Murder at the Aero Club

Baf's Guide

A mystery that made me dream of how wonderful our world would be if all criminals were like the murderer in this game: their utter inability to hide or destroy crucial evidence would make the work of the police so trivial we'd soon have them all locked in. Only one thing overshadows this idyll somewhat: the vision of Agatha Christie begging on the church-porch. Speaking seriously, while Murder at the Aero Club certainly would fail entirely as a detective story, it doesn't necessarily as a text adventure. Some of its aspects are quite amusing, and the puzzles are logical, although not outstanding. Considering its shortness, this work could be put into the "mildly recommended" category, although you certainly don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to beat it.

-- Valentine Kopteltsev

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

My first clue was a line in the banner: "(With apologies to all real-life characters and Government organisations upon which this is based!)" Do I detect a faint scent of "in-joke game"? Of course, the dead giveaway came when I encountered a character with the same name as the author. So assuming that "Penny Wyatt" isn't a pseudonym, or that it's the pseudonym of somebody who really does belong to an Australian aero club, I'm going to venture the hypothesis that this is one of those games where the author implements some familiar setting and characters, drapes a little concept around them, and then releases it to the world. It's a close cousin of the "implement your house" and "implement your job" games: the "implement your hangout" game.

The vast majority of the time, games like this are vastly entertaining to the lucky few who are acquainted with the people and places represented, and irritatingly baffling to the rest of us. Murder At The Aero Club is no exception, though its competent prose and the presence of an actual story (albeit minimal) render it a cut above many.