Your Sinclair


Murder Hunt

Author: Mike Gerrard
Publisher: Bodkin
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #10

Murder Hunt

Don't forget the small software houses, you readers scream at me regularly. Okay, I won't, I won't, I scream back at every opportunity, as I consider them to be very important, but just occasionally they have to take a back seat to the likes of Level 9 and Scott Adams.

This text-only Quilled game turns you into Father Paddy Murphy of St Ivan the Terrible's Church, with the task of tracking down a homicidal maniac who's escaped from the nearby nick. Watch out that the murderer doesn't throw any Domestos at you, or that would be a bleach of the priest.

First victim should obviously be me, after a joke like that, but instead it's the gravedigger, upon whose body is a ring with the intriguing inscription "George- Agnus". Should that be Agnes? I sincerely hope it isn't meant to be Angus. There are also lots of little faults with the game. EXAMINE anything that's examinable and you get the appropriate message plus the default message "I can see nothing out of the ordinary!" A signpost you come across tells you Keggly is to the west, but travel east and you're in Keggly's main street. One description also tells you that you see a lake to the west, but take the south-east exit and there you are by the lake, west taking you up a hill.

Too many of the dreaded sudden death routines as well, no less than three in the first twenty or thirty locations. That's a shame as I liked the general 'feel' of the adventure, and some trouble has been taken with the text and with making the locations believable. Even at this price you have to compete with the likes of Firebird and Mastertronic, and Murder Hunt doesn't quite do that.

Mike Gerrard

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