Acting' is where I plan to talk over what the game really shone in, however – cutscenes! The repeated cutscenes really stood out to me, and where in another place they may have actually felt overbearing, though it was used heavily. Other games have managed to use in-game animations, but as this game works largely with static images which just change steadily, the game would work, for instance, by showing a face, a punch, then the same face thrown back (which is a literal example of the 'bar fight' scene right at the start). It's strikingly effective, and is hard not to give some real props to for its narrative power. But in the end, for a game that has a narrative which is driven in its vast majority by dialogue, it's pretty hard to forgive the fact that the dialogue goes between 'decent' and 'painful' so frequently, not to mention the minor spelling errors and the like. To sum up – cutscenes, good. Dialogue.. not so good.

Rating: 5

I don't even like the majority of Lucky's dialogue, but you're sure kidding me if you think that there is a site of sore eyes around here.

Final Rating
So, adding up (5+6+6+7+5+5)/0.6= 56.6 recurring, or 57. The real question I ask myself when looking at this score isn't so much what similar games have received, but a more simple query – 'is it fun?' The truth is? It was very, very short, but the game never stopped being enjoyable at any time. I could easily add a point on for how much I enjoyed myself whilst playing.. or just as easily retract one for the extremely short playtime caused due to the relative ease of the game. Instead, I think I'll leave the score as is – it's a fun little game and if I didn't have to write and take a billion screenshots of it, I think I could have beaten it even faster. I'd even recommend it to anyone who hasn't played. That means that Joseph Curwen has guessed correctly, and gets to eat up 10 delicious CAPs for his trouble. Speaking of CAPs...

CAP Distribution

Aperama - 100 CAPs

Blogger award - 100 CAPs for blogging his way through this game for our enjoyment

Laukku - 30 CAPs

True Companion award - 25 CAPs - for both playing along and sharing some extra info from his playthrough
Administrative Assistant award - 5 CAPs - for keeping us in check

Joseph Curwen - 10 CAPs

Psychic Prediction award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the correct score

Rowan Lipkovits - 10 CAPs

Editorial Discretion award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out that Aperama writes too often whilst tired and not paying attention to things
The Cold, Black Heart of China award - 5 CAPs - for sharing his corrupted disk tale

Fry - 5 CAPs

Jack Burton award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out the similarities to this and Big Trouble in Little China

TBD - 5 CAPs

Chewbacca award - 5 CAPs - wrrrrrr rooaar wrraaarrr

Raifield - 5 CAPs

Come on, 90s adventure games! award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out the obvious poorness of the 'fat princess' ending

By Ilmari

Happened thus far: Supernatural things have occurred in the Parnasse farm in Martinique. Since the slave revolt of 1831, in which the master of the house, de Ronan, was burned and died afterwards of grief, some strange phantom has cursed a bedroom of the farm. The daughter, Octavie de Ronan did not get hurt, because she and her mother were safe at the neighbouring plantation of du Banville family. Octavie later married Raoul du Banville. Four months ago, a descendant of Octavie, Geneviève Hubert-Destouches and his husband moved into Parnasse. Geneviève aggravated some zombie when she was tilling the ground. A local seer, Papa Echevain, thinks the zombie is trying to revenge something that happened in de Ronan family. Hubert-Destouches family have called me, a famed parapsychologist to investigate the matter. I arrive in the form of a colibri, a day before the nearby volcano is about to erupt...

Calm before the volcano eruption

I ended my previous post moments before I was about to investigate the city of St. Pierre and search for Valentin de Ronan, the only known living descendant of du Banville family, in addition to Geneviève. Just like with the main map of the game, I noticed that most of the locations were of no use: the river Roxelane and semaphore showed only pretty pictures, while theater and cathedral were completely inaccessible. The local school was empty of people, but at least I could pick up some fruit.

I’ve never tasted a soursop

The only place left was the Victor Hugo street. The street itself was empty, but a large white building led me to the banker de Ronan.

It seems a quiet city. I guess they’ve all heard about the impending doom and moved away

Valentin added some details to the story of de Ronans. His family line met the line of Geneviève with his grandfather Jérome de Ronan, who was the brother of Arnaud, the man who was killed during the slave revolt. Jérome had had little to do with his brother, because he was a travelling salesman, always going from one island to another. Of the events surrounding Arnaud’s death Valentin knew nothing, except the general information that rebelling slaves or their descendants hadn’t really gotten anything from their rebellion. He also mentioned the name of one particular person of mixed ancestry, Anselme Saint-Just.

In the strangest scene, Valentin starts to ogle his laundry lady, who walks by his window.
I didn’t capture the lady, but the animation was quite fine

In the previous post I had tried to call up a spirit living in the bedroom of Parnasse, but I didn’t know its name. Now that I knew some names, I tried anew. Apparently it was the spirit of Arnaud that had disturbed the farm so long.

And he wants to atone for his sins

With nothing else to do, I tried again to visit all the locations. This time I managed to access the neighbouring plantation.

There’s all sorts of interesting tidbits about the nature and culture of Martinique hidden in the game

I couldn’t access habitation, but the picture of a horse led me to the stables, where I could speak with Laurent du Banville, last male descendant of du Banvilles. His uncle, Raoul, was the spouse of Octavie de Ronan. Laurent really had no explanation to what had happened at de Ronans, but he did know that Arnaud had been quite melancholic at the time of the slave revolts.

Plantation owner still dreaming of the time they could use slaves as a free workforce

And a descendant of slaves noticing that abolition has changed nothing!

Alcipe Condette worked for Laurent du Banville as a carriage driver. He spoke against the modern version of Martinique slavery, where the people of African ancestry had to take menial jobs at the docks to sustain themselves. This kind of rebellious mentality was in the blood of Alcipe, since he was a direct descendant of Albrand, a slave who had burned down the house of de Ronans. Albrand had died during the rebellion, but not a single bone of him was ever found.

What’s in that pipe of yours?

At the communal house, I met Da Évélina, nanny of the du Banville family. She had been raised at the same time as Raoul du Banville and she had taken care of his children and their children. Her mother Cassidoine had told her of the night of the slave rebellion. Apparently Arnaud had survived the assault of Albrand, but had died soon afterwards, because he had lost his will to live. Arnaud had also written a letter which he had given to the local priest.

Since finding more information of this priest seemed the next logical step, I decided to check if I could enter the cathedral this time. It worked. Unfortunately, the leader of the cathedral during the times of slave rebellion was long gone, and the current canon Éségippe knew nothing about any letter.

He did note the depravity of St. Pierre and its carnivals resembling voodoo rituals.
No wonder there’s a taint of sulfur in the air and earth rumbles

With no open avenue of investigation, I was forced to just go through the various locations. At the Roxelane river I found something new.

Here’s the laundry lady, Séraphine, whom Valentin de Ronan was ogling earlier

Séraphine didn’t really have anything to say about the mystery I was trying to solve. She had noticed that the river had started to become strangely hot and washing laundry in it had become impossible. When she had tried to explain this to her employer, he had grabbed her, but she had been able to distract him by shouting that the school teacher Saint-Just was walking nearby. This was a name Valentin de Ronan had mentioned. Should I try to meet this school teacher?

Just missed him

Anselm Saint-Just wasn’t at the school, but Malou, school’s cleaning lady, told me that I might find her wife at her store, somewhere in the city. Malou also mentioned that if I wanted to know about zombies, sorcerer Gwanzong was the local expert. The only problem was that he lived in the area occupied by snakes. I would also have to find a black chicken, before he would speak to me.

Why weren’t you here earlier?

I found Pélagie Saint-Just, wife of the school teacher, at a little shop on Victor Hugo Street - again, another hotspot that hadn’t worked before. This time there was some explanation, since Mrs. Saint-Just had been with the grandmother of his husband, Nanor. She told me that her husband was at the moment busy with the elections. Pélagie thought this was a bit foolish of Anselme, since it would just aggravate all the Whites. I also found something for my inventory - the picture doesn’t really look like anything, but since I took it from a shelf full of bird cages, I guess it’s also a bird cage,

Again without any hints left, I just started going through every location. This time, I could access the pit, which was apparently a place for raising chickens. I was told I could get a black chicken, if I just answered couple of riddles correctly. I just love these moments…

“I own a shop, everything inside is all burned, everything outside is intact”.
I have no idea, what this was supposed to be

“I go back to my house and only my head remains outside”.
I thought this must be “escargot” (snail), but apparently not

“You put them on table and cut them, but don’t eat them”.
Surprisingly, this pun works in both English and French - it’s of course “cartes” (cards)

“If you don’t push me, I won’t let you pass”.
Simple,”porte” (door).

What to do with my black chicken? I still couldn’t get past the deadly snake, so I couldn’t visit the local sorcerer. Oh well, it was back to checking all locations. Wondrously, a carriage on Victor Hugo Street now had a hotspot that led me to a discussion with someone called master Duchaudé.

You saw me at cocoa farm? I’ve seen you driving around this street all day

Master Duchaudé, apparently of a mixed heritage, told me that people like him often chose to dedicate their life on higher education and become lawyers and doctors, instead of tilling their land to produce rum. Apparently, local whites were a bit uncomfortable with these people, especially if they were their own descendants. Indeed, they had had the habit of naming their “cross-breed” children with anagrams of their own names, so that behind a slave name one could often see a bad joke. This sounded like a hint, so I toyed with various names. The best fit was between “Ronan” (of de Ronan family) and “Nanor” (grandmother of Anselme Saint-Just).

At the cathedral, I met Minerve Doussaint, who knew the fate of the letter Arnaud de Ronan had written. The letter had been left for a faithful servant, who had given it to her or his granddaughter Marie-Reine. Marie-Reine had then wanted to give the letter to me, but had died of fever before she got the chance. Now, the letter was with Minerve Doussaint….

...and she isn’t giving it to me! I don’t know if I should still visit some place or if I should find some item or if I’ve encountered some sort of bug. The latter option seems likely, because whenever I now enter the cathedral, Minerve will just repeat the same lines - something that hasn’t happened before. Since I have yet failed to find any walkthroughs for the game, this will be an official Request for Assistance - hopefully someone knows whether and how Mewilo can be completed! And remember to use ROT13 for all your clues!

(Edit: Well, I did manage to pass this point without any assistance, but I think I'll still give the readers a chance to find out how I did it. If you are the first to know or guess how to get past this stage, you'll receive 10 CAPs. If no one has the exact answer by the time the next Mewilo post is published, the one with the closest and/or funniest answer will get the prize.)

Written by Reiko

Adam Greene Journal #3:"I want to help find King Cetus, but nobody except Delphineus trusts me, because I'm human. I certainly didn't throw any of this trash down here. I'm cleaning it up for them! But that's not enough. I'm SO glad I took some of my dad's experimental fertilizer solution with me. That stuff is awesome at dissolving oil! I'll have to tell him it works. But not only do I have to find Cetus, now I have to stay out of the way of a huge scary manta! I think this quest just got a LOT harder."

Last time, I followed the dolphin down to his ocean home of Eluria and began trying to help the city by talking to the Oracle. Now I have to find the mayor and the guardian of the greens.

I don't think Cetus would appreciate this description of him...

First I swim into the smaller building at the back of the street and find myself in a senator's meeting hall. An imperious voice asks who I am. The room appears empty, but I try talking to the gold mask attached to the back wall [2]. At first, the voice seems very alarmed that a human is here. But Cetus can't help him now, so after I patiently listen to him talk about Cetus, he sets me the task of aligning the three left columns to match the ones on the right.

At least he doesn't rhyme everything he says, like the Oracle.

Most of the column pieces affect a second piece when turned, so I have to find the one that doesn't affect any other piece and click it into place to match its corresponding piece, then follow the chain forward. It's not enough just to get all the pieces to match, though; you actually have to click each piece into place individually in the right order. It's not a very hard puzzle, merely a bit more tedious than it needed to be.

Bureaucracy at its finest.

When all the columns are in place [10], the building settles a bit and the mask is knocked off the wall, revealing a rather distraught hermit crab who turns out to be the mayor. I talk to him again [2] but he feels useless in trying to deal with the crisis in the absence of Cetus, and he still doesn't trust me to help. So I think I'm done here for now.

I swim over to the Fish Apartments to see what Delphineus is up to. I've found the mayor but not the guardian of the greens, so he tells me to check the Royal Gardens and wanders back to the surface to breathe. At the apartments, there's more trash to collect: a candy box, an aluminum toothpaste tube, an old plate, a waterlogged book, an old shirt, a Dodgers baseball cap, a shoe, a toaster, and a sock [10]. I also find a white cotton rag [2].

Cleaning up more trash...

When I try to swim into one of the apartments [2], a blue manatee named Gregarious appears and says I need a pass to get in. There's a cute exchange where he says, "I don't know you from Adam" and of course Adam says, "But I AM Adam!" The game hints that something isn't right with the manatee, as he's blue and is wearing bandages. We’ll have to help him later.

I wander around looking for the Royal Gardens, as there aren't any other obvious exits: the Fish Apartments, the meeting hall, and the ruined temple are visible buildings off the street, but there's nothing else. I try swimming off various edges of the screens, but most lead to open water; once Delphineus even swims up to tell me to stay in the city and then swims away again. Finally I find that the left edge of the street is the exit to the gardens.

...and yet more trash and destruction.

The plant life is dying here, and the coral is covered in oil tar. (Ecological message +1). Naturally, there's more trash to collect: fishing line, a six pack of soda, a can of broccoli, a purse, a tire, a spray bottle, another shoe, a wheel, and a pot [10]. There's also a large shell with a clicking inside that's too heavy to lift. I'm sure there's something interesting in there.

Adam's talking to the coral now...

...and here's why.

So I pour the experimental bacteria solution over the oil on the coral to see if that will dissolve it. It works! Adam swims around watching it and doesn't notice that a large lobster appears from the shell until it pinches him. She asks sternly what he's doing to the coral. He explains, and his compassion impresses her.

And of course this rare potion is exactly what we'll need later.

This lobster is the Guardian of the Greens, of course, and she calls herself Demeter. Not many greens left to guard, unfortunately. She hands over a vial of healing potion [2], which doesn't work on the garden but of course will be useful somewhere else. After she disappears and the oil finishes dissolving, I find an oil-covered shell [2] that fell from the coral. I can use the cotton rag to clean the oil off it [5], so now I have a clean shell and an oily rag.

He's more or less turning the responsibility for this over to a human boy now.

Delphineus suggests I need to give the mayor something he needs so that he'll trust me. Well, how about that shell I just found? The hermit crab is naturally quite pleased to have a larger shell to live in [5]. Now he wants to call a meeting so that everyone can decide what to do next. He offers me a deputy badge if I'll go round up the citizens. The badge turns out to be a starfish - of course!

You could have warned me earlier, instead of unceremoniously flinging me into a pot!

But when I swim back out to the street, suddenly the music turns ominous, a few fish appear and suddenly swim away, and the screen darkens. Delphineus appears and smacks Adam, sending him flying down into a ruined pot, and then disappears again. Then a huge black manta appears in the distance, swimming away. When the coast is clear, Delphineus appears again and apologizes, but Adam knows it saved his life. The manta is known as "Flesh-Eater" and has been preying on Elurians. As if we don't have enough to deal with.

Back to the apartments to talk to the citizens. I give the mayor's starfish badge to the manatee [5], who readily accepts it as a pass to the apartments. The decision of which apartment to investigate first is made for me as a plastic bag drifts down from the surface. A blowfish swims into it, gets panicked, inflates, and can't get back into his room. I push him back in [5] and tumble in myself. He's still stuck in the plastic though, so I go and unwrap it from him [10].

Narcissus is a rather appropriate name, don’t you think?

The blowfish is a "French" artist (with the stereotypical bad French accent) named Narcissus who gratefully hands over two sea urchins [2] for saving his life, and then swims off to the meeting. One citizen down. I also trash the dangerous baggie [5] so it won't be able to trap any other sea creatures (Ecological message +1).

Out on the main apartment screen, I see that the light next to the apartment I just exited is out, and there are at least five other lights still on. I'm up to 307 points, and next time I'll need to help some more citizens before they'll join the meeting.

Inventory: oily rag, steel cage, trident, sea urchins, healing potion, glass jar, transmitter
Ecological messages: 2 (8 total)

Session Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

It's that time again.

With only Ecoquest and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective still to finish it's time to get ready for the annual TAG awards, and for you to vote for the best Adventure game of 1991!

1990's Reader's Choice winner was The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 received the highest PISSED rating this year. Will Lucasarts and Guybrush get the award two years in a row?

Chester seems rather cocky

Or do you feel it's a travesty of justice that our lowest rating game was Hugo II: Whodunit? and Hugo II was actually the best game of the year? Now's your chance to have your voice heard (and possibly have your voice mocked for lack of taste)

I wonder who dunit? (Actually I don't give a toss, but it's your vote)

We played 21 games for 1991, three more than 1990, and you can refresh your memory with our reviews here.

NOTE: We'll be leaving the poll up until after Ecoquest and Consulting Detective finish in case you decide one of them should be the winner.

And now, the vote:

Reader's Choice: pick the best game of 1991

Written by Joe Pranevich

Elementary, my dear Watson!

Our story begins bright and early one morning in the Baker Street residence of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, presented to us in a brief introductory movie. Watson is reading the morning paper and is livid at the Times for printing a story that “play(s) upon people’s superstitions”. Holmes recognizes the case immediately: a so-called mummy’s “curse” that has resulted in the deaths of three men. In fact, he’s been making inquiries already because he believes that the murderer is considerably younger than 4000-years old. The video ends and I am free to start my investigation.

Don’t most Holmes stories start with a “client”, someone that consults with Holmes to set him off on his way? It seems slightly out of character for him to just be picking crimes out of the newspaper. It’s possible that this sort of thing happened often in the original stories and I’ve just forgotten. Three murders to solve-- this should be fun!

A veritable trove of very small print.

Since Watson is reading about this in the Times, that is probably where I should start as well. At first, I try to refer to the in-game newspaper, but it’s almost impossible to use. The interface doesn’t give you any way to scan the paper quickly or search, you just need to select each article one at a time to read it. Since there are so many articles, using the paper copy instead is the way to go. My guess-- and this is only a guess-- is that this could have served as a light form of copy protection. You could play the game without it, but at significant disadvantage.

I read the first newspaper, expecting it to relate to this first story, but can’t find the article that Watson is referring to. It takes me only a couple of minutes to work out the problem: the newspapers are all dated and in order that way, not by case. The introduction movie didn’t give us a date, but I find it in the manual: April 12, 1889. Looking around that date rewards me with several articles that have pertinent information:

Dr. Ebenezer Turnbull was an archeologist, but he was murdered in Egypt, in a tomb that he was excavating, back in March.
While bringing back finds from Turnbull’s expedition, a second archeologist was murdered en route. They were traveling by ship on the Eastern Empress. That murder happened around April 5, about a week before the present action of the game, and was investigated by two crewmen, Herman Ramsey and Luthor Tenney.
A third archeologist, James Windibank, was killed in the British museum. He was strangled by mummy wrappings. Scotland Yard is investigating his death.

