Murder, She Wrote: Mystery Jigsaw Puzzles

The Good
What appears to be the first-ever licensed game for the popular TV show from 1984-96 is also unfortunately a bit too low-budget to recommend. Sure, one voice actor knows exactly what he's taking part in and amusingly chews the scenery ("Jessica FLETCHAAA?"), while the other obvious amateurs are so bad at giving their cue-card line readings, that you can't help but laugh here and there.

Once you've solved the puzzles, you do get to do a nice bit of deductive reasoning of the crime scene to identify the murderer, but in all four cases, it's just one piece of physical evidence that is used to finger the culprit.

The Bad
Despite acquiring the Murder, She Wrote license, Centron Software wasn't able to get Angela Lansbury herself, and the game feels empty as a result.

Voicing Jessica Fletcher instead is an aspiring real estate agent, who tries and fails to mask her Southern accent and gives an incredibly stilted performance. Most of the gameplay involves the titular jigsaw puzzles, and while there are a few what I assume were decent quality-of-life features for 1996, at the end of the day, it's jigsaw puzzles of lo-res photographs.

The Bottom Line
It ends up all feeling a bit thin and lazy, even within the game's low-budget trappings. Can't help but wonder what this might have been with a bigger budget and a more talented dev team behind it. A full-fledged FMV Murder, She Wrote game with Angela Lansbury's participation might really have worked out well in the mid-90s, even as I'm still skeptical it would have sold well given the show's target demographic was seniors.