Deadline 1982

Is it still worth playing?

Marc Blank's 1982 interactive fiction detective game, Infocom's third and its first mystery, and the game that began the company's tradition of feelies. Its cast behaves independently of your actions, and the parser is complex. You can accuse or even arrest any suspect at any time, and a well timed accusation can unnerve a suspect into revealing hidden information. An arrest only sticks with hard evidence of motive, method and opportunity, and without it the game ends with a description of why the culprit was released. That evidence has to be gathered. Besides examining and searching, you can fingerprint objects or ask Sergeant Duffy to analyze them. It was rated Expert by Infocom, largely for the evidence and false leads to sort out in a short time. A cast that acts on its own still makes it feel like an investigation in progress today.