Someone really doesn’t like archeologists!

We should build some sort of wall around Britain!

Most of the articles in the paper have nothing to do with this case. They may be red herrings or pertain to other cases, or perhaps I’ll find connections later. There are some less serious articles including a letter to the editor from “John H. Watson” where complains about the paper’s supernatural coverage. Even better (worse?), there’s an article where someone is blaming all the recent crimes on foreigners. Look at how far we’ve come since then!

But I’m not done with the paper quite yet… I get the idea to search back through the previous issues to see if any of the other murders were covered by the paper at the time. That searching is rewarded by several more clues: Turnbull was also strangled by bandages, plus his body was discovered by Weatherby-- soon to be victim number two. Going back even farther, I find a small note that the Eastern Empress was leaving Calcutta and that it is owned by “Jardine, Matheson, and Co.”

It’s been twenty minutes since I started this adventure and I haven’t even started to play the game yet! That has to be a record of some kind…

The first place to look might be Holmes’s personal files, but that doesn’t accomplish much. I learn that Turnbull, the first victim, was the third son of the Earl of Downey. Not that important. I also learn that Windibank was a professor at London University. None of the others have dossiers in our files, so we’re going to have to start hitting the pavement and finding clues.

Another video!

The approach I am going to take is to research the murders in order. They are clearly all related so this way I might be able to work out the original motive and suspects. I remember that one of my “Baker Street Regulars” is Henry Ellis, the foreign news editor for the Times. He might have been aware of the murders in Egypt and could have more information for me. Clicking on him in the directory and selecting the “carriage” icon causes Holmes and Watson to arrive in his office for a little video chat.

Unfortunately, Henry wasn’t working on this story, but he knows the man who was: Philip Travis. He was the Times’s Cairo correspondent at the time of the first murder but has been transferred back to London to continue covering the story from here. Since he’s in London, we can look him up next!

Only a murderer would wear that vest.

Travis turns out to be a piece of work. He believes that the crimes are the work of an ancient Egyptian god-- and he has a list of which ones he thinks it could possibly be. He’s a trained Egyptologist (hence his posting to Cairo), but also a loony. He believes that the Egyptians discovered the secret to immortality and they were, in fact, more advanced in science than we are. (Well, he was in the 1890s. They didn’t have Pokemon yet.) As his final trick before Holmes leaves, he tries an ancient ritual to bring a mummified monkey back to life that he happened to have been keeping around. The ritual fails, but he shrugs it off. He offers to try again, but Holmes says his goodbyes.

So… he’s the first “suspect” that I’ve met, but I’m pretty sure he’s the murderer. He just came back from Cairo, so I’d wager that he was on the same ship as the guy that was murdered. That places him in the region of all three murders. But what evidence will I need to prove that? I throw the Irregulars at him, but they just tell me that he’s a loony. I knew that already!

Some scenes interspersed old-style illustrations with the videos.

I don’t have any more leads for the first murder, so I continue onto the second and meet up with the two shipboard investigators, Herman Ramsey and Luthor Tenney. Ramsey gives me the overview: they had just come through a storm, so he sent Tenney down to the hold to check in on the cargo-- that’s when they discovered that Weatherby had been killed. Because nothing says good investigative practice like placing the guy that “found” the dead man in charge of figuring out who killed him, Ramsey put Tenney in charge of figuring out what happened.

I meet with him next and am given a much deeper insight into the voyage. He says that just having the mummy on board made the sailors superstitious, but having Travis spouting “mystic mumbo jumbo” made it much worse. I was right! Travis was on the ship as well! He and Windibank also fought a “war of words” on the ship. Beyond that, there were two other suspicious occurrences: a pair of Arab men with a mysterious box and some shipboard infidelity. One of the Arabs, Fahmi, had a mysterious box that the other, Al-Suad, wanted. But Tenney didn’t know what was in the box or why it was important to them. The potential affair seems more suspicious: Weatherby was trapped below deck and seasick for much of the journey, but during that time his wife was “galavanting” with another passenger, Mr. Uruburu. That could be a motive for his subsequent death, but it seems unconnected to the mummy mystery. Holmes drives the conversation back to the case at hand and Tenney reveals that when he discovered Weatherby’s body, the crate containing the mummy was opened. There was also a bowl containing ashes nearby, though the bowl subsequently went missing. Did the murderer come back to get it?

A view of the London directory.

This game keeps throwing names at you and, if you are like me, you’ve already forgotten who was Weatherby and who was Windibank. (Weatherby was the archeologist that died on the ship, while Windibank was the one that was killed at the museum.) Fortunately, the game gives you a bit of a leg up on this, but to explain that I need to talk about the core UI elements of the game: the “notebook” and the “directory”.

Consulting Detective isn’t an adventure in the traditional sense and exploration doesn’t work like any game that I’ve ever played before. At any time, you have access to the “directory”, a list of seemingly hundreds of people and places across London. We can-- in theory, at least-- visit any of them, but the vast majority have nothing to do with the case. Just for giggles, I pick a name at random and head there just to see what happens: we get a brief illustration of a London street while Holmes berates Watson for wasting his time. The “directory” is complimented by the “notebook”, essentially a list of bookmarks. By selecting names in the directory and clicking on the notebook icon, we copy the name there. It seems good practice to put in there every name that has come up in conversation. It doesn’t seem to be required-- you can do all the same actions with either the directory or the notebook-- but it’s a lot less pages to flip through. But while the “notebook” lets you remember all the names you come across, you can’t annotate it. If you want to take real notes, you have to do it with real pen and paper.

Once we have a name of a place or witness that we want to explore, we have a couple of options. From top to bottom, we can either send Holmes and Watson to visit the person, search for the person in Holmes’s personal files, or send the Irregulars there. When we do a visit, sometimes Holmes goes, sometimes Watson goes, and sometimes both. We don’t really have a POV character, although the game implies that you are Watson more often than not. One thing that confused me is that there is no icon for the “Regulars”, like there is for the “Irregulars”. Instead, you have to search the directory for their names just like anyone else. It’s not a huge deal, but if there are people you are expected to talk with frequently then it might have been nice to make it easier to remember who they were. The remaining two icons are the newspaper and the court. I’ve already showed you the former, but we’ll get to the latter when I’m sure I know who did it.

Only eight passengers coming back from Egypt? How do they make a profit?

While I was working my way through the directory, I happened to stumble on the Jardine Shipping Company and sent Holmes there to see what he could find. But “stumble” is entirely the right word: one of the things that works very poorly in this game is finding everyone that has been mentioned to you. I ended up flipping through nearly the entire directly to figure out that “Uruburu” started with a “U” (it’s pronounced closer to “a-ru-bur-rue”) and so found “Jardine” that way. (The Arab names also were a challenge.) It would nice if names were automatically added to your notebook when you hear them, although perhaps that would make the game too easy. Even just adding subtitles would have been a nice help. In any event, the Jardine company was happy to provide us with the passenger list. It confirms everyone we already knew was on the ship, plus one: Louise Fenwick. I add her to the notebook in case she saw something.

Another murder!

I start with the Arab men first, not because I think they are likely to be suspects, but because perhaps they saw something that I can learn from. I try Al-Saud first, but he’s not home. I then check Fami and find a gruesome sight: he’s been murdered too! That’s four!

Before I can dig at this, Holmes speaks up and says he’s solved this case already and this murder has nothing to do with the others. This guy has been stabbed-- not strangled, so it’s a different pattern. Holmes deduces that since he’s rich enough to have a butler, but that his butler hasn’t discovered his body yet, there can be only one answer: the butler did it. I win at least one of my predictions! Does this count? Either way, we move on because this is a literal dead end.

My next stop is Mr. Uruburu and he seems to still have a hangover. He claims that he didn’t kill Mr. Weatherby because he and Mrs. Weatherby were too busy “partying” from Cairo to London. Right. She’ll be my next target.

Clarissa doesn’t explain it all, or much at all.

We find Clarissa Weatherby at her home. She tells me that she and her husband, Andrew Weatherby, had not been married long but stresses that she loved him very much. She seems a bit evasive that she might have had an affair (which is natural, especially for 1890), but otherwise there’s not much new information here. Holmes asks her to open a tin of toffee for him, but she fails to do so. Why did he ask her that? Does he see something that we don’t? Was it a test?

The last of the potential witnesses was Louise Fenwick. I visit her house and interview her along with her husband, Merrill. It’s clear that the passenger list is wrong because he was on the ship with her, but he wasn’t on the passenger manifest. Is that a clue? Or a bug? They are immediately defensive, seeming to resent me for even questioning them. They returned to London after only two weeks in Egypt because their dog, Dickie, got sick. Even worse, the dog wasn’t allowed in her cabin and had to travel in cargo. Merrill seems quite mean to his wife and they may be having some marital problems, although I do not see how that might connect to the murder.

The Fenwicks are not very helpful.

I’ve now talked to everyone I know about for the first two murders, so it’s time to move on to the third. I think we’re sure that someone on the ship committed the murder, but there are motives for several potential killers. I have a feeling that the Arab subplot is a false lead, but so far there seems to be few good ones. Travis is clearly the most unhinged of the various characters, but yet I don’t see a motive (other than a love of Egyptian religion) for why he would kill those men.

What do you think? Do we have a serial murderer here or several killers all using the “mummy’s curse” to enact their various revenge plots? I’m going to have to keep working on this next week. WIll I be able to solve the case? Let’s find out!

Time played: 1 hr 50 min
Total time: 1 hr 50 min

By Ilmari

Happened so far: Martinique isn’t a paradise, which is mostly due to the European settlers, who brought forcefully slaves from Africa to work in their plantations. The master and the slave populations had mixed, but this had not raised the status of Africans. Instead, the people who had even a tinge of African ancestry were considered part of the slave population, and like in a cruel joke, masters who had fathered these sorry persons named them with anagrams of their own names. Slave rebellion of 1831 had not changed the situation, and even the eventual abolition of slavery did not make the economical situation of Martinique any better - descendants of the European settlers still formed the upper class.

Social injustice has caused personal tragedies. During the slave rebellion, slave called Albrand had burned down the house of de Ronan family. Arnaud de Ronan, scarred by burn marks, died soon after the event, but not of any physical reason. He had done something horrible he had to atone for, and even his death by grief wasn’t enough - Arnaud’s ghost was left to haunt a bedroom in de Ronan mansion. The only document about the events leading to Arnaud’s demise was a letter he wrote and gave to a local priest for safekeeping. After the death of the priest, the letter had through various events finally found its way to the possession of one Minerve Doussaint.

Obtaining this letter would be important, since it might be the only clue of a recent appearance of a zombie, awakened by Arnaud’s descendants taking again residence in de Ronan mansion. Is there some dirty secret hidden in the fact that Nanor, grandmother of Anselme Saint-Just, a local politician with African ancestry, has a name that is clearly an anagram of Ronan? What could a local sorcerer, Gwanzong, reveal about the zombie? And how to reach him, when he lives in a land infested with deadly snakes? And who is Man Cécé mentioned in the manual, but never heard afterwards? It’s time to put on my colibri shape one last time and find out…

Yes, I am trying to find a letter, could you please give it to me?

Last time I faced an insurmountable obstacle - I was supposed to get a letter from Minerve Doussaint, but she wouldn’t give it. I finally managed to track down a walkthrough for the game and I found out it’s more of a feature than bug. The book which Minerve Doussaint is holding contains a small black dot. By pressing that small dot I could move on to the next stage of the game. I just love pixel hunting!

Minerve wouldn’t hand me the letter unless I identified the name of the victim, which Arnaud revealed in his letter. Now, the manual had already informed me that at one point someone would ask for a name of a person and I should answer with the name of the game - Mewilo. I guess the fact that I know the name is explained by me being a world-famous parapsychologist, because Mewilo it was.

I couldn’t just read the letter right away, but I had to go back to Parnasse plantation, where I had seen a magnifying glass. With the help of it, I learned the sad story of Arnaud de Ronan. It appears that in the wake of the slave revolts, Arnaud had become concerned that the family fortune would be plundered by the rebels. He put the fortune in a box, and with his trusted servant, Mewilo, he went to a place, twenty meters away from the source of river Balisier and buried the treasure. Due to some temporary fit of insanity, Arnaud killed Mewilo and assigned his spirit to guard the treasure (this is the zombie we’ve been hearing about). The dying wish of Arnaud was to release Mewilo from his eternal task and to give the gold to his own children, their children and anyone deserving it.

Now I knew what had happened in the past, but I still had no idea how to complete the game. Back to going through all the locations, then. Luckily, nanny Évélina had something new to tell me. Apparently she knew a descendant of one of the slaves of Arnaud de Ronan, and by coincident, descendant of a slave who happened to have disappeared during the rebel. Her name was Man Cécé - a person mentioned in the manual - and she worked at the port.

What a coincidence that you hadn’t that pet earlier

Évélina also had a pet - a mongoose called Zouzouffe. We all know mongoose are the prime enemy of snakes, and luckily I got a soursop, which was favourite dinner of Zouzouffe. It was time to face the snake again.

I’ve waited for this moment

The sorcerer accepts my gift (black chicken)

Gwanzong, the local sorcerer, revealed to me then my final mission: I should save the souls of both Arnaud and Mewilo, locked in a sense by the pot of gold. To do this, I had to know the first names of their eldest living descendants. With Arnaud, the choice was clear: Nanor was probably older than either Anselme or Genevieve. Of Mewilo’s family line, I had heard only of Man Cécé. Perhaps it was time to visit her at the port.

Luckily she is willing to talk to me, because I have a mongoose of her dear friend

Before Man Cécé told me anything, I had to tell her the secret Martinique ingredient that wasn’t included in the calalou recipe in the manual.This was a bit difficult thing to google, so I just read the answer from the walkthrough (GOMBOS or okra). Man Céce really hadn’t anything new to add to the fate of Mewilo, but she did mention that her eldest brother was still living in the de Ronan plantation. While she didn’t mention the name of her brother, it couldn’t really have been anyone else, but Papa Echevain, whom I had met at the beginning of the game.

Now that I knew the two eldest persons of the two family lines, I would just have to somehow trigger the ending. How to do that? After a little bit of wandering from place to place, I gave up and just looked at the walkthrough again. Apparently I just had to guess that I should go to a secret place, where Arnaud had killed Mewilo. Once I knew I had to find the spot, it was easy to place it on the main map - it was near the source of the river, as Arnaud’s letter had told. Still, I felt this puzzle was a bit of a cheat, since all the other locations in the game were so clearly marked in the map.

So, then I just told the zombie the names of Nanor and Echevain and I had solved the game?

Not really

All right, I probably missed some clever nuance that told me I should only care about MALE descendants of Mewilo and Arnaud, and so, instead of Nanor, I should have thought of Anselme (I just don’t understand languages with gendered words). Even so, the game was pretty nitpicky about the exact phrasing you had to use, and eventually I just had to look at the walkthrough for it (ANSELME ET ECHEVAIN).

After telling the zombie these names, a hole appeared in the ground and I (presumably) shared the treasure with Anselme and Echevain (or then I just transferred the money to L. Ron Hubbard, in order to raise myself to the next level).

Everyone is happy, time to score the game!

Final rating

Puzzles and solvability

Mewilo resembles Cruise for Corpse in that the mystery to be solved is the primary puzzle, while most of the game time is spent in walking around and finding the next trigger to advance the plot. Luckily, Mewilo has a smaller game area with less things to look at, so it was relatively easy to go through all locations (and in some cases the game even hinted where I should be going next).

In addition to walking around, the game did have real puzzles. There were traditional adventure game puzzles, but these were mostly very simple and not very original fetch quests (he wants rum, so go find rum). Riddles are always a bit of a double-edged sword, since they can be sometimes too devious, but at least I managed to answer two of them easily, so I guess they weren’t that bad. And I’ve already said that the seemingly unfair trivia questions were not too big a deal, when you consider that Coktel Vision provided the answers in Minitel (and googling the answers certainly made me appreciate the game setting more).

I just have to find a way to introduce “vesou” (sugarcane juice)
in conversation to show my expertise in French

If the variety of the puzzles is a slightly positive thing, there are also clear negatives. Mewilo makes kind of a record in having both parser problems and unfair pixel hunting. Without these problems, I might have settled for 3, but now I think I must give a lower score.

Score: 2.

Interface and Inventory

In principle, Mewilo has a perfectly simple interface, in which you just click around to activate the hotspots. In practice, it is perhaps a tad too simple, since it doesn’t really allow the feel of a true interaction - most of the time, it felt more like I was passively reading a story than actively engaging with the environment. Especially the inability to engage in dialogues and ask some questions is a bit unforgivable in a mystery game (then again, the game would have been far easier, if I could have just, say, asked Man Cécé the name of her brother).

Furthermore, while having a colibri cursor might sound like a fun idea, it was actually pretty difficult to hit the right spot with it. Combined with the game’s reluctance to give any hints when some hotspot might be activated, the interface was a source of a constant frustration. Add to that the fact that there’s no in-game save ability and you won’t get a high score. Inventory was a bit simplistic, so that won’t result in more points (although the pictures of the six items in the game were reasonably nice).

Except the cage, which didn’t really look like anything

Score: 2.

Story and Setting

This is where Mewilo shines. Once you get past all the interface problems and bad puzzles, you get to the meat of the game, that is, the story. You could summarise the essence of the plot in one sentence: find out how to appease a zombie. Yet, entwined with this simple mystery premise we have tales of many families, of love and hate and all the other passions that moved them. And all of this emotion and intrigue is tightly embedded in real historical events - the colonisation of Martinique, slavery, rebellion, the eventual abolition of slavery, which still did not lead to equitable society, and the impending threat of an erupting volcano. Add to this the fact that the supernatural elements of the story are firmly grounded in the local traditions and you’ve got yourself a winner.

The meat of the story summarised in one letter

Score: 8.

Sounds and Graphics

To get the feel of how to score this dimension, I took a look of what scores did the other games in 1987 get - Police Quest and Larry got both 5, while Maniac Mansion rose to 7. I have to say that when it comes to music and other sound effects Mewilo clearly shines over what Sierra and Lucasarts had to offer at the time, mainly because Atari ST just had better sound capacities than PCs. As for the graphics, there isn’t as clear advantage - I think that Mewilo could have been imported to EGA. This means that it is difficult to say which of the games had best graphics, but at least Mewilo is as good as Larry 1 was. It is also good to point out that Mewilo has some animations, but mostly the game is quite static. All in all, I’d say Mewilo has a slight advantage over Sierra games of the era.

Score: 6.

