In Sleuth you take the role of an investigator into
a murder. You must identify the murderer and murder
weapon before the murderer grows suspicious and kills
you as well.
At the main menu you may change the character names
by left clicking on the name field and typing in your
characters’ new names. Note that the first four characters
are female, and the last four are male. To begin
click “Play”, to quit click “Quit”.
Once you begin the game all input is performed with
the mouse. The actions that you may take include the
following:
Walk around the house – left click or hold the left
mouse button down where you wish to walk to.
Talk with suspects – left click on the suspect to
initiate dialog. Some of them are less compliant
than others and may not always tell you what you
need to hear the first time, so keep talking to them
to find out their whereabouts at the time of the murder.
The cursor will change to a mouth icon when you are
near enough to the suspect to talk to them.
Examine objects – left click on the object you wish
to examine, the cursor will change to an “eye” when
you are close enough to the object you wish to inspect.
One of the items in the house is the murder weapon,
you must find this before you can accuse a suspect
of the crime.
Assemble suspects – left click on this icon in the
lower right hand corner of the screen once you have
found the murder weapon. This will assemble the
suspects and allow you to accuse someone.
If you take too long to identify the murderer and/or
find the murder weapon the murderer will grow suspicious
and attempt to kill you.
A few notes about the original Sleuth game.
Sleuth was an old ASCII character text based game.
The player was represented by the old smiley face
icon and used the cursor keys to move around a house
made out of various ASCII characters. Interacting
with the environment required the player to type
commands into the game to talk to people and examine
objects. The main difference between my remake and
the original in terms of gameplay is that the player
no longer is required to find a magnifying glass
in order to determine the murder weapon. The original
may still be found, and is shareware, but you will
likely need some kind of “slow your PC down” software
as the “murderer is hunting you” event occurs too
fast on modern PCs. I originally played it on my
XT (4.77 Mhz PC, CGA Graphics, 640k RAM, 20MB HD and
2 5.25″ Floppy Drives.)
This game was coded with Blitz3d. 3d models were
created using Milkshape, lighting was performed
with (g)iles and textures were edited with both
Irfanview and Ultimate Paint. A digital camera
was used to acquire textures for the levels.
Sound was acquired from various free sources
as found on the internet. Lithunwrap 1.3 was used
to set UV coords for the models.
Any similarity to persons living or deceased is
purely coincidental – apart from my cat “Spider” who
has now been immortalized in digital media.
Another thing that really makes Sleuth (Remake) enjoyable for me is how it manages to stay interesting even after playing it multiple times. Many games feel repetitive after a while, but here, the experience still feels fresh because of the small details and different ways you can approach the gameplay. As you continue playing, you naturally start improving and understanding the mechanics better, which makes everything feel more rewarding. I also appreciate the balance the game maintains—it’s not too difficult, but it’s not too easy either. You can play it casually for a short break or spend longer sessions without getting bored. That flexibility is one of the biggest reasons why I keep coming back to Sleuth (Remake). Overall, it’s the kind of game that doesn’t just entertain you for a moment, but actually gives you a consistently enjoyable experience every time you play.
