Category:

Review

Duration: 19:12

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Huge playlist archive with games from 2016: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOanVBhqd3tTtsJlUi18TCr6OI5O4IeE
INTRODUCTION:
The clock had turned midnight and I was just about to leave my office when there was a knock on my door. It was a Mr. Swan, owner of the Swanline shipping company, he explained that his wife was missing and the police had told him that "Unless they can prove outright that there was an involuntary disappearance, they just file paperwork." He said he'd pay me a grand upfront if I could find his wife by morning, no question asked. That may be a suspiciously large reward for a simple missing person case, but I haven't had that many jobs lately and my purse is getting thin, so who am I to ask questions?

REVIEW:
This is a menu driven 'verb-noun-esque' graphical text adventure where you play as private detective Sam Mallard. You have to find Mr. Swan’s wife that has gone missing, and to do that you chose what to do by simply using up, down and fire in the menu system.

The game has a black & noir atmosphere because of the non colored pictures and the pictures are very cartoonish featuring animals in the story line. The control system works very well, and the gameplay works the way that you have to figure out where to go, and when you get to the right place you will have to sort some kind of puzzle, that will gain you access to proceed to new places.

The story line and the puzzles are put well together, and the only negative with this game is that it is made for the 48k Spectrum, which makes it a bit short.

The game was originally planned for the Commodore 64 around 2006 but was never realized, and ended up on the Spectrum with coding from scratch in assembly, and pictures compiled in zx7 to get as much crammed into the 48k as possible.

A 128k version or multiload for the 48k would have made it possible to make this game bigger, and an absolute classic, but definitely worth checking out anyway!

The game was made by Ersh in 2016.

Rating = 87%

Download link: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=30306