My favourite image was the ghost of Arnaud

Environment and Atmosphere

The game successfully creates the impression that you are moving through historical Martinique. I was especially thrilled by all the hidden notes about the geography, biology and culture, which really helped me to form an idea of what the whole island was like. In addition to small size of the gameworld, the only real criticism I could think of is again the nature of the game that forces the player to visit all the different locations again and again, thus making the gameplay itself a bit boring.

Score: 4.

Dialogue and Acting

When I read the story in manual and heard that the same person was responsible for the dialogue in the game, I was afraid I couldn’t even understand what the game was saying. Thankfully, the in-game text is not as poetic, so I had no problems in understanding French. Even though the in-game text was simpler, you could still see that it was done by an experienced writer - different persons had different ways of speaking and different vocabularies, depending on their social status and personal history. All in all, another quite strong dimension.

Score: 7.

2 + 2 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 7 = 29, which divided by 0.6 gives 48.

Now this is a score I hardly expected, when I started playing the game, yet, it does make perfect sense - what the game does well, it does extremely well, although it does have its flaws. Unfortunately, the weak elements of Mewilo make it not very entertaining as a game. In fact, I’d rather call it a graphical version of interactive fiction or a visual novel. I just hope that despite the language barrier more people would have the courage to get to know this hidden gem.

Written by Reiko

Adam Greene Journal #4:"Before Delphineus and the Oracle will let me start searching for Cetus, I've had to help everyone else in the city first so they'll trust me. I'm glad I could help them, but it seems like ALL their problems have been caused by human trash! Some of them were in critical danger and it's a good thing I showed up when I did! There are so few citizens left as it is."

Time to work on helping some more citizens of Eluria. I swim next into the lowest apartment and find the manatee again. This time I can ask why he's blue and bandaged, and he explains that he's holding his breath. He doesn't want to go up to the surface to breathe because he keeps getting hit by a speedboat (Ecological message +1).

He should be dead from asphyxiation by now...

That can't be good for him. Manatees normally surface every few minutes and can generally only hold their breath for about twenty minutes or so (one source said up to twenty-four minutes). So this isn't very realistic, as he was already blue the first time I saw him, before I dealt with the oil on the coral and gave the shell to the mayor. But anyway, it's less realistic that he even talks, so never mind.

Adam offers to go up to the surface with him and do something about the boat's propellers. I don't know what Adam has in mind, but up we go. On the way, the manatee is hit by some more trash drifting down from the surface. It never ends!

The boat in question is just sitting right there when we surface, with an old fisherman at the helm. Able to breathe again, the manatee immediately turns his normal gray color and hovers nervously while I look around. I decide to go ahead and just talk to the fisherman and see if I can explain the damage he's doing. (You'd think he'd notice a manatee wearing a cap and bandages, but he doesn't even notice me until I speak.)

Adam gives the careless fisherman quite a scolding.

He's completely oblivious to the damage his trash and propeller blades are doing, and is genuinely shocked to find out his blades have injured the manatee. Fortunately, he's anchored and the motor is off at the moment, or Adam might have been injured too.

I don't really know what the solution is, but I look through my inventory and decide that the most likely item is the big steel cage I found. I show it to the fisherman, and Adam explains that it's just like the cage his father uses on his boat. The fisherman agrees to use it, but only if I install it. I try using it on the boat, but I have to attach it with something. The rag doesn't work, and I don't have anything else remotely like a connector.

I swim back down to Eluria (the manatee seems content to wait near the boat until I resolve this problem) to find something else. The fisherman's trash has drifted down to the apartments. There's just a bottle and a sandwich wrapper this time [10] but also an old working water pump from the boat [2]. The pump doesn't seem useful to help with the cage either. I guess I'll have to check out some of the other citizens first.

Adam has a good memory for this kind of thing.

In the bottom-left apartment I find a "teenaged" angelfish called Epidermis with a surfer dude personality and lots of posters on his walls, including one of "Marlin Monroe". He's described as looking thin and sad and seems to be ready to move out. I talk to him [2] and he says he only eats one kind of plant, but it's all covered in algae. Adam says it's due to phosphate pollution (Ecological message +1).

Sharp as a knife. Hint, hint.

Seems like the immediate solution was just in the next apartment over, though: the sea urchins the artist blowfish gave me eat algae. I use one on his plants [10], and it immediately starts eating the algae, which gives the angelfish algae-free leaves to eat. He's so grateful that he gives me a sharp shell [2] from his shell collection, then swims off to the meeting.

How are fish supposed to watch out for bleach?

The top-left apartment has a stunned lionfish who apparently found a bottle of chlorine bleach (Ecological message +1). That stuff is really toxic. I've got to get the contaminated water out of here, as it's making Adam a bit dizzy too, so I use the water pump on the window on the far wall. It doesn't work yet as there's still a source of chlorine in the room. I find the bottle and trash it [5], and then try the pump again [5]. This time it works, and once the room is clear, the lionfish wakes up.

"Here, have a weapon as a gift for saving my life."

Adam explains what happens and they exchange introductions: the lionfish is called Olympia. She's grateful, of course, but she's shy, so she doesn't really want to go to the meeting. Adam thinks her spines are cool, so she gives Adam one of her baby spines [2], which has a poison that can kill small creatures or knock out larger ones. Then she's willing to go off to the meeting.

It's never that easy.

I swim next into the top-right apartment and find a sea turtle choking on something with a string attached. I try pulling on the string [5], but unfortunately the string comes off without pulling out whatever it's attached to. There's also a deflated balloon in the apartment, so the turtle's probably choking on another one. They're apparently from the balloons I saw let go from the cruise ship earlier. (Ecological message +1)

I trash the balloon [5], but I don't seem to have anything small enough to help get the balloon out of the turtle's throat. I hate to leave him like that though. You'd think the non-poisonous end of the lionfish spine might help (or maybe there isn't a non-poisonous end, or it's too dangerous to handle?), or the antenna on the transmitter or something, but no, there's a RIGHT way to solve this puzzle and I don't seem to have it yet.

I guess he can't talk well either, let alone eat.

I try the last apartment and find a swordfish with his snout trapped in the rings from a six-pack. (Ecological message +1) This one I can help though: I use the sharp shell to cut the plastic. The swordfish introduces himself as "Hippocrates, chief sturgeon...er...surgeon of Eluria". Heh. He's pleased at my "surgical procedure" and gives me a pair of fish-bone tweezers. Now I'll be able to help the sea turtle.

Initially I just trash the plastic rings [5], but the game makes a comment that Adam thinks he's forgotten to do something, but oh well, can't change it now. (Is this trash bag some kind of dimensional portal, that I can't pull anything back out of it?) Oh yeah, I know what to do. Plus I sense missing points if I don't fix that. I restore back and this time pick up the rings first [5] and then use the shell on them again to cut them apart, which automatically trashes them too [5]. That's better.

The vocabulary of these creatures is impressive. Alas, their discernment is not so good.

Now I'm able to help the turtle. I use the tweezers to pull the balloon out of his throat [5], and then he introduces himself as Erroneous, a professor. He thanks me and gives me four metal screws [2] he found so that no animals will swallow those either. I think I found the connectors I need, fortunately, as there isn't anyone to help now except the manatee. But first I trash the balloon he swallowed [5].

Adam is pretty handy with fixing things. Doesn’t he need a screwdriver?

Back up to the surface to help the manatee now. First I attach the screws to the cage [5], and then I can put the cage over the propeller [5]. Now the fisherman understands how it helps and promises to consider what Adam said about trash too.

Someone's starting to take responsibility for what can be done.

The game automatically sends us back down to the apartments, where the manatee is pleased that all the citizens are helped. He goes off to the meeting and we're automatically sent there too. There isn't even a cutscene, though, just a time-jump, after which we see the citizens dispersing again. But the hermit crab mayor is very pleased with the outcome of the meeting and gives me the gold mask [2] he'd been hiding behind when I first met him.

This doesn't tell me anything I don't already know.

Now we're getting somewhere: a list of things I need. Even if it’s still a riddle.

Delphineus sends me back to the oracle. I trigger her appearance like before, with the trident, and then give her the gold mask [10], which is the sign of trust she wanted. She then gives me the full prophecy, which is written as a poem, but then also gives me a parchment with an illustrated form of the prophecy which can be examined to recall the words.

How is this parchment surviving underwater?

This seems like a good place to stop, since we've done all we can for the city for now, and the next step is to start searching for Cetus outside the city. I have a total of 411 points now, which is over halfway.

Inventory: oily rag, trident, sharp shell, fishbone tweezers, water pump, lionfish spine, healing potion, glass jar, mirror, transmitter, prophecy scroll
Ecological messages: 5 (13 total)

Session Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Total Time: 5 hours 0 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Joe Pranevich

Inspector Lestrade, I presume.

Last time, we started our investigation into a series of “mummy murders”, three dead archeologists all connected to the excavation and transportation of a mummy to London. We had looked at two of the murders but were just starting to investigate the third. So far, we have one very good suspect (a strange reporter) but no motives. The game is afoot, as they say!

Just to recap, what we know so far:

Murder #1 - Dr. Ebenizer Turnbull. He was murdered in the tomb he was excavating in Egypt in March, but I have very few details.
Murder #2 - Andrew Weatherby. He was murdered en-route to London around April 5. He and Windibank were transporting some archeological finds on board the Eastern Empress at the time of his death. He was very seasick on the journey and spent much of the time in his cabin while his wife and a suitor (Mr. Uruburu) may have used that time for some indiscretions.
Murder #3 - James Windibank. He was killed in the British museum, strangled by mummy wrappings.

Time to figure out how poor Mr. Windibank died…
Way back in the introduction video, we learned that Windibank’s murder was being investigated by Scotland Yard so my next stop will be to see Lestrade. He is such a prominent figure in the Holmes canon that I had hoped he would be a “major” character here, but he doesn’t seem to be acted or presented much differently than any of the other “Regulars” that we’ve seen so far. To add insult to all the Lestrade-lovers out there, the Yard has made nearly no progress at this point. It’s a waste of our time.

Up close and very personal with a mummy.

With the authorities being no help, our next target is the scene of the crime itself: the British Museum. That turns out to be very fruitful:

Windibank was strangled using mummy wrappings but not the mummy’s wrappings. They were similar, but care seems to have been taken not to damage the mummy that was returned from Egypt.
Windibank’s body was discovered in the mummy’s sarcophagus, but the assailant didn't move the mummy first. The two bodies were stacked on top of each other.
The museum was open at the time of the murder, but the new exhibit was closed. However, security was not tight enough to say that no one got in or out of the restricted area.
Henry Witherspoon, a guard, discovered the body. Strangely, he is not in our London directory so we cannot talk to him directly.

There’s some good details to chew on there. The bit with the mummy’s wrapping suggests that the assailant was respectful of the mummy and wanted to keep it intact, but then why would he have stuffed the bodies together like that? Was that improvised at the last moment? This detail furthers my conviction that Travis did it, especially as we know he keeps mummified animals around his house.

The final detail I learn also inspires my next stop: Windibank was an employee of London University, not the museum. Time to talk to his bosses.

To be… or not to be.

We head to the university next and we find ourselves talking to the chairman of the Egyptology Department. He gives us a treasure trove of details about the expedition: Turnbull (the first victim) was the organizer, with Windibank (the third victim) as his second-in-command. This was the first time that they had worked together, but Windibank was a popular lecturer at the university. A third and final slot in the expedition was to be given to a student and three of them applied for the job: Weatherby (the second victim), Peter Smith, and Philip Travis (!!). Weatherby was selected, but Smith and Travis traveled to Egypt via other means. Smith joined a competing expedition, while Travis went as a reporter. Finally, we have a motive! Travis may have been jealous that he was not selected for the expedition. I’m adding Mr. Smith as a suspect as he may have the same motives as Travis, not to mention a stake in the failure of the now-competing expedition. But when we pay him a visit, we find that he won’t be back for nearly a year. Even if he did the murder in Egypt-- which is possible-- he wasn’t in the right place for the other two.

Mr. Watson visits an ordinary forensic scientist.

Talking to the guy at the university filled in details about the circumstances of the first murder, but we’re no closer to solving the third. My next stop is to Scotland Yard’s crime lab; H. R. Murray there is one of Holmes’s “Regulars” and might have some evidence from the crime scene that will be helpful. Mr. Murray confirms that the fabric around the victim's neck was thousands of years old but was not the real cause of death! Windibank was strangled the old-fashioned way, with the wrappings put there afterwards for effect. He also discovered monkey hair on the wrapping. I think we all remember who was trying to resurrect a monkey mummy not too long ago… Murray is also looking at the murder on board the Empress, although this may not be in his jurisdiction. In that case, the mummy wrappings had dog hair on them. That could point to Mrs. Fenwick being the second murderer, but that seems unlikely. We know her dog was in the cargo hold; it could have left hair around the scene.

At this point, I know it was Travis. He did it because he wasn’t selected to come to Egypt with the group and was jealous of the success of their expedition. Let’s take it to the judge!

Not Judge Wapner.

This is the first time I’m seeing the judging interface, so I’m not sure exactly what’s involved. I’m first asked to select who committed the first murder; I have to pick that person’s name from either the directory or my notebook. I select Travis and the judge seems happy about that!

Next, the judge asks me to select his motive from a brief list:

Oooh. Difficult questions.

And honestly, that has me stumped. None of the motives match up with the jealousy angle that I theorized. It’s possible that he felt that the tomb should be left undisturbed given his love of Egyptian culture and “science”, but then why would he have volunteered for the trip? We haven’t heard anything about press access being an issue, nor about questioning the doctor’s credentials. We also haven’t heard anything about Travis ever meeting Clarissa Weatherby, though it’s not impossible that she slept with all the archeologists on the trip. I’m stumped. Rather than guess wrong, I select to leave and Holmes apologizes to the judge. Back to the investigation!

Unfortunately, I’ve reached a bit of an impasse. I know the killer of (at least) the first murder but not his motive. It happened in Egypt weeks ago and the two guys that might be witnesses are dead. It’s a perfect little crime, so how do I crack it?

Watson is off finding clues by himself now…

In desperation, I start to run through the rest of Holmes’s “Regulars” to see what they might contribute to the case:

Jasper Meek, the Chief Medical Examiner for Scotland Yard, reveals that the murders were committed with strong but bare hands. In each case that he looked at, the deaths were instantaneous as the trachea and vertebrae were crushed. The wrappings were added later to mask the real cause of death.
Quentin Hogg, a local crime reporter, tells me more about the two Arab men on board the ship: Fahmi was an importer while Al-Saud was an agent of the Ottoman empire. It’s interesting, but doesn’t seem to connect to the case.
Porky Shinwell, a bartender with his ear to the underworld, tells me that someone was smuggling in some kind of bird artifact on the Eastern Empress. Is this whole subplot just an extended Maltese Falcon reference?
Langdale Pike, the expert on the London social scene, provides some details on two of the murdered men. Turnbull refused to marry and “take his place in society”. Windibank did marry, but he once caused a scandal by autopsying his deceased dog and had a run-in with the “anti-vivisectionist league”, whatever that is. Louise Fenwick-- one of the passengers on the ship!-- threatened to kill him over it.
The Somerset House, the mysterious “S.H.” in the introduction, is a hall of records for things like wills. We learn that Turnbull left all his stuff to the Egyptology department, but Windibank and Weatherby both willed all of their possessions to their wives. That seems unsurprising.

The other Regulars either say nothing of value or aren’t around. What did I gain by taking the “try everyone” approach? Not much. We have a motive for why Louise Fenwick might have committed the second murder-- and the dog hair at the scene adds to that theory-- but I don’t believe it. She would have been unlikely to copy the M.O. of the previous killer. We also get the impression that the killer was quite strong. As Travis seems more like a 19th century geek, perhaps he wasn’t the killer for the rest of the cases? Can someone please ask him to open a can of toffee?

Hey! You can visit dead people.

Lacking any other good ideas, I pick the victims’ names from the directory and discover that you can still visit their homes even if they are dead. Turnbull seems to have been quite boring and only owned books and maps, but we are reminded again that he is the son of an Earl. Windibank’s wife tells me that her husband was excited for the trip and did not believe in curses because he was a man of science. Yet again, none of the leads get me anywhere.

I search through the paper again and find some articles that I missed:

Feb 6 1888 - Letter from the Earl of Downey, Turnbull’s father, complaining that the Times said he was not qualified to unearth antiquities.
Aug 17, 1888 - Article about Turnbull’s lecture series. Windibank and Weatherby were both mentioned in the article.

I also find a marriage announcement in there for Mary Moristan & John Watson! That has nothing to do with the case, but it’s another nice little detail. I only wish I wasn’t floundering here, then I might be able to appreciate the nice details more.

With no more leads, articles, or ideas, I decide that trial and error is my only recourse. I head back to the judge and make a guess: “C”, that the victim had questioned Turnbull’s credentials. That worked!

More questions!

The judge is satisfied that we solved the first murder, so he pushes us on to the second. Who killed Weatherby? I pick Travis again. Louise and Clarissa may both have had a reason for killing him, but I trust that only the same killer would use the same M.O. That turns out to be correct! Travis also killed Weatherby. Now, I need to report on his motive.

This one is again very tricky. We know that Travis and Weatherby got into a “war of words” on the ship about his beliefs and that seems the most likely cause. We don’t have any evidence of Weatherby even having an interest in journalism nor anything about their dissertations to suggest it could be either of the middle options. It might possibly be the jealousy issue again, but Travis was much more likely to kill Turnbull for that reason (because he made the selections), rather than Weatherby (someone who was selected instead). I select “A”... and am disappointed. The judge tells me that I’m wrong and we have to start over again. Rather than go back and dig up more clues, I re-play to that point and select “D”. I don’t quite buy that argument as a great motive, but the game says that it’s right. Onward to the third murder.

It’s like taking the SATs...

Once again, I select Travis as the murderer and am correct. Since he did the other two, it was nearly impossible that he wouldn’t go for the hattrick. The judge says that we are correct and asks us to pick his motive. This time, I know exactly what to pick: “B”. He wasn’t picked for the expedition, but Windibank was. That is correct! I completed the first case!

I am pretty sure that I suck.

With the case closed, I am given my score: 646 points. Remember that the score is based on how long it took you to solve the mystery and a higher score is worse than a lower one. Since Holmes managed to get it done in 26 points, I have to assume that I sucked. I did end up talking to a lot more people than I needed to, especially once I started scrambling to discover a motive.

… of the first chapter.

Thankfully, I’m also given a little denouement video where Holmes explains how he solved the case. He was a lot more efficient than I was:

He immediately deduced that it would be the same person doing all three murders. Since one of the murders was on a ship, that limited the number of possible suspects.
He saw from the newspaper that the Empress was in Bombay at the time of the first murder, so the murderer was not a member of the crew.
Since he knew the murderer was on the Empress but not a crew member, he got the passenger list. Travis was on the list.
He then realized that Travis was the reporter who wrote about the first murder.
Clarissa Weatherby was another suspect, but she only had a motive to murder Weatherby and not the others. The whole bit where Holmes asked her to open a jar of toffee was to test her hand strength. She wasn’t very strong, so she couldn’t have strangled all those men.
Travis studied under Windibank at London University and wanted to be chosen for the expedition. He was furious when Weatherby was chosen instead.
Travis had written a “vicious” article questioning Turnbull’s credentials to lead the expedition, to which Turnbull wrote a “harsh” response. This very public war-of-words in the London Times might have been enough to drive Travis to kill.

