Why (almost) No One Solves this Game

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Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
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OneShortEye usually goes fast. But for his latest video retrospective, adventure gaming's speedrun extraordinaire slows down, takes his time, and takes us DEEP inside a beloved Sierra classic that he considers a "beautiful mess of a game."

Released in 1992, a few years after The Colonel's Bequest introduced the world to Laura Bow, The Dagger of Amon Ra sends the young journalism graduate to New York City in 1926 to pursue her first big story: the theft of the titular Egyptian blade from the Leyendecker Museum. There's an eclectic cast of characters, each with suspicious motives, but the culprit may well end up being the last person standing when the museum is locked down and the bodies start piling up. The player's task is not only to figure out whodunit but why – and prove it.

It all sounds straightforward enough for a compelling mystery, and writer/designer Bruce Balfour certainly provided that, along with a surprising number of laughs and another strong turn by the plucky female protagonist. But this is a VERY complex game with a lot of moving parts – often literally – which can lead to no end of potential frustration. It can also be "janky" at times, with erratic pacing, narrative inconsistencies, and more dead ends than there are dead people. Finishing the game is difficult enough, but getting the best of four possible endings requires leaps of logic we're told not to make. It seems like a nearly impossible task, especially when the game's own handbook is guaranteed to lead you astray!

OneShortEye will tell us how to do it, of course, but this is no mere walkthrough, as he once again meticulously deconstructs the game's fun and foibles in wonderfully specific ways. He'll tell us, for example, why carelessly crossing roads and porcupine quills (most improbably) can be deadly, while visiting the docks is not, despite repeated warnings to the contrary. He explains why the artwork sometimes curiously seems missing, how many "script seconds" (not be confused with real seconds) Laura has before being devoured by beetles, and why the voice of stevedore Steve Dorian (ba dum tss!) sounds unnaturally unlike his actor, Josh Mandel. And speaking of staff actors, just who IS playing the role of the flapper in the women's lounge?

This is just scratching the surface, of course, so settle in for nearly four hours of sheer Laura Bow retrospective goodness from a master of his craft. Discover unheard hidden dialogue, avoid nasty soft locks, and learn the differences between releases that make the original floppy version arguably better than its CD successor. All this and so much more from OneShortEye, about a game filled with cults, riddles, ethnically dodgy accents, and mummified teddy bears, seamlessly melding "historical accuracy, absurdity, and sarcasm" into an enduring (and enduringly hair-pulling) classic more than thirty years later.

OneShortEye is part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network, a collective of talented, dedicated content producers who work entirely independently but have joined forces to promote each other’s efforts. All opinions expressed belong solely to the original creators.