Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels

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Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels
Sherlock - Riddle of the Crown Jewels logo.svg
Studio Infocom
Publisher Infocom
Senior Developer Bob Bates
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1987
platform Amiga , Apple II , C 64 , C128 , DOS , Mac OS
Game engine Z-machine
genre Text adventure
Game mode Single player
control keyboard
language English
copy protection Enclosure referencing

Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels is a computer game by the US company Infocom from 1987. It belongs to the genre of text adventures and is based on the literary characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson created by the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle .

action

The plot in the style of a classic detective story takes place in London in 1887. The crown jewels were stolen from the tower and Sherlock Holmes is supposed to find them again within 48 hours, in time for Queen Victoria's crown anniversary. Since he has indications that the thief should set a trap for him, he transfers Dr. Watson the case. The player takes on its role. On his quest to find the Crown Jewels, he visits many of the city's attractions, including Madame Tussaud's wax museum, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben . He has to solve numerous puzzles before he exposes the thief ( Professor Moriarty ) and brings the crown jewels back to the tower.

Game principle and technology

Sherlock is a text adventure, which means that the environment and events are displayed as screen text and the visualization is up to the player's imagination. The character is controlled via commands that the player enters using the keyboard and that are processed by a parser . The commands are in natural language and allow the game character to interact with his environment. The player can move through the game world, find objects, apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with NPCs . As the story progresses, more locations in the game world will be unlocked. Some sound effects were implemented in the Amiga version. There is a time limit for solving the game. The game packaging contains items that are useful for the game solution, for example the edition of a fictional London newspaper from June 17, 1887. The technical development basis is the Z-machine .

Production notes

Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels was Infocom's last text-only adventure. The fictional characters Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Professor Moriarty are creations of the writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The game was developed by Bob Bates . As part of the initial announcement of the game, Infocom also advertised versions for the Atari ST and Apple GS computers ; however, these never appeared.

reception

reviews
publication Rating
Computer and video games 9/10

In a German game review from the 1980s, the excellent parser typical of Infocom-Adventure, the clever plot and the numerous logical puzzles were highlighted. In the overall evaluation, the text adventure naturally received no points in the graphics and sound categories; Overall, it was therefore only rated 70 out of 100 points. A British reviewer gave the game a total of 9 out of 10 points. In addition to the successful mystery atmosphere, the historical reminiscences of London in 1887 were also rated positively ("Altogether, this is a mystery that conveys just about the right atmosphere for the place, time and subject, with a good helping of general historical interest thrown in as well. I take my hat off to it ").

A 2005 study of computer game history and theory recognized the imitation of Doyle's style of speech by developer Bob Bates. Overall, it is a well-crafted adventure adventure ("a well-crafted late Infocom work").

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Keith Campbell: Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels . In: Computer & Video Games . No. 79, May 1988, p. 73.
  2. ↑ See Anatol Locker: Sherlock (The Riddle of the Crown Jewels) . In: Happy Computer with special games part 4/1988.
  3. ↑ See Keith Campbell: Sherlock . In: Commodore User 5/1988, p. 87.
  4. ↑ See Nick Montfort: Twisty Little Passages. An Approach to Interactive Fiction , MIT Press 2005, p. 165.