Looking over this, I missed a couple of details. I did not notice that the Empress was in Bombay at the time of the first murder, but it never occurred to me that the killer might have been a member of the crew. I also overlooked that Travis wrote the article about the first murder himself, allowing him to set the seeds of the “mummy’s curse” in the public imagination as well as turn away suspicion.

But the last bit with the “vicious” article and “harsh” response has me scratching my head. This is clearly where I was supposed to get the information from for the first set of questions, but I still can’t find what I might have missed. The closest I can find is this article in the paper:

Not the (Duke, Duke, Duke) Duke of Earl

This article, from the February 6, 1888 paper is a request for a retraction to a previous article that questioned the Earl’s credentials. We have to assume the previous article was written by Travis, but it doesn’t say. It was written more than a year before the present action of the case-- was Travis even a reporter at this point? More importantly, the retraction is requested by the “Earl of Downey”, Turnbull’s father and not Turnbull himself. We know that he’s the third son of the Earl, so even if his father had died since Holmes put together his files, he wouldn’t have become the Earl. Unless there is another bit of evidence that I’m missing, I’m going to end this case deeply frustrated. It’s put together so well, and yet I just don’t feel we can make the final intuitive leap that seems required for the story.

Did anyone else find a clue here that I missed? Is it a missing article? Or is this a “bug” in the case? Is this bug (if it is one) corrected in the remake?

Is this an “Adventure” game?

So, having played through one case (and probably one-third of the game), I want to pause for a second and ask the obvious question, “Is this an adventure game?” And… I think it is but just barely.

Adventures mean a lot of things to a lot of people and they vary considerably from the earliest days of Adventure to the most recent titles. But I think they have three things in common:

Adventures reward exploration. Adventures take place in every possible locale and every possible genre, but they always reward exploration. Maybe you need to explore every room to get to the end of the game or maybe there’s just a fun detail that the developers put in, but exploration has been a part of the genre since the beginning.
Adventures have a progression and usually a rising of tension. You unlock more of the world as you complete puzzles; your actions matter in cause and effect.
Adventures have an emphasis on thinking over action. While many titles have arcade-style minigames, the primary thrust of an adventure is to use your quick head instead of quick fingers to proceed to the end.

Almost done with my rant. I swear.

Fantastic games play around with these aspects, but Consulting Detective violates two of these rules in a number of ways. Exploration is punished in this game, resulting in a lower score. And that is too bad because the subplot with the Ottoman agent and the smuggled artifact was one of the high points of this case. The “correct” way to solve the game ensures that a player would not find those details. The game barely has progression: you can talk to anyone at any time and no dialog changes because of clues you’ve already picked up. Want to ask a suspect about a new lead? Well, too bad. There is some progression as you have to talk to people to get names of others to talk to, although you could in theory just pick randomly and stumble onto a lead. The judge acts as another gate; he will only accept the case after you’ve seen a certain number of clues. (I’m not sure exactly how he is unlocked, but I checked and you can’t go to the judge immediately after starting.) This is absolutely a thinking game, so I have no complaints there. But one out of three-- does that make it an adventure?

I am going to keep playing through the end. There’s enough here that it counts as an adventure in my book but just barely. I almost want to just ignore the score and talk to everyone that I can because the little side details are so charming! But for my next case, I’m going to try to play it “by the book” to solve the case with as few clues as possible just like Mr. Holmes. Off to the next case!

Up next: more murder!

What do you think about my three rules for adventure games? Am I missing something big? Am I off the mark? Especially as we get out of the Sierra era, do the old rules still apply?

Time played: 1 hr 35 min
Total time: 3 hr 25 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by TBD

It Came From the Desert was recently voted the best Missed Classic we've played to date.

I heartily accept this award on behalf of the town of Lizard Breath

Oh great! This guy's back! He ran out of town at the height of the crisis last time. Surely someone in town has to be a better mayor than him.

With It Came From the Desert getting that accolade, it seems like an appropriate time to look at the sequel.

In true B-movie style, the first game ended with “The End... or is it?” covering my screen, thus leaving itself open for a sequel. Of all Cinemaware's games why did they choose It Came From the Desert for a sequel? I think Cinemaware's David Riordan explains it best:

“Every time we put out a game, we carefully evaluate the responses from reviewers, industry professionals and game players... When Desert 1 came out and got rave reviews, won awards, sold thousands of copies and so on, we knew we had to do a follow-up. The Desert gaming environment is constructed to allow for alternative scenarios, so we didn't have to start over from scratch.”

I particularly like the quaintness of 80s game developers getting excited about selling thousands of copies.

“When the original Desert started to get too big, we split these ideas off into a separate scenario which eventually became Desert II: Antheads. One idea that never made it into either game, unfortunately, was the original plan to have multiple monsters – mutant bunnies, lizards and so on... after looking at the disk space requirements for doing one creature convincingly, we decided to do one creature well, rather than multiple creatures poorly.”

I'm not sure if I find their multiple monster idea awesome or ridiculous.

I keep changing my mind over whether this game should be classified as a sequel or an expansion pack – it calls itself a 'data disk' but most reviews call it a sequel as it has a totally different story.

The game was only available via mail order in the US – but boxed versions were available in Europe. Like most expansions, Antheads required the original game to work.

They had originally planned to make it as a data disk for the first game, but made enough changes that they had to do something different. As they'd already published the purchase price, and sending multiple floppy disks would have been too expensive, when you receive the game the first thing you have to do is get 3 blank disks, run the copy program on the Antheads disk and spend 20 minutes sitting around, swapping disks when prompted.

Ah, nostalgia

For those of you who pay attention to the tags sitting silently at the bottom of our posts, you'll see that It Came From the Desert II is a 1990 game while It Came From the Desert was a 1991 game. Before you start worrying about the stability of the space-time continuum I'll let you know that the original game came out on the Amiga in 1989 but didn't hit the PC until 1991 – while this game came out on the Amiga in 1990 and wasn't ported to any other platforms.

The game comes with a manual of sorts (seems to be just a single piece of paper printed on both sides based on what I've seen) which includes a little background information on our hero, Brick Nash!

Of course, what's a Cinemaware game without a cinematic intro...

The intro uses exactly the same graphics as the first game's intro, but has a different voice-over.

"Not once, in the five years since the defeat of the mutant ants, had anyone suspected that there was a second queen - thirsting for the destruction of all that is human!"

And so, our game begins! I wake up in a house with two people looking at me

Even after playing the first game for hours I never knew they were related

One thing I notice straight away is that there's a lot more dialogue in this game. The opening conversation goes on for quite a bit, and Brick has a much more noticeable personality than his predecessor, Dr Greg Bradley.

Fortunately I was found by people who were sympathetic to my cause. Biff and Dusty both know who I am and that my actions have saved the town. I also had help from the local mechanic, Elmer, who towed my truck where the government will never find it.

Less fortunately, the entire reason I went to Lizard Breath in the first place, Dr. Wells, has been dead for five years. Biff will take me to the doctor's old lab when things cool down

After Dusty and Biff leave I enter the map screen, and receive a bulletin that G-men are scouring the town looking for a plutonium hijacker (me!)

I check out the pub and overhear some conversations

some tough guys promise to beat up the hijacker if they ever find him
Billy Bob's now nothing but a bum, which makes me smile – I don't like that guy
Benny's shift at number 1 pump finished a while ago but he hasn't arrived yet

I make my way to the Ore plant in order to get to Mine 1.

Looks like a puzzle

It's a very simple puzzle, I have three possible responses. I choose to tell him I'm a day laborer and he lets me past because everyone seems to be coming down with the flu. I go from mine to mine, but the second miner gets suspicious and makes a phone call as I leave. At the third mine I get threatened by the miner who just received the phone call. I sensed a fight coming up so went back to the ore plant. But when I got there the mine super blew a whistle and a G-man popped up from behind a shed and attacked me with a knife. According to wikipedia, a G-man is an FBI agent.

Apparently when FBI agents find dangerous fugitives, they get in knife fights with them

Well, in my first small adventure I encountered some minor dialogue puzzles, which the first game didn't have, and got myself stabbed by an FBI agent. I played a lot more and ended up failing to save the town. This game only gives me 10 days to save the town whereas the first game gives me 15. But I'm getting better at the action sequences and so expect better luck in future attempts.

Now get your score guesses in before our next episode, where we find out why the game got its title, meet a few of Lizard Breath's new residents and attempt to break into a safe!

To help you with the score;

I gave the Amiga version of It Came From the Desert a PISSED rating of 57, but there was some suggestion I might have gone a little too high.
The June 1990 issue of ACE Magazine rated Antheads 902 (presumably out of 1000) and said it was better than its predecessor. The same issue gave Loom 845. Will I agree and rate this game above Loom's PISSED rating of 65?

Session time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Total time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Written by Reiko

Adam Greene Journal #5:"Time to explore farther! I've done all I can in the city for now. It's too bad everywhere else is so full of trash too. And something nearby is wayyy worse than just trash! All the plants near one cave are dead. It must be that poison that's threatening the city. I've got to get in there and find out what it is without killing myself."

We're on the next stage of the quest to find Cetus, which seems to involve actually leaving the city to start searching. I swim down out of the city and find myself back on the overlook screen where I first saw the city after emerging from the kelp maze. This time I have full control, though, and plenty of time to look around.

Statue pieces don't count as trash, fortunately.

I notice a giant statue head off to one side that looks intriguing. As I approach it, the view shifts over to the next screen and I can look at it more closely. Apparently there's a "flashlight fish" stuck in the statue's ear.

I also find some trash to dispose of [10] (a doll, a plastic flamingo, an old teddy bear, and a pair of polka-dot shorts), plus a little mirror, which I pocket [2]. I need to catch that fish in the statue, though. I thought initially the mirror might lure it out if I reflected some of its light, but no. I think I need to catch the fish in the glass jar I have, but the problem is that the lid is stuck tightly on the jar. I tried to get it open earlier by using it on the fisherman, but nothing happened. There must be another way, but I don't see it yet, so I keep exploring.

Farther to the right of the stone head, there's a screen full of healthy fish and sponges and anemones and stuff. At the moment it seems to just be an excuse for some more educational descriptions, so I move on into the narrow hole leading upwards. Oddly enough, I break the surface and discover a skeleton. I thought I was deeper than that. It looks like the sky isn't far above, anyway, but it's described as an air pocket.

Good work, Mr. Greene, you've found cause of death.
(5 CAPs for the first person to get the reference.)

The skeleton, dressed as a pirate, is transfixed with a pike. The skeleton's belt holds a skeleton key which is also pierced by the pike. I don't seem to need it yet because the treasure chest next to the skeleton readily opens [5], but all I find is a lazy crab that scuttles away. I try pulling on the pike next [2]. First I yank too hard and tumble back into the water, but the second time I pull [2], the pike shatters and the key falls into the water.

This isn't a timed mini-game or anything. It doesn't matter how fast I follow the fish.

I dive back down, but when I reach for the key, a red fish swoops in and swallows it! I chase it three screens east and back, but when I get back to the screen with the hole, the fish has disappeared and an anemone is looking very uncomfortable. Delphineus said anemones will eat anything but spit out whatever isn't digestible, so I assume it will spit out the key eventually. So while I'm waiting for that, I wander off to investigate the screens I went through while chasing the fish.

This time it's Adam lecturing about the environmental danger.

Immediately, though, I hear a cry for help from above. I swim up and find a huge net full of bones of various sea animals, plus one very trapped lobster who Delphineus names as Persephone, daughter of Demeter. I free her by cutting the net with my sharp shell [5] and she swims off again. Delphineus says this must be the net of bones mentioned in the prophecy. So I'm on the right track, I guess.

We have a conversation about how these nets are death traps for all sorts of animals, even ones as large as dolphins. In fact, Delphineus's family disappeared and the Oracle told him she saw a net like this, so it's likely they too were caught in one. Too bad I can't do anything about this one. (Ecological message +1)

This screen looks terrible. Yuck.

I swim back down and check on the anemone. It burps but doesn't seem ready to spit out the key yet. Maybe I have to help it along with something, but I don't see what yet, so I'll give it some time. I swim farther east and find some kind of derelict maintenance vehicle crashed on the ocean floor, plus some glowing dead fish and a fishing lure. This whole area looks rather dead, due to spilled oil from an abandoned drilling rig (Ecological message + 1).

The lure might be useful, so I take it [2]. Then I check out the access panel in the vehicle. First I find a pair of lovebird fish or something, which sheepishly swim away for more privacy. The storage compartment holds tools - an old hammer disintegrates when I pick it up, but under that there's a steel saw [2]. Hmm, that's some heavy-duty cutting there. Maybe I can take down that net now?

Another use for the trident.

But first, I notice that there's a toilet half-buried in the sea floor too, with its tank stuck shut. I'm not sure why I care, but I get out the trident and use the blunt end to pry it open. I find the round float from the toilet mechanism to be in good shape. Then Adam points out that the prophecy calls for a floating orb. Well, this seems to fit the bill, although it's hardly the first thing you might think of for that.

I can't use the steel saw on the huge net, unfortunately, so I go back to the anemone and try waving the fishing lure at it [10]. It gets greedy, thinking it's another little fish, and snaps it up, belching out the bones of the previous fish in the meantime, including the key it ate, which I recover [2]. "Adam tries not to think about where it's been." Heh.

No watching tentacles do anything in this game.

On the screen below the net, there's an octopus hiding in a small opening in the coral. He almost seems to be fishing, with a coiled wire leading out of his hiding place. If I pull on the wire, the octopus grabs me with a strong grip. Hmm. I need a strong grip to open my jar. I leave the jar within reach of the octopus, but apparently he's really antisocial, so I swim to the next screen and back. Now my jar is open [2]!

I go back to the flashlight fish and hold up the open jar to the stone head's ear. The fish swims right in, and now I've got my glowing light [10], another piece of the prophecy. I check the Oracle's description and find that I still need some armor and a silver wire.

I wonder what would happen if you did this before getting the jar open.
Does the octopus come back later?

Well, the octopus has a wire. I go back to him and look through my inventory for a bit before trying the mirror [10]. It works: he thinks he sees another octopus, which he charges out to fight, but then he sees me and flees. Now I can swipe his cable [2].

I haven't seen any armor yet, so I go check out the dark cave to the east of the derelict vehicle. Delphineus says it's very cold in there too, and very dark, of course. I take out the flashlight fish and release it, which lights up the cave enough to see what I'm doing.

Pulling over a dozen stones gets a bit repetitive.

In the back, there's an opening blocked off by a number of small stones. Apparently that's the "wall of stones" mentioned in the prophecy. I start pulling stones free, revealing a green light coming from the passage beyond. There's no puzzle here, though; I just have to keep pulling stones free one by one. After ten stones, Delphineus complains that he feels funny and his sonar feels off.

After fourteen stones [5], I find a metal box [5] that had been concealed within the wall. The box is labeled "Joe's Dumping - You Pump it, We Dump it." Ugh. I try the skeleton key on it, but the lock's stuck. I poke around in my inventory, but nothing helps until I try the oily rag on the lock [5]: that helps get the salt free so I can open it with the key [5].

Treasure! Except...not really.

Inside I find something that's basically a hazmat suit to protect against chemical exposure. Perfect "armor for a modern knight" to protect against whatever poison's in the water behind that wall. Apparently it was affecting Adam also. Now I'm ready to face it - I've got everything the Oracle mentioned, and I'm up to 534 points out of 725.

Inventory: oily rag, trident, sharp shell, fishbone tweezers, water pump, lionfish spine, healing potion, mirror, skeleton key, shielded cable, toilet bulb, steel saw, transmitter, prophecy scroll
Ecological messages: 2 (15 total)

Session Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total Time: 6 hours 15 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Joe Pranevich

Dr. Watson has taken to finding cases in the paper.

Last time, we wrapped up Holmes’s first case of the game and now it’s time to start in on the second. This one begins like the first with Watson reading about an interesting case in the London Times. A “Society Burglar” has managed to rob seven different high-society households, each time taking only a single valuable piece of jewelry and leaving the rest untouched. There were no signs of a search; it was as if the burglar knew exactly where to look each time. The most recent burglary was a Cleopatra tiara at the home of Sir Sanford Leeds on July 2. Holmes seems interested, but then he and Watson are interrupted by another case.

A gentleman named Gerald Locke arrives at Baker Street and tells us about the murder of Guy Clarendon. That case seems straight-forward: three days ago, Guy was shot dead in his hotel room with a woman, Frances Nolan, found standing over his body with a gun in her hand. Despite the evidence against her, Gerald is certain that she did not do it and his request is for us to prove her innocent. This sounds pretty fun!

Are these two cases connected? Or is the “Society Burglar” just foreshadowing the third case in the game? I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

Gerald Locke protests his lady’s innocence.

Before the introduction is over, Gerald gives us more details about the case. He covers quite a lot of ground and already this case is more complex than our previous adventure:

Both Gerald and Guy had been courting Frances; they were rivals to her affection. It is because Gerald knows Frances so well that he is sure she could not have done the crime.
Frances and her sister Loretta are children of tragedy. When they were young children, their parents were killed when a bomb was thrown into their carriage. Loretta was also injured in the blast. The Nolans were not the intended target of the murderer, but it was a case of tragic mistaken identity.
The sisters are the heiresses to the Caverdine Navigation Company and are quite wealthy.
Guy Clarendon was a well-known individual, a batsman for the London cricket team and a ranked fencer. He also was a drinker and a gambler with a poor relationship with his father.
The murder happened at Halliday’s hotel in London.
Frances Nolan is currently being held at the Old Bailey awaiting trial.

There is a lot more backstory to weed through than in our previous case, but what we have already suggests some things. Guy Clarendon might have had enemies, especially if he had gambling debts. Even Mr. Locke would have had a motive to kill Guy if they were both after the same woman, but would he really have been dumb enough to go to Sherlock Holmes if he had done the deed? The court is getting ready to throw the book at Frances and from the outside it does seem to be pretty open and shut. Standing above a murdered man while holding a gun does inspire a certain level of suspicion.

Just like last time, I check the papers first. This case is chronologically before the previous one, July 4, 1888, so there are far fewer issues of the paper to scan through. Even so, I don’t find any articles in the paper about Mr. Clarendon’s death. There are many articles about the Society Burglar, but none about the murder of a cricketeer in a local hotel. Who should we talk to first? Let’s try the prime suspect: Frances Nolan.

Did maids really wear that outfit?

