Lord Augustus Mandrake is dead - murdered. You are Inspector Burton Strange of Scotland Yard and must investigate this grisly deed at Graven Hill House.
This is a murder mystery set in the 1930's. You must speak to suspects, find clues and solve the crime by finding out who murdered Lord Mandrake.
You are not logged in.
If you log in before playing, you'll be able to save your progress - which means you can come back later and pick up where you left off.
I liked the puzzles very much but some of the characters were a bit off. The detective (the player) wasn't a character at all and the scene where I arrested the murderer went a bit unrealistically. Also, the game had some unusual commands, and even if the player knew what to do, they didn't know which command they had to use. But overall, the use of objects was fantastic and there were a lot of tricky red herrings too :D.
A very complex game that's fairly interactive concerning the characters. A great mystery while being fairly straightforward, contains a few game-ending dead ends. There were many rooms, though a few rooms had no descriptions or were not interactive. I really enjoyed finding out more about the characters and there were several extra pieces of information aside from the necessary storyline. I highly recommend players use the walkthrough because without it, I fear the game will be too hard to complete, particularly concerning the dead-ends.
However, it was a very well-written game and contained a lot of freedom without seemingly "too free." A job well done.
As said in many comments, giving suspects more to say in response to certain queries and a few more subtle hints/better verbs to the harder places to find would've been great.
I enjoyed this game a lot, from the back stories of all the characters to how I was able to question and interact with them, and how they had more to say after I'd found particular pieces of evidence. that is something new and exciting that I haven't really seen in other text adventure games. but I did find the game a bit troublesome at times, mostly due to the lack of hints or descriptions for things. for example (SPOILER), I'd have never known there are footprints to be examined in the greenhouse if I hadn't seen them mentioned in the comments, and then examined the pots, and the soil, and THEN the footprints. this seems like something that could have been alluded to a bit more in the game (i.e., "maybe Lord Mandrake's beloved Dahlias can offer a clue as to who could have done this" or whatever), as it is a CRUCIAL element to discovering who the murderer is. this happened in several other instances too, like with the towel and the sand. also I think the characters could have had a little more involvement with some of the items, and the rooms could have been a bit more interesting to explore. the commands were sometimes a bit too specific as well. I've played other text adventures where as long as your command was generally pretty close to what you're trying to do it will take. but overall it was a pretty fun game, and I really liked the story! also the red herrings were genius, and nearly threw me off several times! I'm glad I played and finished this one.
First off, I didn't finish it on the first try, because my boat sank before I've gotten the clue and I needed the walkthrough for some of the clues, because I would've never came up with the ideas (and verbs). Some more hints in the game would've been good for myself.
I like the classic mystery detective theme, the puzzles and the subjects are well done. The story is really good, but I found that the game lacked a little bit of a finishing touch. The descriptions were very minimal and not every object even had a description. Most of the rooms appeared empty and lifeless and outside the 4 standard questions the characters hat very little to say. This put me off several times, but the story and the motivation to find the suspect kept me around ^^
I think the introduction could offer some more direction with what commands are available (instead of having to find them here in the comments, where there are a lot of spoilers), and in general I would change how the communication works - see my previous comment about getting suspects to comment on objects. I would like to see much more commentary from the characters about items, even if it isn't something they're interested in. If the question is completely irrelevant, then a generic response makes sense. At least that way the player knows they're asking something that should be asked of other characters. I guess that might be a lot of work though! Oh, and grammar-nazi tip... It's "could have" or "could've" not "could of".
I'm looking forward to trying some more Craig Dutton adventures!
Average rating
(4.4)
Written by Craig Dutton
Plays 16529
Downloads 4958 Download file
Written for Quest 5.2
Published 16 Jul 2012
Updated 19 Jul 2020
IFDB listing