Murder, She Wrote
Description official descriptions
Jessica Fletcher is an elderly novelist who writes crime mystery books and solves cases in her spare time, using her powers of observation to investigate and uncover the truth.
Murder, She Wrote is a hidden object game based on the TV series starring Angela Lansbury. There are five cases to be solved, presented as books on a shelf. Each case can be played with or without a time limit, displayed as a clock at the top-left corner of the screen. The plot is developed through cartoon cutscenes with full voice acting, that appear at the beginning of each case and in certain pivotal moments.
As Jessica, the player has to search several locations for all the items listed at the left side of the screen. The entries are incomplete, but their missing letters can be found scattered through the scenery as typewriter keys and collected to fill the gaps. A few of the entries are instructions instead of object names, describing an action that has to be performed. Some of the scene objects can be dragged and dropped to complete a required action. Some entries are marked blue to indicate that the item can only be retrieved after completing an extra step.
Mini-games appear from time to time on a separate screen, with logic puzzles where the player has to chronologically organize a series of clue notes, find the correct owners of several buoys by analyzing statements and examining the color strips, pick up a singular figure in a grid filled with similar pictures and complete other similar challenges. They can be skipped, incurring a thirty-minute penalty. Below the list, Jessica's typewriter acts as a hint button that, when activated, shows the position of one of the required items. Extra hints can be found on the scenes as ink ribbons for the machine.
Spellings
- Она написала убийство - Russian spelling
Groups +
Screenshots
Credits (Windows version)
49 People (44 developers, 5 thanks) · View all
Melanie | |
Seth Hazlitt, Sheriff Ashmont, Mick, Avery, Vern, James | |
Maria, Carol | |
Jim, Billy, Thomas, Morris, William, Inspector Crimmins | |
Emily, Jane | |
Jessica Fletcher, Emma | |
Sheriff Mort Metzger, Andy, Board Chairman | |
Sally, Joann, Tina | |
Greg, Deputy, Jack, Chris, Bartender, Nigel, Giles | |
President |
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CEO |
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Executive Producer |
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Producer | |
Programming | |
Scripting | |
Additional Scripting | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 75% (based on 2 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 4 ratings with 1 reviews)
The Good
Despite yet another Murder, She Wrote game without Angela Lansbury, this hidden object title from Legacy Interactive mostly succeeds where its jigsaw puzzle predecessor did not. Yes, this game was released a full 13 years after its source material went off the air, but from what I'm told, it ably replicates the tone and structure of the show, featuring five whodunit murder mysteries in Vermont, London, and of course, Cabot Cove, Maine.
Featuring a strong voice cast, the game primarily features the typical hidden object pixel-hunting, though spices things up fairly nicely with a mix of logic, memory, and visual puzzles mixed in. The cast of characters and writing is much stronger than I would have expected for a HOG, as well.
The Bad
Where the game falls a little short for me is that the gameplay doesn't really affect the investigation in any material way. There's no active analysis of clues or deductive reasoning the player must perform. Rather, Jessica Fletcher handles that herself exclusively in dialogue and cut scenes in between the hidden object searches, so it's easy to become emotionally detached from the narrative should you let your mind wander. Worth noting as well that the same locations are reused a little too often, and the game is extremely linear.
The Bottom Line
All that said, this is a well produced title with good music, sound effects and art. That helps revive a lapsed IP and led to the game receiving a 2012 sequel, ably titled Murder, She Wrote 2: Return to Cabot Cove.
Windows · by Hipolito Pichardo (43060) · 2023
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Related Sites +
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Murder, She Wrote
product page on the Focus Multimedia website
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Macs Black.
Additional contributors: Jeanne, formercontrib, Trond Berntsen, Victor Vance.
Game added December 24, 2009. Last modified February 22, 2023.