Unfortunately, I “miss”. I go to the directory as usual and pick Frances Nolan, but Holmes and Watson visit her house instead of her cell in the Old Bailey. She’s not home, but we are able to learn quite a bit from talking with her maid.

We learn that on the evening of the 1st, Frances was visited by Dr. Trevelyan. He’s a regular guest and always leaves around 10:00 PM. After he left, Frances asked for her usual cup of hot cocoa and settled in to read in front of the fire. The light in her room went out around 11:30 PM. Sometime in the night, a noise woke up the maid, but it passed quickly and she went back to sleep. At 7:30 in the morning, she came downstairs to find that Frances had just left. She must have been in a hurry because she never leaves before breakfast. That was the last she saw of Ms. Nolan.

Are you sure you didn’t kill him?

While that detour gives us a pretty good timeline of the night before, I still want to talk over the case with the main suspect. This time, I pick “Old Bailey” from the directory. This is actually the first time when the video narration takes a slightly different form: Holmes speaks to a judge to request to talk to Ms. Nolan, we get a old-timey title card saying “moments later”, and then a scene with Frances in an interrogation room. It’s a small thing, but a nice break from the usual cinematography.

The judge tells us that a lawyer has agreed to take Ms. Nolan’s case, Wilfrid Robarts. I jot down that name for later. When we get to talk to Ms. Nolan, she claims that she cannot remember what happened that night. Her first memory is seeing Guy’s body across the room and realizing that the pistol was in her hand. She has no idea where she got the gun, but the police are sure that it is hers. She also had never been to Guy’s room at Halliday’s before and she did not even know that was where he was staying. She claims that she would never have shot him-- she loved him! The last thing she remembers from the previous night was meeting with Dr. Trevelyan, then hot cocoa and bed. She and the doctor have become close friends as her sister is under his care. Everything she says matches up with what we heard from the maid earlier.

If you squint, you can just make out a party.

Ms. Nolan explains that she met Guy at the country estate of Cornelius Goldwine back in March (about three months earlier). She and Loretta were attending a party, but her sister must have enjoyed the party a bit too much because she dived into a fountain and caught pneumonia. Frances did not manage to catch Guy’s eye at that party and he seemed more interested in Loretta than her. She must have made more of an impression than she thought because a few weeks later, he came to visit her. It’s been a dream ever since: long carriage rides and picnic lunches. On June 5, he declared his love for Frances and asked for her hand in marriage.

Holmes pushes Frances to discuss her memory loss and she reveals that she had two other periods of amnesia in the past month. The first time, she was having lunch with her sister and suddenly found herself on a horse in Hyde Park-- and she is afraid of horses! A few days later, she was meeting with Dr. Davenport, her solicitor, when suddenly she’s at the Newgate Street Station. She discussed the spells with her physician (Dr. Mason), but he doesn’t know what is going on either.

Before departing, Holmes asks her about her relationship to Mr. Locke. She claims that “Jerry” is a dear old friend, but they recently had a falling out. Gerald had said very unkind things about Guy and they are no longer on speaking terms.

Guy and Frances, in happier times.

That is a lot of information to take in! The key to this case is clearly the memory loss. She must have purchased the gun during one of the amnesia spells, but why? My first guess is that she is being drugged, probably by Loretta working together with Dr. Trevelyan. They both had the opportunity to administer a drug (Loretta at lunch and Dr. Trevelyan in her evening cocoa), although that doesn’t explain the period with her solicitor. The whole engagement also rings false to me; were Loretta and Guy conspiring together somehow and it went south? Why would Loretta want to kill Guy if he was secretly “her” beau, rather than her sister’s? This is quite a puzzle! I wonder if Loretta wouldn’t shed some light on all of this...

Suddenly, it’s like we’re in an Elvira game.

We pick the other Nolan sister out of the directory and find ourselves at Loretta’s house. She’s another odd duck, greeting Holmes in a very revealing costume and expecting him to show deference to her as if she was a queen. When questioned, she does not seem unhappy about recent events. She doesn’t show remorse for Guy’s death, although she calls him a “chum”, and even seems happy that “Ms. Right-and-Proper”, her name for her sister, is in trouble. She admits that she had danced with Guy at a recent party, but that was it. She is also sure that Guy would not have been interested in Frances, but perhaps her sister was deluding herself into thinking that he was. She claims that on the night of Guy’s death, Frances told her that she wanted to talk to him about “their future”.

Loretta doesn’t come off as a reliable narrator at all and I’m not sure I trust anything she’s saying. Her comments about Guy might hint at her own jealousy of her sister’s relationship, and perhaps even a motive to killing her sister’s fiancee. I am tempted to try to check out her story of the party to see if perhaps she did more than just “dance” with Guy, but I doubt that will buy me much. Even if she had the motive, she does not have the means to have drugged Frances. I can’t imagine that she has the medical know-how to do it, even if she had the drugs. My best next target then is Dr. Trevelyan.

Have I mentioned how “brown” this game is?

We next pay a visit to Dr. Percy Trevelyan, but that doesn’t go at all like I expect. He admits that he dined with Frances on the evening of July 1, just as they did every Sunday. Loretta has been his patient for some time, first with Mesmer-Braid Institute and later in private practice, and so he has been close to the Nolan family for years for years. He explains that Loretta never recovered from the trauma of watching her parents die. She is mentally ill and maintains delusions, including that her father was the king of England. “As a princess,” he says, “she believes she can do no wrong.” He believes that Loretta is incapable of being close to people, she cannot feel love for anyone.

Princess Loretta.

I leave my conversation with the doctor very confused. He seems like a nice guy and invested in the health of his patients, not at all the scheming person that he would need to be to drug Frances’s cocoa. Unlike the last case where we had a means but no motive, here we have the reverse. Loretta could very easily have wanted Guy dead and it seems that she would show no remorse if her sister was punished for it, but there’s no way that I see that she could have done the deed. Does she take drugs that might cause memory loss? I send some Irregulars to the Mesmer-Braid Institute, but it’s closed now and there’s no one to talk to. I’m at a dead end.

We have investigated two of Frances’s memory loss incidents, but we know that a third happened while she was with her solicitor. Did he see anything? It’s a thin lead, but I’ll take it: we head off for Mr. Davenport next.

My grandmother still calls couches “Davenports”. It’s a regional thing.

Mr. Davenport is a gray-haired fellow in a nice suit. He explains that he’s actually only Frances’s solicitor, not Loretta’s, so he doesn’t know much about her situation. Even so, he believes that Loretta is not in good financial health. He also tells us of an odd meeting with the two sisters several weeks ago. They were having a conference when he was pulled away suddenly for around twenty minutes. When he returned, Frances had a “weird look” in her eye, mumbled something, and then quickly left. Meeting over.

This means that Loretta was present at two of the three memory-loss incidents! If there was any doubt that she’s responsible somehow, it’s fading rapidly. Her motive for killing Guy could be simple jealousy, especially if he had secretly been her lover first.

Could Loretta’s financial situation be so dire that she needed to kill Clarendon to get additional money? Would she have been in his will, for some reason? Or would she somehow get Frances’s inheritance if she were to be imprisoned (or executed) for murder? I send an Irregular to Somerset House, but he returned with nothing of value to the case. The Nolan sisters received an equal share of their parents’ fortune, but we probably could have guessed as much. I had hoped to find out about Clarendon’s will, but there’s no way in this game to be specific about your line of questioning.

The guy that named his son Guy.

Just grasping at straws, I select in the directory to go to Guy’s father’s house, Sir Francis Clarendon. In retrospect, it’s probably for the best that Ms. Nolan did not marry Guy, otherwise we’d have all sorts of confusion between Francis Clarendon (his father) and Frances Clarendon (his wife). Or maybe that’s just me.

Guy’s father has nothing nice to say about his son. He was a “wastrel” and a “neerdowell”. A few weeks back, he had run out of money and his father gave him 5,000 pounds and the admonition that it would be the last cash that he would ever receive. His father had been upset that Guy had been wasting his life on gambling and galavanting with “the lovely” Loretta Nolan.

This throws a wrench in the works. Was Guy with Loretta or Frances? Was he playing the sisters off of each other? Was he with Loretta first? Was his decision to pair up with Frances just some ruse to get access to her money? It could be any of those things, but none of them explain why Loretta would have wanted Guy dead, especially if they had been in on the conspiracy together. The pieces are not falling into place yet.

Maybe he just fell down the stairs.

As Holmes is leaving, the family butler approaches with some additional information. Around four or five weeks ago, he had heard a noise downstairs one morning. He ran down to find Guy had been attacked and badly beaten. Guy seemed afraid for his life, but refused to tell the butler who attacked him or why. Is this a false lead? This sounds like it connects to Guy’s gambling debts, but we don’t have any connection from them to the Nolan sisters. I suppose Loretta could have lent him money, but we know she’s not in good financial health either. Could he have been courting Francis only so that he could marry her and get access to her money?

Here is my theory: Frances really did kill Guy. She had the gun and she was found next to his body and those kinds of details are difficult (but not impossible) to fake. Loretta has been drugging her sister with something that is both causing amnesia and also causing her to act out of character. While on this drug, she rode a horse, she bought a gun, and she may have killed Guy Clarendon. At some point, Frances learned the truth about Guy, that he was just courting her to get access to her money to help pay down his gambling debts. The next time she was drugged, Frances got angry, sought him out, and killed him. Loretta probably didn’t want Guy dead necessarily, but it’s not exactly a bad outcome for her either.

That’s not a great story, but it’s the best that I have. We don’t know how the drug is administered or where Loretta is getting it, but it’s pretty clear that she’s a key part. She knows that Frances does out-of-character things while under the influence and is setting her off like a game of Russian roulette. Even so, there are pieces missing. We don’t know for sure how Frances would even get Guy’s address at the hotel. I’m not fully satisfied, but all we can do is take it to the judge.

You again.

And… no dice. The judge won’t even let me select a murderer this time, only saying that we need to find more clues first. Am I even on the right track? This case is proving to be a tough one. This seems like as good a place as any to break. Will I be able to solve this next week?

Time played: 1 hr 10 min
Total time: 4 hr 35 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by TBD

Brick Nash Journal Entry:I've come to Lizard Breath to try to save everyone from a lethal atomic bomb test, but most of the people are against me. Hell, half of them aren't even people anymore. I've found out that there's a secret area in the hospital that might help me sort out this mess, but how do I get it?

When last we met our hero, Brick Nash, he'd gotten info from Biff and Dusty then went to mine M3 looking for information before getting pummeled by an FBI agent and sent to the hospital.

The action games are the same as It Came From the Desert 1 with one addition we'll get to later.

I can attempt to escape from hospital, but if I fail...

The hospital escape - still a great little action sequence

Before putting me under sedation, the nurse reminds me to behave myself because I don't want Dr Antione giving me “the treatment!” Sounds appropriately ominous – I'm intrigued.

Thanks to the miracle of modern emulators I'm able to save and reload whenever I want in this game. So let's assume I did escape hospital and get to continue with my day.

But first, a short and unnecessary visit to the local fortune teller. This one's for you, Dehumanizer!

Ida, the only woman in this game that I won't end up kissing

Visiting Dusty at work has her telling me about what happened last time the ants appeared. She then gives me a gun, a kiss and a geiger counter.

As in the first game, I have multiple ways to find most pieces of information. When I wake up on day two Biff gives me the good news.

Elmer told me yesterday that they'd never find it! Note to self: Never go on Elmer's team for a game of hide-and-seek

I call Dusty at the radio station who tells me the same thing. I visit Bert at the Lizard Breath Star newspaper and he tells me the same thing. I even see Ida the fortune teller ,

So your crystal ball tells me the same thing everyone else in town has. I fear your powers!

Ida also tells me that a young boy has information I need and someone with the initials BB is not himself and needs sugar.

I find the young boy in Dr Wells' old destroyed lab.

Billy has Polio. I love that the game doesn't make a big deal about it.

Billy's by far the most useful person in town. He's always with his dad, who is not nearly as smart as him and keeps telling his son to stop bothering me with his crazy theories.

Billy's doing a report on Dr. Wells, and promising to one day prove that he was right about these A-bomb tests irradiating the town

He also found some notes in the rubble which all refer to a bigger notebook about the effects of radiation on harvester ants. More importantly, finding that notebook will also help me avoid jail time if it can prove the bomb tests are harmful and my actions have saved many lives.

Dad's not helpful, just telling his son to stop talking about ants because it can't happen again. I would have thought if it's happened once it's proved it's possible and therefore can definitely happen again. Is this the first game where the guy wearing glasses is an idiot?

Ida's advice about finding a young boy was on the money. What about her second piece of advice? Someone with the initials BB. I remember Billy Bob, the crazy guy from Neptune Hall from the first game. Let's pay him a visit.

New action sequence: Antheads!!!

If you think the flashing is off-putting, you should hear the awful shrieking noise he makes!

This is the one new action sequence in this game. It's a simple variation of the ant versus pistol fight. It's actually a bit easier as the character in this sequence doesn't move whereas the ants walk across the screen randomly. You don't have much time though so you do have to be fairly accurate.

If I fail to shoot his antennae off in time, my screen goes red and I wake up in hospital. The nurse tells me that I've been hit by some kind of sonic wave and I have to accept treatment or escape.

If I succeed at shooting off his antennae he morphs back into a human and tells me that the number 45 keeps going through his head, and that there's a special vault in the hospital that contains important files. Two vital pieces of information - score!

When I enter the map screen each day I get an update from the radio describing what's happening with the manhunt or the ants...

...and also tells a continuing coming-of-age story about Hattie McCloskey

The game of 'chicken' with Ice and the Hellcats is back. Shouldn't these morons have grown up a bit in the past five years?

I didn't get anything useful from the farms in this sequel. Each time I bothered to visit a farm I just got a story about something mysteriously taking cows or I had to fight ants. Or after a few days, had a farmer attack me with a knife.

Everyone wants to fight me in this game. Unlike the first game, where the knife fight is only with Ice or on one possible occasion Billy-Bob, average farmers and people at the pub want to stab me now. They've been hearing the news about how dangerous I am and want to dispense their own form of justice.

On day 2 I found out that Jackie was in hospital. I find out why if I'm home at the right time on day 1, when Jackie comes over to tell me she wrecked her car. I can help her and get into a knife fight with her boyfriend Ice, but the most interesting thing about Jackie's visit is that she was looking for Dusty before being surprised to see me instead. This is the first indication that this is actually Dusty's house. Now I know why Biff always seemed to be here in the first game as well as this one. Antheads definitely gives us more story than the first game, which I appreciate.

Knowing that Jackie's been in hospital makes me suspect she's gotten 'the treatment' so I'm not surprised when she comes to my door early on day 3 asking for candy.

Even a half-woman is woman enough for Brick Nash

She turns into an anthead and I succeed in shooting off her antennae. She turns back into a human, asks me to kiss her (I oblige) and tells me something interesting and obviously useful

These numbers are clearly very important.

On my next visit to the University Lab Billy gives me some more information

In five years nobody's bothered to clean up this lab. The ants must have also eaten the University's janitor.

Dr. Wells had suspected a second ant queen, and five years ago some ant eggs were stored in the basement of the hospital for further study.

This is where the story gets beyond ridiculous. And I swear I am not making this up:

When the ants crashed my truck before the start of the game it wasn't random carnage - it was a deliberate ambush! They took the stolen plutonium to the queen to activate her. Then she called to the hospital's eggs using psychokinetic power. Dr. Wells also theorised that the ants might be able to take over a human being from the inside but leave the outside the same and that's somehow an offshoot of the psychokinectic stuff.

Billy also gives me a useful prize

I wonder if Cinemaware got paid for this product placement?

I don't think the pez dispenser is really necessary. In conversation I get the option to "Pez 'em" but if I keep talking to a suspected Anthead they always seem to turn anyway.

By this point in the game, talking to people becomes extremely dangerous. Because I'm officially a criminal and my description and face has been circulated around town, after a few days almost everyone is against me apart from a few main characters. Going to either the mayor or the police station ends up with me beaten up and in hospital. Doesn't this place have jail cells?

Fortunately, getting sent to the hospital does give me some important plot information. If I flirt with and kiss the nurse, she decides she can trust me. She tells me about people coming in seriously injured and leaving the next day totally cured but with a strange look on their face. She also tells me about a blood drive going on and that the blood is taken to a mysterious off-limits vault room in the basement next to the morgue.

When questioned further she tells me that the records of all patients who've gone through 'the treatment' is also in this vault, but the combination is a closely guarded secret.

Aha! Now I know when Jackie and Billy Bob remembered a mysterious number.

Now, I can get information about the vault from various sources but the nurse gives me all the details, except for the combination itself.

As we've already noted, every time you shoot the antennae of an anthead they remember a number. The three numbers are different in each game, so I'm not allowed to use past game information to finish the game on day 1.

Like the first game, the ants gradually take over the town. On one of my visits to the lab, I first had to fight a horde of ants while Billy and his Dad were yelling for help.

This action sequence is the same as the first game. Just lob grenades at the ants and kill enough of them before you run out

After killing the ants, I got some more info.

Does this kid only look for one page a day or something?

Next time I visit Billy Bob, he's no longer wearing his crazy guy outfit, but he seems even crazier in a regular suit.

I liked this guy better as a bug...

Brick and I on the same page when it comes to Billy Bob

If you lose to ants, antheads or knives too often, you get to meet the new doctor...

Yikes!

Around day 8 most of the town's either against me or an anthead, or destroyed by giant ants. At least I can rely on Dusty to be on my side

Aw, crap!

Dusty transAfter shooting Dusty's antennae she gives me the third number I need. Let's get to action!

With my 3 numbers committed to memory (or spreadsheet) I decided to break into the hospital for a change. The first level of the hospital is easy. Nobody stops me and I can explore at my leisure.

But when I go downstairs the alarm sounds and everyone's after me. I make my way to the room with a safe and try the combination using the instructions given in the manual. Fortunately the order of the numbers in the combination is coincidentally the exact same order that I happened to meet antheads who remembered a single number. What luck!

Just me in a wheelchair, and open and emptied safe and too many nurses and doctors

I now have the patient records and Wells' paper on radiation. The alarm changes tone, so I wait for an opening and roll away. I leave the hospital the same way I came in, but this time the alarm continues to sound on the ground floor so I have to use my well-practiced hospital escape skills to get out.

When I get out of the hospital, I'm treated to a spinning newspaper.

Forget the Antheads! I just want to read the article about Zoz Nilborc

And with that news out I'm suddenly given a lot more responsibility than anyone who's recently committed treason should really be given.

About bloody time.

And we'll leave it here for now.

Tune in next week for our final episode when I cheat to find an ant's nest, leave a little gift for the queen (probably a kiss seeing as how I've been dealing with most of the females in this game) and give the game my Final Rating!

