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Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit

by Ian Ball and Marcus Young

Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction
1997

About the Story

For Madame L'Estrange, contacts with beings from the ghost world are everyday routine. This case, however, is not. Did Dr. Taverner really kill himself? If not, who did it? And what about that beast?
[--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue]


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

SPAG
Whoever did the writing here did a LOT of it; there are several situations where many full screens of text go by between inputs. Often, those scenes include fairly complicated dialogue by your character, handy in a way--since this game certainly isn't up to much in the way of parsing input--but also a bit destructive of the interactive element. Most of the characters have a two- or three-screen spiel to tell you, and once you've found that, you're generally safe moving on to the next character; the authors did not conceal the relevant information under a variety of topics. That speeds things along, I guess, though it does make the whole thing feel mechanical.
-- Duncan Stevens
See the full review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit (hereafter called MmeLTS) is a frustrating game, because it builds such a slipshod house upon a very promising foundation. The game is riddled with what I would guess are at least a hundred grammar and spelling errors. It flipflops seemingly at random between past and present tense. It can't seem to decide whether to address the player in the second or third person. It consistently causes a fatal crash in at least one interpreter (WinFrotz). All this would be easy to evaluate as simply the product of incompetent authors if it didn't take place in a game that starts with an interesting premise, executes a number of great interface decisions, and manages to unroll a complicated mystery plot along the way. As it is, MmeLTS is a great mess that could've been a contender if only it had been written with more care.
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Page Update History

  v.5: 05-May-2022 23:51 - Paul O'Brian (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed external review links
v.4: 15-Jun-2013 12:56 - Edward Lacey
Changed external review links
v.3: 14-May-2008 14:05 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.2: 11-Mar-2008 17:49 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.1: 16-Oct-2007 01:49 - IFDB
Created page