I’ve been reviewing Liberated Pixel Cup Games. This is one of the 48 Games.
Disclaimer: I’m competing in the cup too! I am not a judge!
Murderous Manor [Download me] [Github Repository]
This is a Single Player Game, and it reminds me of Clue (The board game) an awful lot. The game entry is powered by Allegro and compiling it was simple, once I built a copy of Allegro5.0.6, as Fedora currently ships 5.0.3 as the latest, and the game needs the newer version.
The game has a built-in tutorial, which explains the rules of the game, as well as the controls. I love it when devs take their time to do something like this.
You are a detective, there’s been a murder in the manor. Each case is generated automatically which adds some replay value. I highly recommend you take note of what time the body was found, as I couldn’t figure out a way to get that info after. You should also take notes of key answers from the witnesses.
To play the game, you have to walk around the manor and explore it, you can talk to the body to see what was the cause of death (Asphyxiation? Stab? Gunshot?) and poke around the house trying to find the murder weapon. You can also interrogate interview the multiple house guests and ask them if anyone did something weird, or where were they between so and so hours. They’ll each go to varying lengths of detail. To figure out whodunnit, I looked for a contradiction and went on a hunch: The body was found at 5:34pm and she was last seen with him at 5:32, yet when asked, she stated she was elsewhere.
You have 3 accusations, so even if you guess wrong, you can still try with a different suspect, but I managed to solve a case in less than a minute by just accusing 3 random people (The third one was correct! Hah).
I liked the game, it feels fresh and different. Going through a case won’t take long, so it’s a great way to kill some free time.