Session time: 2 hours 25 minutes
Total time: 4 hours 10 minutes

Written by Reiko

Adam Greene Journal #6:"I found a huge stash of chemicals leaking into the water! No wonder there’s so much dead stuff near this cave, and the Elurians are getting sick. Good thing I brought a transmitter with me. With that out of the way, it doesn’t take long to trace a harpoon line to Cetus. He’s in bad shape, and it’s up to me to help him, free Delphineus, and turn the tide of battle against the crazy manta!"

Last time I gathered all the items from the Oracle's prophecy, including a hazmat suit to protect me against the poison that's been leaking out and devastating the underwater city. Now I can swim through the wall and investigate it. Indeed, I find that there are barrels of chemical poison stashed in the cave, and several of the barrels are leaking (Ecological message +1).

Somehow Adam has everything he needs to mark a chemical spill for immediate cleanup.

Well, clearly this is what that transmitter is for that I picked up at the beginning of the game. I have to mark the location so that it can be cleaned up properly. The transmitter has to be attached to a buoy with a cable to anchor it to the location. So first I attach the toilet float to the steel cable to make the buoy [5]. Then I attach the transmitter to the buoy [5]. Then I can attach the whole thing to one of the barrels [5], which causes Adam to automatically deploy the end toward the surface to begin transmitting [10].

“Is that buoy a toilet float?”

There's a bit of a cut-scene where a ship notices the transmitter and divers come and collect the barrels and poison. Adam has to turn in the hazmat suit and the box it came in as evidence. The cleanup itself is summarized like this: "Adam watches from a distance as the divers carefully collect the drums. Grimly, they bear them to the surface and stow them on the boat for safe disposal on land. Adam gives the metal box and suit as evidence of illegal dumping. He returns to the reef to find Delphineus and continue the search for Cetus."

We're not done yet, since we haven't found Cetus or done anything about the Flesh-Eater manta. I also automatically get 20 more points, although I haven't done anything else yet.

There's nothing more to see in the cave where the poison was, so I move through the next opening into an open area with a view of an ominous underwater mountain in the distance that holds another dark cave. Nearby there's a harpoon boat with a harpoon gun that's been fired recently. I poke around a bit and try to pry open the boat's compartment, but suddenly the music turns ominous again!

Watch where you're going!

The huge manta appears from the mountain's cave and swims toward us. Adam and Delphineus automatically flee through several screens and then end up getting caught in that driftnet. For some reason, the manta doesn't attack right away. Delphineus begs Adam to save himself, but Adam doesn't want to leave his friend behind. He can't cut the net apart enough to free the dolphin, though. I get control back, but only long enough to use the sharp shell on the net [10], and then the manta scoops up the net with Delphineus still inside, knocking Adam aside in the process, and disappears into the distance toward its lair.

Chekov's harpoon. And the manta’s lair.

Okay then, now I have to rescue both Cetus and Delphineus, and at least one of them is now in the lair of a giant manta. Yikes. Well, I still need to check out that ship. I got the impression the manta doesn't care about me, so now that it already has Delphineus, I should be able to investigate the harpoon ship without attracting too much attention.

That's a whale of a...whale!

I swim back there and try again to use the trident on the ship's door [5]. This time I'm not interrupted, and it quickly pops open. But the line attached to the harpoon gun goes taut and I suddenly start hearing whale calls. Could Cetus be that close? I swim through the ship [5] and see that the harpoon line continues up above the ship. I follow it up, up, up, until suddenly Adam runs into the whale itself.

Cetus is very still, caught by the harpoon. I try to talk to him [10] and Adam approaches again and starts trying to find out what happened. But Cetus is too weak to say much, only that Flesh-Eater tricked him into the path of the whaling vessel that attacked him with the harpoon (Ecological message +1). I wondered briefly why the whaler didn't kill him, but since it's sunk, Cetus probably fought back but wasn't able to free himself. The barbed head of the harpoon is lodged in his mouth; the wound is infected, and he's also starved. Clearly I have to use the healing potion on him, but I have to get the harpoon out first.

Ouch!

The controls are awfully finicky here for some reason. I try to cut the harpoon, but it keeps saying I can't do anything useful this close to the whale. Well, how am I supposed to do anything farther away? I swim down to get back to the more distant view, but from there I still can't do anything with the cable, and I can't swim close again. Cetus' mouth is now opening and closing rhythmically, so apparently I need to swim inside his mouth to do something about the harpoon, but I click all over the screen with the swim icon and can't go anywhere. Finally I click with the hand on the harpoon and for some reason that makes Adam swim into the mouth.

Now the problem is clear: the harpoon is literally poked through the wall of the mouth, and the head is barbed so that there's no way to pull it out again. So I use the steel saw to cut through the shaft just behind the head [5]. Then I can click on the shaft, and Adam swims back out and pulls the harpoon out [5]. Now I use the healing potion on the wound [5]. Immediately Cetus wakes up and starts to recover.

Cetus speaks very loudly despite being weak.

Adam tells Cetus about Delphineus being captured by Flesh-Eater, which rouses the ire of the huge whale. He will call the predator out and deal with him, while we have to go into the lair and free Delphineus.

Delphineus is caught in the lair of the manta.

Saving Delphineus is rather anticlimactic, really. I can just swim right in, since Flesh-Eater is distracted by Cetus, and use the sharp shell again to cut Delphineus free [15]. Delphineus goes to the surface to breathe, while I go back to my vantage point by the harpoon boat.

The battle isn't going well.

Cetus was already wounded and weak, and the manta is pressing his advantage. Adam's got to do something else, but how can he do anything against such a huge opponent? Well, the only weapon we have that will be effective is that poisonous lionfish spine. The trick is getting close enough to use it. Fortunately the manta doesn't care about Adam right now. I try a few times to use it, but the timing is off. The manta sees him coming and swats him away.

Finally I trigger the attack at the right time so that Adam approaches the battle at the same time that the manta approaches Cetus. When the manta swings back out from his attack, Adam's already in position and strikes with the spine at one wing [20]. It doesn't seem to do anything right away, but it does slow the manta down long enough for Cetus to get in a solid hit with his tail, and by then the poison has stunned the manta.

Victory parade!

Delphineus returns and Cetus congratulates Adam on saving the day. He suggests that the manta was mutated by the chemicals, but over time may recover and return to being an ordinary manta. We'll hope he stays stunned long enough for Cetus to fully recover and be able to defend Eluria until he reverts. Then Cetus brings Adam back to Eluria riding on his back in a hero's parade. All the Elurians appear, and Cetus makes a little speech about Adam having proven that man can be a friend to the sea.

Are whales really that much bigger than dolphins?

Each of the citizens congratulates Adam in his own way. Finally, Cetus offers Adam Poseidon's conch [20] and a promise that if he blows it, help will come. Then Delphineus carries Adam back to the surface and there's a little scene with the two of them where Delphineus basically promises that Adam will see him again sometime.

The end...

The final scene shows Adam on a dock waving goodbye, with a constellation of a whale visible in the sky. Credits roll with triumphant music.

Inventory: oily rag, trident, sharp shell, fishbone tweezers, water pump, mirror, skeleton key, steel saw, prophecy scroll
Ecological message: 2 (17 total)

But it seems I've missed a few things, as I only have 679 points out of 725. The game is relatively easy and very forgiving in terms of plot, but it's a lot harder to get full points. After I finished the game, I went ahead and checked a walkthrough. Mostly I did all the environmental things right as far as cleaning up trash, but I missed a few actions here and there that didn't impact the plot.

I totally missed the water bottle next to the cage.

I missed a few things right at the beginning: you may remember I mentioned a poor thirsty hamster that I couldn't figure out how to help. There's a water bottle near the cage that can be used to give water to the hamster. Plus the fertilizer solution can be tested on some coral. It's experimental, so I guess it's good to have a test before trying to use it for the first time on the dirty coral in Eluria. I missed 14 points in the first room.

It's possible to play frisbee longer with Delphineus after he talks the first time, plus actually catching the frisbee gives points each time. I don't know why that matters, but I missed at least five points there. And I didn't examine the boat's propellers in that room (five points), so I probably missed some foreshadowing explanation about how dangerous they are to animals like manatees if they're not shielded.

Time to dive...with no oxygen hooked up?

Before I dove with Delphineus, I seem not to have explicitly put on my oxygen tank, even though it was with me as part of the diving equipment. I did notice that later it disappeared from inventory and I didn't know why. That's a really strange way to handle it, actually. Instead of preventing the player from diving before connecting the oxygen, or giving a message about running low on breath and then triggering a death if the player doesn't surface or connect the oxygen right away, the game just silently docks points and carries on.

I'm not surprised it doesn't do the latter since I don't think there's any way to actually fail or die in the game. But it's an odd sort of cruel to be so opaque about failure to do a critical action that then results in missed points, when normally that kind of failure would be fatal. At least with the six-pack, trashing it without cutting it triggers a message about Adam having a feeling that he missed something. Diving without using the oxygen gives no such message.

Delphineus did say to hide, but I didn't know I could do it on the same screen.

I also missed ten points later on by not hiding in the plants and waiting for the octopus to open the jar. I just swam to the next screen and came back. I don't know why it should matter if you hide and watch the octopus do it rather than swimming farther away. I'm glad the game was finishable and I didn't have to read the designer's mind on these puzzles.

So what did we learn from this game, class? Here are all the ecological messages I saw:

Oil slicks coat seagulls and make them dirty and unable to fly.
Fishermen catch dolphins in their nets along with fish.
Cans and bottles should be recycled rather than trashed.
Cruise ships dump their bilge into the sea, including all sorts of trash.
Balloons released at sea could drift hundreds of miles before sinking.
Trash can sink all the way to the ocean floor.
Spilled oil can coat coral and kill it over time.
Plastic baggies can trap fish.
Speedboat propellers can injure sea animals like manatees when they surface to breathe.
Phosphate pollution can cause algae to grow on some sea plants.
Chlorine bleach can poison fish.
Turtles can choke on deflated balloons.
The rings from six-packs of drinks can trap the snouts of fish, so they need to be cut apart before recycling.
Huge nets are death traps even for large sea mammals like dolphins.
Abandoned drilling rigs leave spilled oil and other mechanical garbage in the ocean.
Chemical poisons can leak out and contaminate large areas of ocean, killing everything nearby.
Harpoons from whaling vessels can injure whales without immediately killing them, leaving them to die a slow death from starvation.

Next up is the rating, where I'll consider the question of whether the educational content improved the game or not.

Session Time: 1 hour 0 minutes
Total Time: 7 hours 15 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Joe Pranevich

Is this the face of a murderer?

Last week, we were trying to solve the case of the “Mystified Murderess”, a woman who awoke from amnesia to find that she had apparently killed her fiance. We’ve been asked to prove her innocence. That’s not going to be easy! I think I have it figured out that her sister arranged the murder (at least indirectly) but not how she carried it out.

Just a reminder, here are our dramatis personae:

Frances Nolan - Our “murderess”. She seems like a nice lady, was in love with Guy Clarendon (the victim), and is currently locked up in the Old Bailey awaiting trial. She’s an heiress to the Caverdine fortune.
Loretta Nolan - Frances’s sister. As a young girl, she witnessed the murder of her parents and has been wrong in the head ever since. She thinks that she is a princess and her doctor believes that she is “incapable of love”. She seems to be our best suspect, but I have no idea how should could have accomplished it. She is also an heir of the Caverdine fortune but may have squandered much of her wealth.
Guy Clarendon - The victim. He was a well-known athlete for a London cricket team but had gambling and drinking problems. He was dispossessed by his father recently and may have run up gambling debts. At the time of his death, he was engaged to Frances, but we found evidence that he was secretly with Loretta instead.
Gerald Locke - A suitor for Frances’s hand and the one that brought the case to Holmes. He has plenty of motive to kill Guy, but then why take the case to the world’s greatest detective?
Dr. Trevelyan - Loretta’s doctor, first at the Mesmer-Braid Institute and now in private practice. He’s known the Nolans for years and is good friends with Frances. He was also the last person to see her before she apparently went off to kill Guy. He could be working with Loretta, but he doesn’t seem like the murdering type.

We still also have a “Society Burglar” at large but have found no connections from him to the current case. Got all that? Let’s continue!

A perfectly legitimate business meeting.

Between this post and last, I took a breather from the case for a few days, to let it percolate in my head. I had been concentrating very hard on the “how” and not as much on the “why” of this case. Loretta has no known motive to kill guy, with the possible exception of a love triangle gone bad. Frances might have a motive if she discovered that Guy was cheating on her with her sister, but as far as we know she still thinks him a saint. I want to start today by focusing on who would want to kill Guy and hope that a means falls from that as well. Would Porky Shinwell know of Guy’s gambling debts? (He’s my “Regular” that keeps tabs on the underworld.) Let’s start there.

I select for Holmes to pay Porky a visit and he knows about Guy! He was a regular at Kilgore’s gaming parlor but would stop by Porky’s bar on the way with his “lady friend”. (Porky doesn’t let us know if that was Frances, Loretta, or someone else entirely.) Guy had at one point gone £7,000 into debt with Kilgore, even being roughed up over it by Gus Bollocks, Kilgore’s hired muscle. A month later, Porky tells us, Guy and Kilgore were suddenly the best of friends again. Guy must have paid the money back. How? Guy had also been seen with Calvin Leach, a known dealer in stolen goods. Porky claims that Leach was a “square dealer” who always paid out the fair value of the items fenced with a 50% commission. Guy, Kilgore, and Leach continued to meet regularly until Guy’s death. I’m a bit suspicious about how Porky knows so much about the comings and goings of folks at a casino down the road, but I assume his information can be trusted.

Porky gives us the scoop.

This drops a major puzzle piece into place: Guy Clarendon might be the Society Burglar! We know that Guy didn’t get enough money from his father to cover the debt and the burglaries start up at the right time. Could Guy be courting the Nolan sisters just to find out where their treasures are hidden? Even the switch from Loretta to Frances makes sense in that light as he realized which sister had the most wealth. We still don’t know how he found out exactly the location of each key item without searching, but we can guess he had access to the homes ahead of time. Unfortunately, this answers almost nothing for the case we are trying to solve. We now have more people with a motive to kill Guy but no idea how someone could use Frances (and mysterious amnesia) to do it.

I make my next stop Kilgore’s gaming house, but all he does is confirm that Guy was a visitor. He feigns ignorance of Calvin Leach, as you might expect. I visit Calvin after that and he claims to have never heard of Gus at all. Maybe talking to the underworld is not the best way to really learn what is going on...

I can’t believe I forgot to go to the scene of the crime.

I just realized that I have never visited the scene of the crime! How could I forget that? I select to head to Halliday’s Private Hotel. Holmes chats up a porter there and we learn a ton of stuff: Clarendon stayed there starting on the 29th of May, initially in a front room on the third floor. Two days later, he asked to be moved to room 205, one floor down. That was the same day that Guy was visited by a large guy with a walrus mustache and a scar down his cheek. We also learn that he was regularly visited by a woman with a distinctive laugh. That has to be Loretta! The hotel doors lock at 10:00 PM and anyone after that would have had to have been let in by the night staff, but Guy was always in his room before the curfew.

Homes pushes for details about the day of the murder and we learn that a woman entered around 9 AM. She knew exactly where to go; she didn’t pause for even a moment to look around. Less than a minute later, the porter heard a bang and a scream. He raced in to discover Frances laying in the center of the room with a pistol in her hand and Guy Clarendon dead. When she came to, she was totally disoriented. She did not know where she was or what had happened.

Jinkies! A clue!

Holmes and Watson are then taken up to see the room firsthand. Holmes discovers a discarded bank statement showing a series of deposits and withdraws, but I honestly can’t make heads or tails of it. Does it make sense to any of you? It looks to me like Guy kept removing money and putting it back again a day or so later, but the formatting is odd and the lines aren’t in chronological order. Maybe I don’t know how to read one of these things? They also find blood and sherry stains in the room, black clothing, and stained black canvas shoes. There is no doubt now that Guy was the Society Burglar! There’s even a trellis that he can climb to get into and out of the room at night without being spotted. I wish I had thought to visit the crime scene earlier, but I still do not know how someone used Frances to kill him.

You, sir, are very scary. Good day!

I search through my notes for passed-over leads:

Gus Bollocks, the muscle that roughed up Guy, doesn’t want to talk to Watson and has him fleeing in terror. He had the scars to match the porter’s description but is otherwise a dead end.
Otis Richmond hosted the party where Loretta and Guy danced together, but he tells us nothing about the party. Instead, we learn that he was robbed by the Society Burglar! That reinforces that Guy could have gone to the party just to case the joint.

Does anyone know a conversion calculator to put these in modern dollars?

Since Mr. Richmond was one of the Burglar’s victims, does it make sense to look at some of his other targets? The newspaper lists all seven known crimes. I try the first and last of them, Roger Baker and Sir Sanford Leeds, but neither add much. Both stress that the burglar knew exactly where to look and did not disturb anything other than his target. Sanford tells me that his wife was last wearing the tiara at a party. Guy was there and spilled champagne down her gown, forcing her to leave the party early. A few days later, the tiara was stolen from its hiding place amongst her undergarments. Did he spy on her putting it away? Is there a clue hidden here? How would Guy have known where to look? I thought that he had been seducing his victims, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. I don’t see the trick. Somehow, Guy has the power to find valuable objects without looking, while someone else has the power to send amnesiac women out to kill people. I’m missing something key.

Magnetism? Mesmerism? I am so confused.

I search the newspaper again and find a potential clue: it has an ad for a show about “mesmerism” and mentions Milo de Meyer as an expert on the topic. Is it a coincidence that Loretta and Dr. Trevelyan were both at the Mesmer-Braid Institute? I seek him out, but he’s not home. And what does it mean to “magnetize” someone? It sounds like a levitation act.

I work my way down a few more stray leads:

Murray, the police chemist, tells us about Guy’s gunshot wound. It was a close range shot, but the red on his shirt was not all blood: it was a “inferior quality red” wine. Guy is now a drunk with poor taste instead of just being a drunk.
Meeks, the chief medical examiner, tells us that the body was recovered at 1 PM and had been dead for between four and ten hours. Since we know that Guy was killed shortly after 9 AM, this matches up.
Dr. Mason, Frances’s doctor, tells me that he found nothing wrong with her after her first bouts of amnesia. His first thought had been a bump on the head, but her condition is a “complete mystery” to him.
Gerald Locke, the suitor that brought this case to us, can be visited a second time for more information but does not add much. He was playing at a cribbage tournament at the time of the murder. How delightfully boring!
I also rewatch Loretta’s video and notice that for part of our conversation she is wearing a tiara! Is it the same one that was stolen or just another piece of her princess cosplay?

Is that a tiara I see before me?

No one that I have talked to have mentioned an amnesia drug. I felt sure that was it, but now I’m not so sure. I’m missing something, but I interviewed every doctor that has been mentioned in the case.

