Mortville Manor

Sinclair User

Overall 5/5

John Gilbert 5/5

Publisher: Pyramide Price: £14.95 MONSTROUS MURDER AT MORTVILLE MANOR John Gilbert interviews the suspects in the first QL murder mystery. An urgent telegram, the anguished plea of an old friend and the chance to revisit your childhood home build up the Poe-like atmosphere of Mortville Manor, Pyramide's latest game. The manor has changed since you last saw it. A smooth blanket of snow covers all traces of the past. Why are you here? What draws you back to this dark eerie mausoleum? It's an unusual adventure in both plot and execution. Motive, rather than monsters, make the game, which includes a novel use of window graphics. During play the screen is split into seven windows. The first four deal with game mechanics and show the characters present in your location, a picture of the scene, your commands and the computer responses. The last three display speech from characters, give system commands and display the time. Each window is used in the three game modes - action, discussion and object. Action mode takes you round the manor and grounds. Just type Go and a menu of all adjacent locations appears. Use the cursor keys to move through it and Enter to travel to new locations. Locations are depicted in stunning, full-screen, graphic detail. The QL does not draw them quickly but the detail, colour and atmosphere conveyed make the wait well worth while. You can also look at specific points of a scene by typing Look or Read, and moving an arrow pointer to the feature you want to examine. You'll usually get a few words about atmosphere, such as 'dark' and 'damp', or if you're lucky, a message. CHARACTERS Mortville Manor has a good smattering of characters, all of whom are relations of Julia, the friend who pleaded with you to come to the house, but was murdered before you got there. The discussion mode lets you talk to the house guest, but the vocabulary is limited and your audience unresponsive if you don't ask the right questions. When you want to Talk select one of the characters in the room from a menu at the top of the screen. The display is then split. A portrait of the character is shown on the left side of the screen and their speech is displayed on the right. In talk mode the character says 'Yes' and expects you to answer. If you ask something which is not in the game's dictionary the character answers "Pardon?" and you'll have to repeat the question. Although vocabulary is limited, the instruction manual gives a sketchy list of the important verbs. Unfortunately, the list gives only the first letter of each word followed by dashes. An inventory is provided with the command List and Open takes care of closed drawers and locked cabinets. To investigate a locked object, move the pointer arrow to the drawer or door and press enter. Though the verbs list is a partial secret there's no cover up in the list of nouns. The authors have, however, included some nouns in the list which are not used in the game. You've got to work out if Rape, Kidnapping, Murder and Mistress are important to the inhabitants of the manor. Two of those words are important but one is more innocuous than it seems. SUSPECTS You'll only solve the mystery if you talk to the characters. It's a slow, often monotonous business and the cast don't always co-operate. There's Max, the friendly butler, who shows you to your room, tells you that Julia is dead and gives you the lengthy cast list. Leo is the head of the household and, with Julia now buried, a widower. Leo's sons are Pat and Guy. Pat is the heir to the family fortune and is president of a perfume corporation - well somebody has to be. He's helped by cousin Bob. Guy, is a morose young man who was pre-occupied with his mother's health. Now he's preoccupied with her death and says very little under interrogation. Guy's cousins are Bob, who you've met, and Luc, a shifty-eyed youngster who's married to Ida. Luc lurks around other people's bedrooms and orders you out if he finds you snooping. Speech at Mortville is no easy matter. It's an involved process which quickly has you cursing your hosts and wanting to go back to your dusty little detective agency. First, you must use Talk mode and the cursor driven menu to pick your subject who appears in high resolution, on the left side of the screen. A large speech bubble on the right-hand side logs everything the character says. For starters, try asking everyone their occupations. You must paraphrase every question you want to ask. So, if quizzing Guy, instead of "What is your occupation?" you must use Guy's occupation. Strange but effective. OBJECTS To a detective objects are as important as people - we're talking about Sherlock Holmes here, not Adam Dalgliesh. There are plenty of clues scattered around and you'll enter object mode as soon as you stumble on the first one of them. You already have the telegram and a revolver in your pocket - for protection - and to solve the mystery of Mortville you'll need to explore every room of the manor to discover the important objects. It's a hard slog but, coupled with the information gleaned from characters and the furnishings in their bedrooms, you'll suss out the masterly plot to usurp the family fortune and heritage. Edgar Allan Poe and the inhabitants of Usherland would be pleased with this plot. SCENE OF THE CRIME? Mortville Manor is a show house for the mystery contained in Pyramide's latest game. It contains all the element for the solution of the puzzle but is not, literally, the scene of the crime. The game pulls off a difficult conjuring trick. It has all the hall marks of a classic who-dunnit but you must realise that the solution lies in how the characters live and react. For instance, what objects does the head of the household surround himself with? What will he tell you about other characters. Pyramide's adventure is for stickers who like a good mystery and are willing to play for months to get into the game.

ATTIC Attic: Full of Interesting - if not relevant - bric-a-brac. INACESSIBLE Inaccessible: secrets you'd rather not know anything about. THE WELL The well (at back of manor): Deep and dark. The only place of interest outside the manor. Don't wander too far or you could be hit by an avalanche.

Character Mode

FRONT OF MANOR Landing: Long corridor containing character's bedrooms. Enter them using the arrow cursor positioned over the selected door and Open. Don't hang around too long or you'll be accosted by Luc.

Mortville Manor

PLAN OF MORTVILLE Dining Room: Breakfast at 7am, dinner at 12am. If you Wait aroundfor an hour characters will wander in and out. Look around while you wait to interview family members. Hall: First room you see when you enter the manor. Max hangs out here. Your bedroom: Place of sanctuary and rest. You can Sleep here until morning. Kitchen: Plenty to Look at. Max can be found here. Cellar: A dank place. Strange symbols in pillar supports. Bureau: Papers, papers everywhere. There are blocks to Read and Leo uses this as his research room.

The Dining Room