Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit

by Ian Ball and Marcus Young

Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction
1997

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A mid-to-long 90's parser game with great muder story but some bugs, February 3, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: IF Comp 2015

This game is a murder mystery with a twist. The game is written in third person, with the protagonist being Madame L'Estrange, spiritualist detective.

The focus here is the story, and it's what got the game nominated for a '97 XYZZY Best Story award. You travel to various locations and get big text dumps spinning a marvelous tale of murder, Australian animals, and the occult.

The rest of the game is a bit spotty. There are numerous typos and spotty implementation. Sometimes you talk to people automatically when you see them; you almost always have to 'ask about' something even if you want to tell, except for one spot in the game where you have to 'tell' several things. A lot of guess-the-verb, but you can do most of the game on your own before using the walkthrough (you don't get any points at all until you're about 3/4 of the way through the game). Even the inventory has a typo with a misplaced colon.

Overall, a great game if you're into a good story, which I am.

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<blank>, November 26, 2015 - Reply
Amazing you got to finish it. I ran into a game-stopping bug at the morgue. The game kept crashing on me when I tried to perform a certain necessary action.
MathBrush, November 26, 2015 - Reply
I was using Gargoyle on a windows 7 computer, if that helps. Saving crashed the game, so I just had to hang on and use the walkthrough.
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