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If I can't have you, no one can..., November 22, 2023Artful Deceit is an old school parser, made for the Commodore 64 machine (or a C64 emulator), where you are a detective hired to solve a murder, one the victim had been expecting. As the game has specific commands, reading the manual is highly recommended before starting the game.
I managed to find some clues on my own, before using the walkthrough. The game crashed* about 2/3rd through the game.
*not sure if it was because of the emulator or the game itself.
I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to parsers, especially the old types, and my frame of reference on what is or should be in an old-school parser rest essentially on what other people say about certain games. There are old-school and old-school parsers... like the ones who will only run on 8-bit machines that haven't been around since the 90s. This was the first time I dared to try out a game like this.
Even with an emulator, this was honestly an experience just loading the game and faffing about. There's something quite charming about those retro-style games (even the cluckiness of it or the loading of the command added to it), a style you can emulate visually with the likes of Adventuron nowadays. But it feels different with games like this one - sort of keeping some traditional alive in a way.
Aside from the novelty of it all, which was quite a lot for me, the game itself is a corny who-dunnit murder mystery, with a bit of a cliché revelation (but in a good way, it fits the vibe). There are some neat puzzles with hinting items close by, the ANALYZE mechanic was fun (I did send the other detective on wild goose-chases...), and I was glad to find I didn't need to read some of the clues on the tiny screen. But it wasn't too long or too large, it was just enough to solve the mystery, and seemed large enough to not feel unsatisfied.
But old-parsers also means frustrating commands, especially when trying to interact with some elements (you need to type out the adjectives, all of them) or conversing with the suspects (I barely managed to get a response from them). It's not always quite clear when an item can be open or not (like that painting) or why you have to take some objects to read them (but that might be an old-parser thing).
But the thing that frustrated me the most was the maze-like environment, especially in the manor. There are so many empty rooms where there is nothing to do... It was a bit disorienting at times. Even if the map helped a bit, I still think there were too many empty rooms...
I'm not against trying other games like this one in the future (hopefully they don't crash on me...). This was fun and new!