Since I’m at the bottom of the barrel, I turn to the only person less likely to have figured this out than me: Lestrade of Scotland Yard. He tells me that he is sure of Frances’s guilt because she went to Guy’s room directly as if she knew where it was and that they found a receipt for the purchase of the gun with her name on it. The firearm was purchased from “S. Goff”, a dealer in such things. Holy heck! Lestrade was useful!

In America we have a name for places like this: Walmart.

We head to the shop and interview the owner. Almost immediately, we discover the deception: Loretta purchased the gun, not Frances. She even signed the receipt in her name. That answers a lot! But why would Loretta turn on Guy? If she could get Frances to kill her fiancé, why did she need to buy the gun herself? And how did she do any of that? I’m frustrated. I know a great deal yet the pieces don’t fit together.

Just to see what happens, I click to go to the judge. I don’t have everything, but maybe I have enough. And I do!

Officer, I thought the gun was fake! I swear!

The judge first asks who killed Guy Clarendon. This seems like a trick question but since Loretta was pulling the strings, I’ll select her. And I’m right! The motive is more difficult.

Since Loretta didn’t pull the trigger herself, we can discount the first option. This was not a “joke”. I see no reason Guy would have named Loretta in his will, nor did he have had enough money to make it worth it. We also got the hint from her doctor that Loretta was incapable of romantic feelings, so I doubt she was in love with Guy. That leaves only two options: jealousy or the tiara. I pick jealousy and am ushered out of the courtroom in disgrace. No! I play again and select the tiara and that is correct. Really? She killed him over a tiara? How did she know he had one to steal? If they were chums, couldn’t she just have asked for it?

Umm. I don’t know?

The judge asks us why Frances went to Halliday’s. This one is tough too. It’s not about Dr. Mason or the elder Clarendon. The idea that Frances wanted to tell Guy that she loved him is a bit pointless as they were engaged. That leaves two options: hypnotism and Loretta prompting her. Seriously? It does make some sense. I had been looking for a drug, but if Loretta could hypnotize her sister to make her do things… in a video game… where the laws of reality don’t apply… it could work. Right? I pick it and am correct! It violates my suspension of disbelief, but it works!

Double dog dare.

The judge is all set to let us thrill in our victory before Holmes offers up that he actually solved a second crime as well: the Society Burglar. I select that it was Guy Clarendon and that’s correct, but then we have to come up with a motive. We can quickly eliminate several options: Leach was a dealer in stolen goods but not someone to lend money. Doing it on a dare is ridiculous. Guy also wasn’t an accomplice of Gus, especially after the beatdown that he was given. We have two almost identical options left: because he owed money to Kilgore or because his father cut him off. They seem like two sides of the same coin. I select Kilgore, but that’s wrong and I have to start over again and pick that his father cut him off. I suppose that Kilgore forced him into a corner, but he didn’t specifically cause him to do burglary. Couldn’t the same be said of the other option? It doesn’t matter because we won!

This is an improvement!

I’m not completely happy about this "win". I didn’t work out that Frances was hypnotized and I’m still not sure it makes sense. I can see the clues all there in retrospect, especially the “Mesmer” institute, but it didn’t even occur to me. On the bright side, this is also less than half of my last score! Watson still makes fun of me but on the whole a big improvement.

Holmes discusses the case while dabbling in chemistry.

As before, Holmes explains how he solved the two cases. He starts with the “Society Burglar”:

Guy was £7000 in debt to Kilgore but his father would only give him £5000. What was he going to do?
Kilgore sent Gus Bollock to rough Guy up at his father’s house. That’s why he moved into Halliday's. To repay the rest of the debt, he turned to burglary.
Guy picked victims whose homes he had visited often as a member of the upper class.
He changed rooms at Halliday’s to allow for a stealthier entrance and exit.
On June 1, Bollock tracked Guy down and confronted him in the hotel lobby. He gave the enforcer the £5000 from his father then launched his burglary career that night to get the rest.
Holmes knew that Guy had seen Calvin Leech and that he takes a 50% share. When you add up the values of the first three burglaries and divide by two, that equals exactly £2000.
The bank statement-- which I still do not understand-- shows that Guy made deposits after each successful job.
Even after he paid off his debt, Guy continued thieving. He would have been able to keep at it longer if he hadn’t stolen the tiara.

Holmes transitions to talking about Loretta next, but I want to pause for a second. I had figured out most of these things but did not stitch them together as well. I doubt that Clarendon would get the exact amount that he needed and not a penny more in three heists, but it’s just convenient math. The story of Guy’s fall into crime makes sense even if Holmes doesn’t explain how he was able to find the treasures so quickly in every case. Presumably, he had not previously been in all of the ladies’ bedrooms. (Some were married!)

I saw this in Willy Beamish once.

As for Loretta, Holmes explains:

Loretta’s delusion that she was of royal blood made the tiara a must-have item for her.
She bought the gun in Frances’s name then snuck into Guy’s room via the trellis.
When Guy returned from his evening out, he and Loretta drank two glasses of red wine together. She then shot him and took the tiara.
She sought out Frances at home and hypnotized her to go to Guy’s room and fire the gun into the ceiling. This would implicate Frances in the shooting.

Holmes then says that he has no evidence for the rest, but he believes that Loretta and Guy were working together the whole time. She hypnotized the society ladies to reveal the locations of their jewels and gave that information to Guy to do the heavy lifting.

Watson doesn’t seem too happy with this solution either.

This leaves me with more questions than answers. If Loretta and Guy were working together, why did she need to kill him for the tiara? Couldn’t she have just asked for it? Stolen it herself? Hypnotized him to give it to her? There are so many reasons why she wouldn’t need to murder him especially when she had so much incentive to keep him and their crime spree alive. She’s a psychopath, but that’s just stupid. If she could hypnotize her sister and other people, that opens up a bunch of possibilities. She didn’t need a burglar if she could get the ladies to turn over their valuables over tea! And why would Frances shoot in the air? The bullet in the ceiling would be easily recoverable, not to mention just more straightforward to shoot the guy you are there to shoot. She could have used this power in so many more creative ways. Once you add something like hypnotism, you have to wonder why would she go through all of these steps just to frame her sister. There were a hundred better ways and I wish that it had worked out differently. Let’s see how I feel about this in a couple of weeks when the final rating comes out, but right now... meh.

“One tin soldier rides away…”

Up next: Is it our third murder plot? What ever happened to extortion, kidnapping, or grand theft?

Time played: 1 hr 20 min
Total time: 5 hr 55 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Brick Nash Journal Entry: With the information I found in the hospital basement the antheads are no longer a problem. The giant ants themselves however are being destructive enough without their half-human brethren, and now I've been put in charge of the defenses of Lizard Breath. Being a man of action, I give a cursory look at our defense strategy but decide to commandeer myself a plane and deal with the ant queen in her own environment. To the nest!

Now that the town's put me in charge I can go to the police station to assign the army, police, construction workers and townspeople to whatever locations I choose to fight off the ants. I didn't bother much with this screen, I just sent all my troops to defend two locations – the airport and the M3 mine. I figured I'd need a plane and the M3 mine seemed to be where the action was in this game.

I then went straight to the airport to get a plane. I had to convince Louie I should be able to fly without a license.

I won't tell you which option I chose in order to convince him

After a few screens of non-interactive dialogue where I explained my Korean flight experience and we exchanged national stereotype insults, I got to the plane screen. The ants had beaten me to the airport, however, so I had to do a combination of fighting them off and avoiding them before I could take off. Eventually I got the plane safely off the ground.

Without a liberal use of save states I'd probably still be stuck at the airport

I then flew randomly around M3 mine many times before checking out a walkthrough. I'm not sure if it's the game itself or if it was just my mindset as I played but I had really lost patience with this game's action sequences. In the first game Geez had left me a marker which gave me a good indication of where to look. This time all I had was the evidence that it was likely somewhere near the M3 mine and northwest volcano. I was right, but it's a large area.

I'm not sure if I completed this game back in the day but the idea of doing it without save states and/or walkthroughs fill me with dread.

With help of walkthroughs I finally found the nest. Landing my plane with the skill of a pilot who'd shot down plenty of MIGs in Korea...

Without cheating crashing on this scrub after finally finding the nest would have made me stop playing the game for months.

Eventually I landed my plane near the nest, fought off the ants guarding it and entered,

Finally!

I once again had to traverse two levels of the hive maze and took many wrong turns and dead ends (and a few deaths) before finding the queen

Running up to the queen to give her my gift of a big pile of dynamite starts a ticking sound which gradually gets faster until I make my way back to the surface.

But the ants live underground. What good does watching the skies do?

If I lose the game, which you're almost guaranteed to do the first time you play, I get a slightly different ending screen

And after that I'll look for Jackie... and then the nurse, and I knew what would happen next...

And just to see what happened I also tried not leaving the nest before the dynamite exploded.

The last thing I remember? How can I remember the last thing that happens before my death?

Session Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 5 hours 10 minutes

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability - 1
There are no real puzzles in this game. A few minor dialogue puzzles which don't affect anything don't really count. Getting the safe combination from the antheads and the information from Billy may count as a puzzle but not enough to really count. I'm once again giving this a 1 because it isn't an adventure game

Interface and Inventory - 1

No inventory to speak of. The interface is simple and clear. Like the first game the map screen has a cursor and looks like it SHOULD contain mouse movement but I can't really punish a game more than giving it a 1.

Story and Setting - 5

I praised the story of the first game for being right out of a 50s monster movie, but despite the game in some ways improving on its predecessor, the whole explanation for antheads is ridiculous, While the individual dialogue might be improved (see D below) the story as a whole is slightly diminished by the premise of antheads being possible due to psychokinesis. The story is still great fun though. It's a simple premise and really feels like a story out of a 50s monster movie - or at least a slightly inferior sequel to a 50s monster movie. The setting of the small town in the middle of nowhere in 1950s USA still works. Unfortunately we lose some of the tropes that made the first game work so well, but we still have the one person doing what he can to single-handedly save the world.

Sound and Graphics - 7

A giant ant's favourite food is horse... or perhaps cow... maybe llama?

I gave the Amiga version of the first game a 9 here, and am dropping it to an 7 largely because it had a year to improve to keep in line with other games and didn't. I know I copped some flack for giving the original game a 9 but I still stand by my score based on the year of release.. When you compare Antheads with the best of 1990 it's not quite as impressive though, but still somewhere near the top.

Most locations have unique and appropriate music - the main wandering themes are atmospheric and add to the game as you play, and different locations and minigames have different music.

For a 1990 game, I put this on par with 1991's Space Quest IV, but below 1990's King's Quest V and The Secret of Monkey Island.

Environment and Atmosphere - 8

As always, this is the category where Cinemaware's games shine. They try to play like you're in a movie and this game does it well. I've mentioned some of this during the playthrough and in the 'Story and Setting' section but to really understand how well it does you have to have seen the old monster movies it's mimicking and have played the game. I'm considering repeating my 9 from last time but dropping it slightly to an 8. I feel that in all, while a brave attempt, it's noticeably inferior to the first game.

Still a cool intro, but I've seen it all before

Dialog and Acting - 6

For the same reason as It Came From the Desert, this game does quite well in this category. You often get the same information from different people, but in different ways. Each character has a distinct personality and that shines through when they speak.

Apart from Brick Nash, the only new speaking characters are Billy and his dad and they're probably slightly better written than the other characters. Brick's own thoughts throughout give him a personality that Dr. Greg Bradley never had.

The non-linearity that I drew attention to in my Final Rating of the first game is again evident, The dialogue actually gives us more options, though most of them are useless.

The only reason it doesn't rate higher is that there are still limited options to say different things.

One of the occasions we get Lots of dialogue choices, but what's the difference?

On par with the first game is Antheads''acting' which is mostly in the opening cutscene but also the way a nurse will call out during the hospital escape scene or the scream you make when an ant gets you.

Final Rating - 48

1+1+5+7+8+6*10/6 equal 47. I'm again giving it an extra discretionary point because it just does what it does so well, and only fails at categories it wasn't even trying to succeed at in the first place.

So, the final rating is 48, which means the 10 CAPs will go to...both Joe Pranevich and Fry. I am surprised it's so different to the 57 I ended up giving the first game's Amiga version. Perhaps nostalgia did cloud my judgement the first time or perhaps I was too cruel in marking this one down for not improving more.

Either way, I did enjoy the sequel – though not as much as the original. I'm not sure why though. If I'd waited more than a year between the games my feelings might have been slightly different. This time the action sequences were more annoying than fun and I put that down to the fact that I've played them all to death so recently.

Written by Reiko

As it was targeted at a younger age group, EcoQuest was a very straightforward underwater romp, aside from a few minor issues. I generally had fun playing it (and gently poking fun at it) and was never really stuck on what to do next, although I did miss a few things and didn't get full points.

Puzzles and Solvability

The puzzles were all very straightforward. Most were logical inventory puzzles, like setting up the transmitter to broadcast the location of the chemical poison. Only two were classic puzzles, like the tile puzzle and the rotating pedestal puzzle. The tile puzzle could even be bypassed, if you wanted to cheat. So it's kind of odd that there were any classic puzzles at all. Neither one was all that fun. At least the finished mosaic was used for the riddles afterward. The rotating pedestal puzzle was unnecessarily tedious because I had to find the right order for the pieces, not just get everything matched up. It's awfully gratuitous anyway: the pictures are of a whale, a dolphin, and a boy in a mask. Hmm. These things just *happen* to be carved on columns in an ancient human ruin?

The instructions make it clear this is a brute-force sort of puzzle.
Note the clear picture of a boy in a mask on the far left.

I was never stuck on what to do next. There were no dead ends and no deaths. However, while the game was fun, it was really a bit too simple. It's probably pitched well for the target audience, but I'm not a ten-year-old, so it's not going to compare well in terms of challenge.

But there were a few places to lose points that were not obvious at all, especially the oxygen tank disappearing and the bit about hiding from the octopus rather than just swimming to the next screen. But those didn't impact the plot or game progression at all; I merely failed to gain the points from doing it "correctly."

Score: 5

Interface and Inventory

The interface is the classic and well-tested Sierra interface, with an extra button for the Recycle action. The inventory is also classic, with clear, bright icons representing each object, with the option to look at an object to get a text description of it. No problems here.

Can you easily tell how many exits this screen has?
(The answer's five, and three are near the top edge.)

On the other hand, many of the screens look cluttered (and not just by trash!), and it's often hard to tell which ways are exits. Sometimes this is deliberate, as in the seaweed maze, but sometimes it seems like the game's just being a bit obtuse, as on the main Eluria screen. At first I couldn't find the Royal Gardens and had to do some trial and error off every edge to find the right exit. There's something on the main screen that looks like it might be the tail of the coral whale in the gardens, but other than that, it isn't visible at all. Some kind of cursor change over valid exits would have been helpful here, but I know that's not part of the usual Sierra experience.

I think this is more of a problem in this game because of the 3D environment of being underwater. The graphics are only 2D, of course, so it's harder to represent where all the exits are when going up has to literally mean up as well as forward or into the scene. I think the designers tried to keep it simple by setting most of the story close to the ocean floor with mostly horizontal motion, but the Eluria screen was just too complex and not designed clearly enough.

I also had trouble with the sequence involving entering the whale's mouth to remove the harpoon. Trying to move into the mouth directly didn't work; I had to click on the harpoon and then ended up with an inset closeup of the inside of the mouth, so it really wasn't an exit in the sense of moving to a different screen.

Score: 6

Story and Setting

As a story for younger players, it's reasonably engaging, with lots of bright, cartoony animal characters. But the juxtaposition of realistic environmental issues with fantastic elements like talking animals and a prophecy-based quest is rather jarring at times. For instance, Gregarious the manatee keeps getting injured from unshielded boat propellers, so he wears bandages and just decides he's not going to go breathe until Adam convinces the boat captain to let him put a cage on the propellers. Nevermind that he'd suffocate in less than half an hour. Nevermind that there could be other boats in the area; once Adam solves the problem with that particular boat, he's fine. It's just an excuse to make the point about the propellers.

Similarly, most of the other citizens in the Fish Apartments seem to exist only to illustrate the various dangers of human trash. If Adam hadn't happened to show up on that particular day, there'd be almost nobody left alive in the city because they'd have choked on a balloon or suffocated in plastic or succumbed to chlorine poisoning, etc. Nevermind the real threats of the manta and the dumped chemicals.

Adam's already awesome!

I also find the story less compelling because Adam himself, as the player character, has no particular character growth. He's already a precocious kid and knows a lot about the ocean and sea animals and the related environmental issues. By solving puzzles and disposing of trash and such, the player might be learning more about these things, but Adam already knows them. As such, the Elurians learn to trust him as a human who's going to help them rather than make things worse for them. If Adam weren't already this kind of person, he could never have fulfilled the prophecy. But it means the player is being encouraged to become more like Adam, so he's a role model rather than an avatar. He's a bit too perfect.

A more interesting story might have focused on a character that had a lot of raw knowledge about ocean creatures but not a lot of experience or empathy for the problems that environmental issues can cause, and then shown him becoming the right kind of empathetic person who could fulfill the prophecy. Even a few comments from Adam about "wow, I had no idea [that issue] could cause that much damage" would have helped. Instead, he lectures the lionfish about bleach, and the fisherman about his boat's propellers and dumping garbage, etc.

It's a rather short adventure, not unreasonable for the time period, especially given the target audience, but it just feels too simplistic (especially since my previous game was the intricate and twisty Timequest, which took more than three times as long to play). Okay, the "floating orb" turning out to be a toilet float was rather funny, but since mostly we were just fulfilling a prophecy, there really weren't any surprises or twists to the plot. The length was extended somewhat by having to help each Elurian citizen individually, but it still boils down to "accept quest, help citizens, gather prophecy items, fulfill the prophecy". So the plot really doesn't go much beyond cliche.

Are there more mutated mantas around somewhere?

The ending seemed a little unclear. So Adam stunned the manta with the lionfish spine poison, allowing Cetus to knock it out and presumably take it somewhere away from the city. Cetus says specifically that he didn't kill the manta; it's only stunned. He even says the manta may return to normal given some time, but no real explanation about how that's supposed to happen, just that he might "recover from the toxins that caused his mutation." Presumably with the poison cleaned up, it won't be getting any more exposure, anyway, but if the cause is really a mutation, I don't think it's likely to just revert with time.

Score: 5

Sound and Graphics

Sound is atmospheric but mostly unmemorable for me. It turned ominous every time the manta showed up, for instance, and was generally appropriate and unobtrusive. I was honestly a bit creeped out that first time when the manta's shadow darkened the city and the sound went ominous and Delphineus abruptly flung Adam into a hiding place. Later, before we encounter Cetus, we hear whale calls, and there are other appropriate sound effects, but nothing annoying.

Isn't Adam cute??

