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The Witness (1983)
Released
Infocom's 1983 murder case is the compact place to try this style. A small cast moves around the Linder property while your questions and searches advance the night; being somewhere at the right time can expose what a suspect would rather keep hidden. Most investigative actions spend a minute, with some careful examinations taking longer. Use SAVE and RESTORE to revisit a promising interval. It is more manageable than Deadline, but a wrong arrest or a missed piece of evidence still matters.
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Deadline (1982)
7.9/10on IGDB
Released
Twelve fictional hours turn an apparently settled death into a demanding exercise in observation. The Robner household carries on while you search, arrange analysis and compare what people say with where they actually go. An important opportunity can pass while you pursue a different lead, so an exploratory run and a notebook of times are useful. Read the supplied case documents before starting, and keep early SAVE files for RESTORE. There is room to think at each prompt, but little reassurance that you have already missed something essential.
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Suspect (1984)
Released
Being the person the police may arrest gives the costume party a sharper urgency. You must move among guests, follow their movements and preserve a convincing account of the crime before other people and the arriving investigation complicate the scene. Time advances with commands, so deciding whom to follow costs opportunities elsewhere. SAVE, RESTORE and RESTART are the dependable recovery tools. Pick this after The Witness if you want a busier social clock and can accept replaying a section to catch an encounter you missed.
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Corruption (1988)
Released
The most valuable thing in this City of London thriller may be knowing who will meet whom, and when. Each turn spends a minute while other characters go about their business; FOLLOW and WAIT UNTIL make surveillance an active plan. ASK and TELL also track information, so remembering a fact from a previous attempt does not always count as discovering it in the current one. Save before a tight sequence and retain earlier positions. The corporate conspiracy is rewarding for a patient note-taker, with unforgiving missed steps and old parser conventions to match.
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Make It Good (2009)
Released
A moving household and a troubled detective make this a richer, less comfortable successor to Infocom's small-cast mysteries. The afternoon advances as you investigate, and other people's actions can change the situation you hoped to examine. Timing is tangled up with how you handle the case, rather than serving as a simple final countdown. The help menu, suggested conversation TOPICS and navigation commands ease the parser work; SAVE and UNDO support experiments. Expect difficult inference and a morally uneasy story, even with those conveniences.
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Moonmist (1986)
7.0/10on IGDB
Released
A haunted Cornish castle offers a gentler-looking introduction to watching the night unfold. Dinner, guests' movements and later appearances make waiting and choosing where to investigate meaningful; TIME reports the hour, and the story pauses while you consider your next command. Four colour-selected variations change the mystery, so clues from one should not be assumed to solve another. SAVE and RESTORE let you return to an earlier part of the evening. It is approachable by Infocom standards, with treasure-hunt riddles alongside the detective work.
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Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels (1988)
Released
Watson has forty-eight fictional hours to recover the stolen jewels, following riddles through Victorian London while some opportunities depend on the time of day. This is a trail of literary and physical puzzles more than a household of suspects to interrogate. WAIT UNTIL helps with timing, and the built-in HINT menu can reveal increasingly direct help. SAVE and RESTORE remain useful; UNDO depends on the interpreter's support. Keep the supplied material handy, and choose this for a clock-bound Holmes excursion rather than a freely argued accusation.
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1893: A World's Fair Mystery (2003)
Released
The fairground's scale turns time management into route planning. Most commands spend a minute, opening hours affect useful visits, and meals and sleep take larger chunks of an investigation that can run across the week. Photographs and the supplied maps help you keep your bearings, but this is a substantial exploration commitment. The HELP system, WAIT UNTIL, SAVE and RESTORE give practical support, and the game supports multiple turns of UNDO. A good choice when you want to plan a detective's working days rather than optimise one tense evening.
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