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Deadline is an interactive fiction computer game published by Infocom in 1982. Written by Marc Blank, it was one of the first murder mystery interactive fiction games. Like most Infocom titles, Deadline was created using ZIL, which allowed the easy porting of the game to popular computer platforms of the time such as the Apple II and the Commodore 64.
Story The player's character in Deadline is an unnamed police detective, summoned to a sprawling Connecticut estate to investigate the apparent suicide of wealthy industrialist Marshall Robner. At first, it seems a very straightforward case: the body was discovered in the library, which had been locked from the inside, and the cause of death was an overdose of his prescribed antidepressants. But something just doesn't feel right. Could someone have killed Robner for his money? Did he make an enemy through his business dealings? Or was there some other motive? With the able assistance of level-headed Sgt. Duffy, the player has twelve hours to solve the case before it is closed forever. The suspects, who walk around the estate pursuing their own agendas during your investigation, are: New commands were implemented to suit the game's detective theme: the player can accuse or even arrest any of the suspects at any time. A well-timed accusation can cause an unnerved suspect to reveal previously concealed information. For an arrest to stick, however, the player must possess hard evidence of the three basics: motive, method and opportunity. Without these, the game ends with a description of why the presumed culprit was released. The standard examine and search commands are present, of course, but the player can also fingerprint objects or ask the invaluable Sgt. Duffy to analyze them. Feelies When writing this game, Blank couldn't include all of the game's text in the limited 80KB of disk space. Working with a newly hired advertising agency, Infocom created the first feelies for this game: extra items that gave more information than could be included within the digital game itself. These materials were of very high quality and their inclusion with a computer game was unprecedented. Critics and fans hailed Infocom's pioneering move as lushed over their high quality and the immersiveness they added to the game. The feelies included: These materials were very difficult for end-users to copy or otherwise reproduce. They included information which was essential to completing the game. So, as a side effect, the feelies acted as a deterrent to software piracy. Infocom thus started including feelies in their subsequent releases, though not every game required the use of the included feelies. Notes Deadline was a game of many "firsts" for Infocom: their first mystery game, their first non-Zork game, and the game that started their tradition of feelies. The amount of NPCs and the parser's complexity were also considered revolutionary at the time of the game's release. Infocom gave Deadline a difficulty rating of "Expert", largely due to the abundance of evidence and false leads to be sorted out within a short timespan. Working titles during the game's development included Was It Murder? and Who Killed Marshall Robner? A bug in the program made it possible to follow a certain set of instructions that resulted in Ms. Dunbar committing suicide while another Ms. Dunbar continued to walk around the house. Upon hearing the gunshot fired by the now-dead Ms. Dunbar, the alive version of Ms. Dunbar executed her AI script faithfully and ran into the room to see what had happened. This led to an amusing exchange with the game parser: >examine dunbar Which Ms. Dunbar do you mean: Ms. Dunbar, or the body of Ms. Dunbar? See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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