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Release: October, 1989.
Developer: Sierra On-Line, Inc.
Publisher: Sierra On-Line, Inc.
Genre: Adventure.
Perspective: 3rd-person (Other).
Gameplay: Graphic adventure.
Setting: Interwar.
Narrative: Detective / mystery.
Director: Chris Iden, Roberta Williams.
Writing / Dialogue / Story: Roberta Williams.
Executive Producer: Ken Williams.
Design: Jacqueline Austin.
Programming: Chris Hoyt, Chris Iden.
Music: Ken Allen.
Sound: Ken Allen.
Animation by: Douglas Herring.
Graphics/Artwork: Douglas Herring, Gerald Moore.
Interpreter / Development System: Corinna Abdul, Pablo Ghenis, Stuart Goldstein, Robert Eric Heitman, Jeff Stephenson.
Documentation by: Marti McKenna.
Platforms: DOS, Windows, Amiga, Atari ST.
Distributed on: 3.5" and 5.25" Floppy Disks in same package.
The Colonel's Bequest is a detective mystery adventure game very similar in style and presentation to Agatha Christie's novels.
The year is 1925. Laura Bow is a young student attending the Tulane University in New Orleans, and an aspiring journalist. Her friend Lillian
invites her to spend a weekend in a mansion belonging to her uncle, Colonel Henri Dijon, a veteran of Spanish-American war and the owner of a large, but
decaying sugar plantation on a secluded island. During the dinner Laura meets members of Lillian's extended family and their alleged friends. As Laura begins
to explore the mansion and talk to its inhabitants, she unravels old family feuds and realizes some of those people - if not all - have their own plans and
schemes. It all gets much worse when strange accidents and murders start to occur. Laura must investigate those gruesome events and find the culprit.
The game world is confined to the island and consists of numerous interconnected areas, such as various rooms in the mansion, garden, smaller structures, etc.
The player is free to explore much of the game's world right from the beginning, with only a few areas being initially inaccessible. The game's clock advances
a quarter of an hour each time Laura performs an action pertaining to the plot. Characters have their own schedules and clues are often obtained by discretely
observing their actions.
The player interacts with the environment by typing verb-object command combinations (such as "Look Garden", "Talk Colonel", etc.). Some of the most common
actions have keyboard shortcuts. The gameplay largely focuses on exploration. Much of the plot stays in the background and can be uncovered by talking to the
characters about various topics (mostly other people). There is an inventory and a few puzzles, but they play a much less prominent role in the game compared
to other adventures by Sierra. It is possible to complete the game without having discovered the entire plot or even without having identified the murderer.
There is no scoring system, but after the game is finished the player is given a detective ranking and told about story branches or other elements he might
have missed.
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