Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest

A murder mystery, taking place at a spooky plantation in the 1920's. College student Laura Bow is invited by her friend Lillian to come along to what has to be the most dysfunctional family gathering ever. The only problem is, various members of the family begin to mysteriously disappear! Done in the traditional Sierra adventure game style.



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This first game in the Laura Bow series created by Roberta Williams using SCI0. It uses 4-bit color (16 colors) and a typing interface. It's set in the 1920s, which gives the game a unique, Art Deco style. The game's main character is Laura Bow, a Tulane University student who is invited by her friend Lillian to spend a weekend at the decaying sugar plantation of Colonel Dijon. When the reclusive, childless Colonel gathers his quarrelsome relatives for a reading of his will, tensions explode and the bickering leads to murder. Throughout the game, Laura remains stranded on the island surrounded by suspects and potential victims in a classical Agatha Christie manner. All Laura can do is observe the family and witness murders. Apart from this, there is also an optional, secondary backplot concerning a hidden treasure. The game will be finished no matter how Laura solves the puzzles, since the score is expressed by the means of a clock and time advances by a quarter-hour when new plot elements are witnessed. A murder happens every 1 hour. This is the only Sierra game which is more character-driven than puzzle-driven. Although solving puzzles is crucial for obtaining a high score, discovering information about the characters' backgrounds and their relationships with each other is more important to the game. It features two different endings, a right one and a wrong one, based on your final action. The game closes with a detective rating, dependant on how much of the mystery you actually solved.