The Witness (1983 video game)

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The Witness
Macintosh
ReleaseRelease 13: May 24, 1983

Release 18: September 10, 1983
Release 20: November 19, 1983
Release 21: December 8, 1983

Release 22: September 24, 1984
Genre(s)Adventure, Interactive fiction
Mode(s)Single-player

The Witness is an

murder mystery. The Witness was written in the ZIL language for the Z-machine
, which allowed it to be released simultaneously on many systems. It is Infocom's seventh game.

Plot

The beginning of the game

The game takes place in Cabeza Plana, a quiet and

Los Angeles, California
in February 1938.

Freeman Linder, a local millionaire, has begged the police for protection from a man named Stiles. The player's character is a detective assigned one evening to check out the wealthy man's claims: is Linder seriously in danger or just another rich eccentric? Before the player can decide, a window explodes and Linder collapses, dead.

The case of possible harassment has just become a murder, with the player as the only witness. With the help of Sgt. Duffy (last seen in Deadline), the player has until sunrise to solve the mystery. Motive, method, and opportunity must all be established to secure a solid arrest and the optimal ending. There are two ways for the player to die.[2]

Development

Enjoying playing

Sears catalog and researched contemporary slang; the radio plays the programs that aired on the day the game occurs in.[3]

Release

Included in each package of The Witness were the following supplementary items:

Reception

PC Magazine gave the game 11.0 points out of 12. It stated that the quality of the text parser and intricate plot balanced the "scant" 28 locations in the game.[7]

The Witness received the award for "1984 Best Computer Adventure" at the 5th annual

text adventures were "passe" that the game had "run away with the Arcade Award" just as Infocom's previous text adventure, Deadline, had the previous year.[8]
: 28 

References

  1. ^ Hague, James. "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers".
  2. ^ "Infocom Scoreboard" (PDF). The New Zork Times. 3 (2): 3. Spring 1984.
  3. ^ Dyer, Richard (1984-05-06). "Masters of the Game". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 1997-06-07.
  4. ^ Arrants, Steve (December 1983). "Infocom does it again ... and again". Creative Computing. p. 153. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  5. ^ Gutman, Dan (December 1983). "The Witness". Compute!. pp. 182, 184. Retrieved 30 October 2013.
  6. ^ Barker, Dennis (March 1984). "The Witness". BYTE. p. 301. Retrieved 17 January 2015.
  7. ^ Wiswell, Phil (1985-01-22). "The Plot Thickens". PC Magazine. p. 245. Retrieved 28 October 2013.
  8. ISSN 0147-8907
    .

External links
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