You have inserted the cassete into your player and the computer has dutifully loaded the program. You now find yourself in Victorian England, sharing a flat with a doctor, overlooking Baker Street. Yes, you deduced it, you are the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. This is the setting of the new Spectrum adventure program from Philip Mitchell and Melbourne House, the people who gave the computer world “The Hobbit”.
Again we have a text adventure with graphics, featuring “Animication” of characters, “Animtalk” and “Inglish”. What does all that mean? Well, Animication is the independent actions and movements of all the characters in the adventure. They will follow courses of action based on their personality and the situation they find themselves in. Animtalk is the ability for you to speak to any character in the adventure, asking them questions or telling them to do a particular task and for them to talk back. You will find that at times, the characters do not cooperate, due to Animication. Inglish is the easy way in which you communicate with the computer and the adventure (i.e. “Open the ornate door and go through the door.”) Also included, is a “real-time” feature. Time passes as Sherlock examines items, questions witnesses, or rides on the railcar. This is a very rare element of test adventures and an added challenge. You can also save your progress to tape and reload it back into the computer. This will allow different approaches to be tried and prevents having to start over if you allow Sherlock to be killed.
As Sherlock Holmes, you find yourself confronted with a mystery as yet not chronicled by Watson. (Note: you can use your printer as a chronicler of your adventure by using a print feature which will print out all actions and graphics if you so desire, see example.) This is a mystery which has completely baffled the local police and you can bet that Inspector Lestrade will make the wrong conclusions. You must hunt down the clues, make your brilliant deductions and find the real criminal. The computer has a vocabulary of over 800 words and can carry out over 53 different actions.
I have found this adventure very challenging and well worth the purchase price. I have spent many hours, which have turned into days, which have turned into weeks..and I have yet to solve the final mystery. Sometimes the deductions come easy, but obtaining evidence can be quite the task. I have a few qualms with the program. I have found no means of using all of the vocabulary listed in the accompanying manual and a few glitches have shown themselves, none with major consequences. The most annoying is an “out of memory” report from the adventure itself. One must then reload a saved portion of the game in order to continue. Still, I must highly recommend this program to any mystery and/or adventure lovers in the audience. After all, a program of this size and scope is bound to have a few bugs in it.
Sherlock comes in a small book-sized box, with an instruction manual, and a train schedule. Available from Speedysoft for £14.95 plus £1.50 for postage.