Dōkeshi Satsujin Jiken

August 6, 1932, England. A small traveling circus troupe came to Brighton, an old port town located about 50 miles south of London. On the morning of the opening day, trapeze artist Mary McCaulan discovered clown Charles Dubois dead in his shower wagon and called the police. The cause of death was a stab wound from a knife that reached his heart from the back. The shower had been left running, and most of the blood had been washed away. The Metropolitan Police Department was contacted and decided to dispatch you to investigate the murder.

Dōkeshi Satsujin Jiken is a graphic text adventure game in which you take the role of a skilled detective from Scotland Yard (Metropolitan Police Department) who must explore the circus and nearby town searching for evidence and questioning suspects to solve this case. The commands can be entered in both English and Japanese. In Japanese, commands can be entered in the form of "Noun + Verb" or "Noun + Auxiliary Verb + Verb". Be sure to put a space between the Noun and Verb. It also responds if you switch the Verb and Noun back and forth. For example: "LOOK DOOR", "ミル ドア" and "ドア ミル". When playing the game, you may try to ask suspects questions, but they may not give you clear answers or be uncooperative. In such situations you can use the command "メリー・マッコーラン ジンモンスル" or "マルタン・ルドック ジンモン" to summon them to a separate room at any time, where you can ask them for more details about their alibi (アリバイ キク) and any evidence you have found (ノート ミセル). To navigate through the locations type commands like "NORTH" (キタ) or "SOUTH" (ミナミ). It is also possible to use "2, 4, 6, 8" on the numeric keypad. Move up and down the stairs can be done with "ウエ" (UP) and "シタ" (DOWN).

Saving and loading the game is only done in English, with commands such as "SAVE GAME" and "LOAD GAME".

Compared to the PC-9801 version, the graphics are smaller and the text is double-height on the PC-8801. Background music was added to the X68000 release and the graphics were redrawn in full color and high resolution.