Murder at the Manor

The local squire has been murdered by a thief in search of the squire's hoard of gold coins. Making good his escape, the murderer has scattered about the countryside pieces of a page containing the combination number of the squire's safe which still contains a vital clue. The object of the game is to find the combination, the clue and the identity of the murderer.

Murder at the Manor is a text adventure with graphics where the player inputs all actions via verb-noun commands with the keyboard to interact with the surroundings, such as " OPEN DOOR". To navigate through the locations in the game use "(N)ORTH", "(S)OUTH", "(E)AST", "(W)EST". A compass showing the possible exits is presented at top left.

The command "SEARCH" will show if there any objects around whilst "PICK" and "DROP" can be used to manipulate them. To redescribe locations, type "VIEW" and type "HELP" to get hints. "(I)NVENTORY" will list the objects the player is carrying.

Strength is displayed when the player types "SCORE" along with the percentage of locations so far visited and the time of day. Walking around the village or fighting with any characters will deplete the strength and eating any food will restore it. Any character (except the policeman) may decide to pick a fight. The player can defend himself with "FIGHT" if he has the right object to fight with.

The local villagers can be asked to give clues as to the murderer's whereabouts and identity with a sentence like "ASK POLICEMAN". The replies are entered in the notebook and can be redisplayed onscreen with "READ NOTES".

Each time the player starts a new game, a different person is chosen as the murderer. “SAVE" to save current game progress, "LOAD" to load a saved game, and "QUIT" aborts the current game.