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McMurphy's Mansion - Review

Review by Canalboy

Ratings

Parser/Vocabulary
6
Atmosphere
5
Cruelty
Polite
Puzzles
6
Overall
3
Written:
02-11-2024
Last edited:
Platform:
PC

I have always liked the "search a mansion to claim your inheritance" style of text adventure encompassing the whole gamut from Hollywood Hijinx to The Mulldoon Legacy and I had meant to try this DOS and C64 effort for some time. I wish now that I had essayed the C64 version as the DOS effort elicits a number of bugs, both harmless and game crashing.

There are no fatal mistakes in this game (beyond the bugs) as any potential moves merely earn a rebuke regarding your lack of adroitness.

One has to find twelve gold bars and solve the triggered end game to claim one's $10,000,000 dollar reward. I arrived at the mysterious Durham Airport in Scotland (erm, Durham isn't in Scotland and doesn't have an airport but we'll gloss over that) and was greeted by the butler. I also encountered a winsome French maid called Gisele who promised to meet me afterwards but never did.

There are many bugs here that both crash the game and produce weird parser responses. Dorothy Millard's solution doesn't work for the puzzle in the kitchen.

I gave up in the end as too many bugs made the game unplayable but if the untried Commodore 64 trope plays more smoothly then the game is worth a play as the shell is very good.




Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 6/10)

The vocabulary is adequate and the two word parser ok except the surreal responses to prosaic input which occur sporadically, viz. TURN CUBE can sometimes produce "Everything is now yellow" or "Such language!"

The game randomly crashes when entering the mansion from the grounds complaining of a missing mcmurphy.dat file and some directions take you to the wrong location.

Atmosphere (Rating: 5/10)

The location descriptions are quite atmospheric but again going NE in the grounds can take you to a window ledge - another bug. Very few spelling and grammar mistakes or typos.

Cruelty (Rating: Polite)

Putatively impossible to make unwinnable but the bugs override this altruistic feature.

Puzzles (Rating: 6/10)

Quite clever when they work. The solution to the puzzle in the kitchen would not work for me but this is probably another error.

Overall (Rating: 3/10)

If the bugs are ironed out a definite seven. AS it is unfinishable I can only offer three.