~4 minute readBYTE GAME GRID
Deadline
The eternal dilemma of the reviewer of mysteries is how to discuss the plot without revealing the ending. But that's not a problem with Deadline, a fascinating new program from Infocom, the creators of the Zork family of adventure games.
Deadline puts you in the role of the detective, plants you firmly in the cliché-ridden trappings of a thirties murder mystery, and challenges you to discover the culprit. Naturally, this involves your wandering in and around a large mansion, the scene of the recent murder -- apparently by poisoning -- of the master of the house.
In classic adventure style, the game begins when you arrive at the front gate of the property, where you are given a typically elaborate description of your immediate surroundings. But Deadline is quite a different animal from traditional adventures. For one thing, it's much less deterministic. Your actions have definite, if sometimes unpredictable, effects on the various characters who inhabit the mansion (all are suspects, incidentally). In fact, if you get too nosy in your clue-hunting, you may be threatened or, in some cases, killed. In these respects Deadline resembles the other programs in the Zork family of adventure games.
Deadline's radical departure from the prototypical mystery is that it has more than one ending. The denouement depends on your actions and possibly on randomizing factors I haven't detected yet.
As the detective, you have a varied repertoire of strategies. Among other things, you can gather objects, analyze them for fingerprints at the lab, test them for a specific substance, arrest people (for that you should wait until you're quite sure of yourself!), ask people to tell you about each other or about objects you show them, accuse and even kill a suspect in the event that one threatens your life, wait for someone to arrive at a particular place, and so on. You can also use relatively complicated sentences. For instance, "Put the wrapper, the ticket, and the nail file on the dresser" is syntactically acceptable.
The game takes 12 hours (Deadline hours, that is) to play. You begin at 8 a.m. and have until 8 p.m. to solve the mystery. As with other adventure-style games, you can save your position at any time if you want to restart the game and try a new approach. One thing I discovered (and it's not giving too much away) is that in many cases events in the game occur at prearranged times. For instance, a phone that rings at 9:06 a.m. on your first pass through the game will probably ring at 9:06 in future passes - something to keep in mind if you miss an opportunity during the first pass (a common occurrence, I assure you).
Philosophically, I found I was playing the game like an old detective inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. And like Poe's character, I concentrated on the myriad clues rather than the characters, But the real key to success in this game, as I discovered, is to monitor both the clues and the characters with equal diligence, And watch out for red herrings: there are many more of them than I initially suspected.
Deadline's documentation is useful, complete, and even witty -- surely a rarity in personal computer software. With its clever, dossier-like folder for printed material, 8 by 10 glossy of the scene of the crime, actual plastic packet of crushed tablets "found near the body," and the like, I felt like Lord Peter Wimsey arriving at the police commissioner's office to pick up the official file. A mystery addict couldn't ask for more.
Deadline is more than mere escapism, however; it's not for the player who prefers vicarious to actual experience, You're the one who'll do the work, and that includes solving the case, But in this case the work is great fun.
I do have one quibble: the beginning Deadline player deserves a few clues at the outset. After all, this is a very tricky game, For starters, it would be helpful to be present at the reading of the will. Rather than risk infuriating potential players by continuing, I have printed some pertinent clues upside down at the bottom of the page. Play the game for a few hours (real time, that is) before you glance at the clues, They don't give away too much, but they'll spare you a lot of make-work.
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
