Review of Sleuth

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Wine

Sleuth Review
By Wine on 19 July 2009


Pros: Simple, yet engaging. Extra locations (castle and town) add to replay value. An excellent example of how less can be more.

Cons: Sometimes errors in names are unnoticeable until it's too late. No spaces allowed in names. Original sound effects are missing.

The best MS-DOS game you've likely never played!

Perhaps it's nostalgia, but I rated "Sleuth" a 5.0 overall. I lost my MS-DOS copy of this game long ago and was delighted to find a remake of it in YoYoGames. And what a remake! It is faithful to the original in nearly every way.

The interface, graphics and story/premise are simple yet brilliant. A lot has been done with little.

If I recall right, there was at least one sound that would play when the murderer trapped you in a room and killed you... the iconic slasher knife theme from Psycho! If there were other sounds in the game, I don't remember them. The addition of sound would be an improvement but is not necessary.

(And for reviews on YoYoGames, I wish you could select "Not Applicable" for games that don't have sound. Instead, you're forced to rate a game lower than it otherwise would be because of it -- but now that there are sounds, I've altered my star reviews accordingly.)

Extra locations are very much appreciated and add even more replay value to the game. I wish there was a way a player could add even more, but hopefully EjM will release a newer version with more places. Expanding the game to include other commands, descriptions, and humor would be cool.

Sometimes I had problems with the names I entered. If I entered a new name over one that I already typed, a space can appear after the name and before punctuation (such as in the sentence "Detective Wine , please come here."wink thus irking me because I'm a bit of a stickler for correct punctuation. I think it has something to do with the fact that you have to hit the space bar to start the game, so if the cursor is still on a name, you'll add a space. A bit annoying, but not a major inconvenience. Perhaps a separate button to click in order to start the game would help.

I'm hoping that more games like this are released. "Sleuth" shows how limits (in the MS-DOS version, it was an issue of file size) can spark creative genius. And this game is definitely a textbook case of this. I'm not certain what other MS-DOS games would benefit from a remake but "Sleuth" is deserving. Everyone can now enjoy it -- even if the title is misspelled. I think that the original was misspelled too, so a nice homage is paid to it.

5/5

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