PC Magazine, v4(2)

~2 minute read

22 Jan 1985

PC ARCADE: The Plot Thickens

The Witness

Phil Wiswell

The date: February 1, 1938. The time: 8:00 p.m. The place: The Linder estate on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The crime: Murder. The detective: You. The task: Obtain enough proof to arrest and convict the guilty party within 12 hours of game time. You are The Witness.

The Witness is a text-based murder mystery, with no graphics other than those supplied by your imagination, which are magnificent, of course. Every room, person, object, and situation is described by well-written prose, but much is "hidden” from view and can only be uncovered through clever detective work.

Your investigation will be accomplished by means of the keyboard with full-sentence commands. None of that simple LOOK WINDOW stuff here. You can LOOK OUT THE WINDOW, EXAMINE THE WINDOW SILL CAREFULLY, THEN FINGERPRINT IT, and so forth in a seemingly never-ending variety of sentences.

The generous 711-word vocabulary is balanced by the scant number of rooms or locations in the game — only 28. Every command you type counts as only 1 minute of your 12-hour deadline, but the plot is so thickly woven and some clues so difficult to unearth that you may wish you had 12 days! Fortunately, you can ASK DUFFY FOR HELP any time you feel stuck. Sergeant Duffy works for you and will appear on request to give hints or run evidence to the lab for analysis.

As to the depth and flavor of the mystery itself, well, you be the judge:

Freeman Linder has asked you to his house this evening because he received a threatening note from a man named Stiles, who was having an affair with Linder's wife until she committed suicide.

Stiles blames Linder, and Linder, Stiles. Phong, the Asian butler, greets you at the door and ushers you to the living room. Linder and his daughter, Monica, are there. Monica isn't much help when you question her, but she reveals contempt for her father.

Linder wants to talk to you alone and takes you down the hall to his office. Monica leaves to meet her boyfriend at the movies. Linder shows you the note, and you start asking questions. He doesn't seem to be all peaches and cream, but just as your conversation gets interesting, you hear the doorbell. Phong doesn't seem to be answering the door. Suddenly Linder looks at the window and shouts, "Stiles!" A gun is fired, and Linder falls to the floor, dead.

Sergeant Duffy nabs Stiles running from the office window, handcuffs him, and bring him into the living room. You begin a search of the house, but the evidence you turn up doesn't exactly solve everything. To get the truth from a suspect (there are only three: Monica, Phong, and Stiles), you may ASK your suspect about the evidence, SHOW it to him or CONFRONT your suspect with it, or ACCUSE your suspect of a related crime. And if you take the wrong approach, you'll get something like "I don't know anything about it, shamus!"

So whodunit? I found out, but I'm not telling. On PC's scale of 0 to 6, The Witness rates:

This article appeared in
PC Magazine
22 Jan 1985

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