The Colonel's Bequest
| The Colonel's Bequest: A Laura Bow Mystery | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher | Sierra On-Line |
| Senior Developer | Roberta Williams |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1989 |
| platform | Amiga , Atari ST , DOS |
| Game engine | Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) |
| genre | Adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | Mouse & keyboard |
| medium | Floppy disk , CD-ROM |
| language | English |
The Colonel's Bequest: A Laura Bow Mystery (German about: The Legacy of the Colonel: A Laura Bow crime) is a text-based adventure from Sierra On-Line in 1989. It was for Amiga , Atari ST and MS-DOS released .
action
The play figure, the student and budding journalist Laura Bow, daughter of a detective inspector from New Orleans, travels to the plantation of Lillian's uncle, Colonel Henri A. Dijon, at the invitation of her friend, Lillian Prune. After dinner, he announced that he had made his will due to age and that his inheritance should be divided between his relatives and friends who were living at the time of death. In the days that followed, the eleven potential heirs stalk and fight each other; deaths occur, which Laura Bow seeks to solve. In doing so, however, she herself becomes the target of the murderer.
Game principle and technology
The plot is divided into individual acts like a play. The game world is represented by hand-drawn rooms, between which Laura Bow moves with a mouse click. The interaction with the game environment takes place through a text parser . The focus of the game is on uncovering the background to the crime and is reminiscent of the situation in the crime novels by Agatha Christie . Progress is mostly made through dialogues and common object and combination puzzles. These are not necessarily necessary to solve the game, but are no less important.
As with all text adventures developed by Sierra, there are points in the game which are spent on the player at the end and which can be used to assess his own game progress. There are no classic dead ends in this game, unsolvable situations that force the player to start over or to call up a saved game. The death of the player in unfavorable situations is possible.
Production notes
In 1992 a follow-up was released with the title The Dagger of Amon Ra . The game is supported by the interpreter software ScummVM .
reception
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The ASM saw the appeal of the game both in the plot and in the "confused relationships between the individual characters", praised the graphics, animation and controls, criticized the economical sound and assessed that designer Williams "had her own again with this fantastic adventure game." Raised the bar a hefty piece ". Heinrich Lenhardt praised the idea and story of the game in the Power Play ; Author Williams has "turned a handful of well-hung crime classics into a fun genre parody". The playing time and the replay value are too low, the price is too high and the parser is of inferior quality.
The specialist magazine Adventure Gamers ranked The Colonel's Bequest: A Laura Bow Mystery in 2011 in its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games at 84th place.
Web links
- The Colonel's Bequest at MobyGames (English)
- Adventure Gamers: Review
- Adventure Classic Gaming: Review
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b ASM 3/1990, p. 109: A murderous theater play. Retrieved October 4, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Power Play 4/1990: All corpses are already there. Retrieved October 4, 2016 .
- ↑ AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved January 10, 2016 .