Graphics are bright and colorful, with nearly cartoony characters. Adam is very cute and bubbly. Character portraits are animated to represent speech movements and are surprisingly expressive, given that most portraits are of sea creatures and for most of the game, Adam is wearing a breathing mask. All the characters swim smoothly through the water. Adam swims surprisingly well given the amount of inventory he's been gathering by the end of the game (especially that recycling bag).

Every room is expressively drawn in detail, maybe too much detail (you can click on individual books in the lab!). Each of the characters' rooms in the Fish Apartments is uniquely decorated. The screens with poisoned and dying plants are appropriately more muted. The oceanic colors are brilliant, and the variety of plants and animals is done very well, from seaweed, to anemones, to brain coral, to various kinds of fish.

Okay, Adam looks almost dead with fright here or something. Not his best moment.

Score: 7

Environment and Atmosphere

A ruined city on top of a ruined city.

The vivid underwater setting is fantastic in every sense. Eluria is built on submerged human ruins, with fallen pillars and broken statues as background decor. Even more than that, it's a ruined aquatic city on top of a ruined human city, in the sense that the chemical poison and other troubles have nearly destroyed the gardens and driven many citizens elsewhere. There's a real air of neglect and futility that turns to outright destruction the closer to the poison that Adam travels. But there are moments of beauty, too: the occasional bright flower or coral that's somehow surviving, a random group of fish swimming by, the thick seaweed that hides the entrance to the city.

Bat-manta!

I mentioned above that the manta's appearance is quite creepy. Actually, having it show up reminds me of fighting mantrays in Quest for Glory, although Adam doesn't really fight the manta except for stabbing it with the lionfish spine at the end. Its lair is also creepy, with bones strewn around and even a human skull in the corner.

Also, in the cave with the poison, when Adam pulls one stone at a time out of the wall, the eerie greenish light from the poison room gradually illuminates the entrance area, a little brighter each time. I thought the process of having to remove one stone at a time was pointless and repetitive, but it does give that eerie visual before the reveal of what the poison is.

Score: 7

Dialog and Acting

The game provides a description for nearly everything you look at, from individual descorations in the Fish Apartments, to individual books in Adam's father's lab. The plot is short, but there's a lot of text. And I saw no grammatical errors, aside from deliberate affectations of some of the characters' accents. One fish has a terrible French accent, for instance.

One of Adam's many excited lectures.

There's no voice-acting, but the characters are written so well that the game doesn't need it. Adam is a cheerful and knowledgeable boy who likes to give lectures about environmental issues. Delphineus is a worried dolphin. The crab seems depressed, or at least has no self-esteem. And then there's the Oracle, who nearly always speaks in rhyme and provides the various pieces of the prophecy, which is nearly an instruction manual, if a bit of an opaque one, for how to fix the problems the city has.

Clearly a lot of research was done into environmental issues and what causes them. Every issue seemed realistic and well-described, even if it's usually Adam or Delphineus giving a bit of an info-dump each time.

Score: 6

That adds up to a final score of 5+6+5+7+7+6 = 36/60*100 = 60. That's on the high end of the guessing range, but I think it captures well the balance between straightforwardly easy but mostly fun puzzles, a cliche-ridden, prophecy-dependent plot, beautiful and atmospheric visuals, memorable characters, and detailed but sometimes preachy text.

Fourteen people made guesses ranging from 33 to 63, but Ilmari and Aperama both guessed exactly 60.

So that’s it for Ecoquest. Next up for me will be Legend’s Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, which I am very much looking forward to!

By the way, nobody got the reference I made in the Anemone and Octopus post: "Good work, Mr. Greene, you've found cause of death!" It's what Dr. Brennan from Bones says to her techs. For instance, in The Dude in the Dam, it was Wendell Bray who found the cause of death. Finding cause of death based on miniscule patterns of damage in the bones is the usual goal in each episode.

EcoQuest CAP Distribution

100 points to Reiko

Blogger award - 100 CAPs - for blogging through this game for our enjoyment

15 points to Aperama

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating
Greek History Award - 5 CAPs - for noticing the Greek goddess/constellation naming

10 points to Ilmari

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating

10 points to Niklas

Pop Culture Award - 10 CAPs - for referencing the Simpsons episode about dolphins taking over Springfield and the Ducktales episode about cleaning up Atlantis

5 points to TBD

Flushed Away Award - 3 CAPs - for being environmentally concerned about the toilet
Pedantry Award - 2 CAPs - for correcting my fifteen-puzzle terminology

5 points to Paul Franzen

Genre Lover Award - 5 CAPs - for mentioning the Steam/Humble Bundle Sierra sale

2 points to Voltgloss

Nostalgia Award - 2 CAPs - for referencing the Skies of Arcadia Delphinus
Giving Me Fits Award - 0 CAPs - for losing the bet on a not-so-tricky puzzle

Missed Classics CAP Distribution

50 points to Ilmari

Classic Blogger award - 50 CAPs - for blogging through Mewilo for our enjoyment

100 points to Joe Pranevich

Classic Blogger award - 50 CAPs - for blogging through Dragon's Keep for our enjoyment
Interviewer Award - 25 CAPs - for interviewing Mike Woodroffe
Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating of Antheads
Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating of Robin of Sherwood
Improving the Blog Award - 5 CAPS -For suggesting to use first published release year for multiple platform games

65 points to TBD

Classic Blogger award - 50 CAPs - for blogging through Antheads for our enjoyment
Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating of Mewilo
Riddle Me This Award - 5 CAPs - For good riddle solutions in Mewilo

75 points to Alex

Classic Blogger award - 50 CAPs - for blogging through Robin of Sherwood for our enjoyment
Interviewer award - 25 CAPs - for interviewing Christy Marx

10 points to Reiko

Keen Eyes Award - 5 CAPs - For spotting the connection between Mewilo and Lost in Time
Riddle Me That Award - 5 CAPs - For good riddle solutions in Mewilo

10 points to Aperama

Those Darned French Games Award - 10 CAPs - For a great solution to Mewilo

10 points to Fry

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For guessing the final rating of Antheads

Written by Joe Pranevich

The “Moriarty” of French warfare

Last week, we “solved” the second of our three mysteries by unraveling a murder plot hatched by a crazy lazy with a superpower. Now that we’re on the third, I’m curious to see if this one references the previous cases or if all three chapters are completely stand-alone.

This story begins in Baker St. as Holmes and Watson are sought after by Inspector Smythe of Scotland Yard. As usual, the Yard has a case they cannot solve: a former soldier in the Napoleonic wars, General Farnsworth Armstead, has been murdered. He was a member of a curious lottery where the man who lived the longest would receive a significant cash sum. His death means that there are five remaining participants and five very good motives for murder. Mr. Armstead is also the author of a tell-all book about various “treasures” and may have been about to reveal the secretive owner of the Polar Star Diamond. Two lines of investigation but only one dead body. This should be fun!

Inspector Smythe. Maybe Lestrade was on holiday?

The lottery that General Armstead participated in was called the “Waterloo Tontine”, a fundraiser for British veterans of the Battle of Waterloo and their families. Half of the money raised went to fund medical care while the remainder was put aside to earn interest. The value of the account will be paid out to the last surviving member of the tontine. The prize is considerable: £500,000 plus fifty years of compound interest. That is a LOT of money. With only six members left and everyone getting up there in years, it’s easy to see why someone had a reason to hurry the process along.

I had to look it up, but it seems that tontines were a real thing in the 18th and 19th centuries, but they are banned today in many countries. Apparently, creating a reason for you to want to murder your fellow investors is looked down upon. It appears that real tontines paid out proceeds to survivors over time in addition to the lump sum at the end. Fraud was a major problem in these early contests, especially at a time when birth and death records were not as well-documented. Smythe provided Holmes with the list of our five tontine suspects: Captain Robert Juergens, Ned and Clarence Thomas, William Rowland, and Peter Dudley. Up until his duel, Armstead was the youngest of the bunch, a youthful 74-years old.

Armstead was also an author and art collector.

After his military career, Armstead became an art collector and researcher. He authored a book, Treasures of the Conquerors, that told the stories of stolen valuables and their current owners. At the time of his death, he was working on a second edition which would include a newly written chapter on the whereabouts of the Polar Star Diamond, a gem that had once belonged to Joseph Bonaparte. Mr. Smythe tells us that Norgate and Company were the publishers, in case we want to head there later.

All of those potential motives out of the way, Smythe finally tells Holmes what happened: at 10:00 AM this morning, an elderly French man came to General Armstead’s front door. He was greeted by his valet and told that Armstead did not take guests in the morning, but the gentleman was insistent and claimed that the general would make an exception for him. He gave the valet a letter to deliver to Armstead, suggesting that once the general saw the letter he would agree to meet. He was right: Armstead agreed to the meeting and the valet showed the visitor to the general’s study.

Fifteen minutes later, the valet heard sword fighting in the study. He tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. He then heard a crash and breaking glass. The only other entrance to the study was through the garden, so he ran out of the house through the kitchen and re-entered through the side door. By the time he arrived, the Frenchman was gone and the general was near to death, slumped against a broken display case filled with military miniatures. He died moments later. The valet searched the room for the letter, but the Frenchman must have taken it with him.

It’s only a flesh wound!

I love this already! We have two separate threads to pull for suspects, the lottery ticket holders and the current owners of the Polar Star diamond. Given the title of this case, the miniatures must play a role as well. Could the general already have had the diamond and hid it in the display case? That seems farfetched, but it would hardly be the strangest thing we’ve seen in this game.

As before, I search the paper first. This murder happened just a few hours ago so there isn’t much:

A banquet to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Waterloo survivors is coming up and all of the tontine members are expected to attend. The article says that I can get further information from either the Langham Hotel or the Times.
Norgate and Company was already advertising their new edition of Treasures of the Conquerors, complete with a blurb about the Polar Star discovery.

I suspect I’ll find more leads in the paper once I know what I’m looking for.

A newly unemployed valet.

Last time, I forgot to visit the scene of the crime until far too late. That caused me to miss critical clues about the Society Burglar and threw me down the wrong path. This time, that is where I send Holmes and Watson first. We meet with General Armstead’s valet and he provides us with a few new details: The saber that the general fought with was usually on display above his fireplace. He also tells us of a display of miniatures that the general kept in his study documenting the last British charge at the Battle of Waterloo. But strangely, someone has made a tiny change to the scene: now, Napoleon is standing backwards! He asks the detectives if he should fix it, but Holmes believes that the police will be interested in this clue. (And, I suspect, so should we!)

Maybe Napoleon just needed to pee?

Holmes asks about Mr. Armstead’s relationship with his wife and the valet describes it as strained, not a marriage for love. Lord Fitch, the young lady’s father, arranged the marriage as he did not want to be left with a “spinster” for a daughter. He spiced up the deal with a generous dowry to make up for his daughter’s difficult personality. His son, the current Lord Fitch, did not approve of the marriage but he and the general are now financially tied together with jointly-owned stock and other assets. That gives us a third suspect and motive! The younger Lord Fitch may have little remaining love for his brother-in-law and those assets may have reverted to him on the general’s death. I’ll file that away for later, but that lead seems promising.

The valet continues his info-dump by explaining to Holmes that at the time of his death, the general was working on the new chapter about the Polar Star. Fortunately, he told his valet some of the details: the gem had last been owned by the Russian Count Rostov but was stolen three years ago. Armstead recently received an offer from Pierre Matin to reveal the identity of the current owner... for a fee. The valet even tells us that Mr. Matin is staying at the Bridge House Hotel if we care to pay him a visit. We also learn that the general was supposed to visit with an old friend today, Jean Paul Gerard, at the French embassy. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly forty years. Could he be another suspect?

A champion fencer in his youth?

With some prompting from Holmes, the valet finally tells us about our murderer. He describes him an an old man, somewhat short, and walked with a cane. He also carried a carpetbag. He would not give his name, instead insisting that the yellowed letter was sufficient identification for General Armstead. The valet got a good look at the envelope and noticed that it was addressed to “Captain” Armstead and listed the name of his old unit. When the general read it, he went very pale and permitted the man to see him. The battle and discovery of his body went just as we were told before.

Holmes asked about the study doors: they were still locked on the inside when the valet found them. Since the only two doors into the study were through the kitchen or the garden, the killer must have gone out the other way. But in that case, why didn’t the valet see him leave? The garden was surrounded by an 8-foot tall fence so either he hid in there, the valet knows more than he’s letting on, or he had prepared some form of escape. My best guess so far is that the letter accused the general of an act of cowardice during the war, symbolized by Napoleon’s turned back. General Armstead felt his honor challenged, fought and lost the duel with his opponent who subsequently escaped. Our job then would be to figure out what was in the envelope and who felt the need to approach General Armstead with this now. This would mean that all three other leads (the Polar Star, the Waterloo Tontine, and Lord Fitch) are red herrings, but we may find a connection down the road.

Since Lestrade was essential last time (he had the only clue I found to the gun dealer), I try him again in this case. Unfortunately, he seems back to his old unhelpful self. His team has assembled a list of suspects, but they won’t share it with us. That’s a dead end.

An old friend in a dimly-lit room.

Thinking over the clues, I suspect we are dealing with an elderly Frenchman who knew Armstead earlier in his career. My next stop then will be the French Embassy where Armstead was scheduled to meet with his friend today. I doubt that Mr. Gerard had anything to do with the murder, but he might be aware of an incident that would shed light on the case.

We meet with Mr. Gerard in a parlor in the embassy and get his story. He and Armstead had been stationed together for a year in war college and had become good friends. He tells us that the general was a womanizer even after his engagement to Mary Fitch, the future Mrs. Armstead. His secret nickname for her was “horseface”. Armstead saw his time in France after his engagement but before his marriage as his last “great freedom”. During these dalliances, the future general fell in love with a girl that he called his “little flower”, but he knew that he had to keep his promises to Lord Fitch for his own future. This hurt Armstead deeply and he seemed very sad over the loss of his love. Pierre tells us that last week was the first time he had seen Armstead in 40 years. They dined together and saw a French opera. In their interactions, the general seemed upbeat, excited for both the tontine and the work he was doing on the Polar Star. We also learn that Armstead spoke French, but I do not know if that will be important later. It’s hard to fully discount Pierra as a suspect because he is an elderly Frenchman who walks with a cane just like our murderer. Did the valet ever meet Mr. Gerard? Would he have recognized him?

Another murder!

With one Frenchman down, my next stop is to his other French contact: the man that was to tell him the location of the Polar Star. But when we arrive at his hotel, the valet tells us that he is amazed we got there “so soon”. Mr. Matine had been killed only ten minutes earlier!

He tells us that just prior to the murder, a large Russian man came to the hotel and asked for Mr. Matine. The front desk thought nothing of it and sent him straight up to his room, but he came down running a few minutes later. The staff didn’t realize anything was amiss until the porter went up to deliver a wire that had just arrived. When he got to the room, he found Mr. Matine dead but no blood. An inkwell had been knocked over in a struggle and inky footprints led out the door. Homes suggests that the man was strangled. We inquire about the wire and discover that it came from Armstead’s publisher. They were trying to get in touch with Mr. Matine to see if he would sell the information to them directly, presumably so they could still finish the book without General Armstead. It seems a bit premature given that he only died this morning, but the potential value of the updated book makes it understandable that a publisher would not want to take any chances.

Could both murders relate to the Polar Star? Did someone at Norgate have General Armstead killed so that they could learn the whereabouts of the diamond themselves? That seems crazy, but possible. Could the Russian man that apparently strangled Mr. Matine be related to Count Rostov? Is he trying to recapture the gem himself? How does any of this connect with our honor killing? We’ll have to keep digging.

An evil publishing magnate?

Norgate is my next stop. They knew of Mr. Matine and the timing is just too fishy to pass up. We head to their offices and talk to someone who fills us in on more details of the book. We learn that the first edition generated both enormous sales and numerous libel suits. Armstead insinuated that many of the treasures described in his book were not in the hands of their rightful owners and those owners were not happy to be featured. The only thing they know about the current possessor of the diamond is that he’s an Englishman; they needed to find out who from Mr. Matine. Armstead seems to have been very good at giving people motives to kill him!

What thread should I pull on next? I can keep following the Polar Star leads or go back to Lord Fitch or the tontine suspects. I decide to keep working on the diamond for now. I send an Irregular to the Russian Embassy and find out that Count Rostov is staying at De Keyser’s Royal Hotel. I select to head there next and Holmes gets an audience with the count. He admits that his valet, Vladimir, had gone to speak to Mr. Matine but that he was dead before he arrived. For obvious reasons, he has also been investigating the theft of his diamond and had discovered that Pierre Matine’s brother, Andre, was the original jewel thief. Vladimir had hoped to get the current location of the diamond from Pierre but someone must not want that getting out.

Excuse me sir, can you say “nuclear vessel”?

Should I believe him? If he’s lying and Vladimir killed Pierre Matine, it doesn’t tell me who killed Armstead. If he’s telling the truth, we still have another killer on the loose that may be silencing everyone who knows of the diamond. Could the mysterious Frenchman have done both murders? It seems implausible as there were different MOs in each case. Matine was strangled, not dueled to death. There’s no matter of honor here. Armstead has a history of dishonorable conduct-- possibly even on the battlefield-- and made many enemies. There may have been a line of murders waiting at his door this morning.

With that thought, it’s time to end for this week. I’m enjoying this episode a lot, even if I seem to be getting longer info-dumps than in some of the previous cases. There is a lot of evidence to cover and many possible suspects! What do you think? Both of the previous cases fell down a bit as we approached the finish line. Will the same happen here? I guess we’ll find out in a few days!

But, before we get to the epic conclusion, we have one fantastic surprise in store: David Marsh, the art director for Consulting Detective, as well as one of the designers behind Deja Vu, Shadowgate, The Uninvited, Dracula Unleashed, and many more games will be speaking to us in a special interview. He’s absolutely fantastic so set an alarm for this Friday and make sure to check it out.

Time played: 1 hr 05 min
Total time: 7 hr 00 min

Game 73: Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective - Introduction (1991)

Missed Classic 26: Mewilo (1987) - Introduction

EcoQuest - Seaweed and Oracle

Heart of China - Final Rating

Missed Classic: Mewilo - End to slavery

EcoQuest - Crab and Lobster

POLL: Reader's Choice 1991

Reader's Choice: pick the best game of 1991

Consulting Detective - Are You My Mummy?

Missed Classic: Mewilo - Won! (with Final Rating)

EcoQuest - Manatee and Sea Turtle

Consulting Detective - Revenge of the Egyptology Nerd

Missed Classic 27: Antheads: It Came From The Desert II (1990) - Introduction

EcoQuest - Anemone and Octopus

Consulting Detective - Amnesia, She Wrote

Missed Classic: Antheads: It Came From the Desert II - Three Antheads are better than one

EcoQuest - Manta and Whale - Won!

Consulting Detective - Victorian Supervillain

Missed Classic: Antheads: It Came From the Desert II - WON! and Final Rating

EcoQuest - Final Rating

Consulting Detective - A Duel to the Death