Case of the Obscene Mural

Copyright : Encief Routines | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

One sunny day you were walking down Nearsdon High Street in a vein attempt to find some real excitement when you were accosted by two men in suspender belts who force you to undertake a mission to paint out the naughty bits.

As with most Quill games, The Case of the Obscene Mural has no graphics at all and only a few snippets of sound most of which are the punchlines to one abstract joke or another – try examining the bucket at the bottom of the well for an example of what I mean!

With very few bells and whistles to distract, The Mural lives or dies based on its parser and storyline and unfortunately itÂ's a painful death.

The parser is nothing short of woeful, seemingly basic commands throwing up the ever unhelpful ‘You CanÂ't!Â' until you blindly stumble across the right combination of words. An example of this is when you attempt to enter the cottage by the back door: OPEN DOOR only brings up the standard response with no indication of why you canÂ't open it. As it turns out, typing UNLOCK DOOR will bring the desired reaction even though you donÂ't seem to have picked up or used a key! It is this type of sloppy programming that brings adventures a bad name and turns a lot of people off.

The parser problems continue throughout the game and are the biggest obstacle in what is otherwise a fairly linear adventure game, albeit with a twisted slant.

As you could probably guess from the introduction, the game takes place in a weird and wonderful world full of sandwich eating penguins and contract wielding lions. The ability to think outside the box is most definitely needed if you hope to make any progress here.

Unfortunately though the “wackiness” of the programme becomes grating after a while particularly as the frustration of the parser problems begins to boil over.

Despite some genuinely amusing moments and a flair for language in its descriptions, the game loses its way pretty early on and never really recovers. Playing the game becomes more like a chore for novice adventurers and for more seasoned players who wear the scars of battle with games as obtuse as The HitchhikerÂ's Guide on their sleeve, itÂ's no real contest and provides little challenge or interest (other than trying to work out exactly what it wants you to input!)

The Case of the Obscene Mural is not the worst adventure game in the world itÂ's just so painfully average to be hardly worth bothering with.