Summary
Now they're alive. Now they're dead
The Good
In the late 80's,
King's Quest designer,
Roberta Williams, created an adventure game that acted like a suspense thriller and required you to do some detective work and solve a series of gruesome murders.
The Colonel's Bequest is set in the early 20's, and we are introduced to Laura Bow, a student studying at Tulane University, right in the heart of New Orleans. While she is studying outside, Laura is asked by her friend Lillian to spend a night at her mansion by the bayou, and get to know the other guests that are staying at the mansion, which she accepts.
There, everybody is having a candlelight dinner when Henri Dijon, the colonel of the house, decides to come in and says that he has decided to share his profits among everybody except Laura when he dies. After the Colonel leaves the dining room, the guests fight over who should get his money. To get away from the fighting, both Laura and Lillian decide to unpack their things in the bedroom in which you two share.
TCB is split up into eight acts that last one hour, which is split into 15-minute increments. Each act requires you to go around the mansion (both indoors and outdoors) and notice anything out of the ordinary, and, more often than not, examine objects more closely with the makeshift magnifying glass you acquire later in the game, as a good detective would do. You also have to find out about each guest in the house. I thought that the easiest way to do this is to ask other guests about them. Too bad that nobody wants to talk to you, so you have to do the dirty work yourself.
Not seen in most adventure games is the opportunity to eavesdrop on conversations, which is necessary for your investigation. Eavesdropping is the best part of the game because not only do you learn how one particular guest has a grudge for another, but you also learn of broken relationships .
Once you finally do something useful, the clock ticks over to the next 15 minutes. A lot can happen during this time, and the further you get in the investigation, the more intense that it becomes. Nearly every act in TCB has you discovering dead bodies in nearly each room of the mansion, and you only discover most bodies when you decide to leave and re-enter the room, which is strange because there isn't even a struggle when you leave.
TCB offers more than one ending, and if you have completed the game, you get to look through your notebook to find out what information that you have missed. To top it off, the game gives you hints on how to find out more. When I completed this game, I found out that I missed four things that prevented me getting to the rank of “Super Sleuth”. You can replay the game, doing the same shit, but focusing more on what you have missed, and see if you have performed better.
What I like about TCB was walking around the mansion to find out the structure and know where every room is, often exploring them and sticking my nose into things where it's none of my business, then walking outside and seeing what is there. This gave me a good feel of what I want my house to look like that I will be living in in the future.
The Bad
As usual,
Sierra added in copy protection into TCB to prevent people copying the game. This time, they ask you to identify a fingerprint using the enclosed magnifying glass and the map that is included in the game box. You must do this right or the game won't let you in. Too bad if you have lost this documentation, or it got eaten by the dog.
TCB may look pretty in all its 16-color glory and the music may be a joy to listen it, but when I am playing any adventure games, I would expect the sound effects in the game to reflect those in real life. For example, if you walk outside the mansion, you see lightning in the distance but the thunder doesn't really sound like thunder at all. More like the same sound playing at different pitches. You get the sound of thunder in
Space Quest IV, but I pretty much liked the lightning sound in the disk version of this game.
The Bottom Line
A well-done murder mystery, created by none other than Roberta Williams. There is no points system like in other Sierra games, where performing an important action or picking up shit awards you with points. TCB instead relies on your detective skills in order to solve the mystery, and this is done by going from room to room and noticing anything unusual, as well as eavesdropping on conversations. Each act gets more intense as you discover more and more dead bodies. Nearly all the guests are murdered, which makes you keep thinking that you are next.
