The Witness (1983 video game)

Plot

The game is set in Cabeza Plana, a fictional suburb of Los Angeles, in February 1938. Freeman Linder, a millionaire, has requested police protection from a man named Stiles. The player, a detective, is sent to investigate Linder's claims.

Before a conclusion is reached, a window explodes and Linder collapses dead. The player becomes the only witness to the murder. There are two ways for the player to die.

Reception

Creative Computing called The Witness another fine game from Infocom, comparing it to working with Philip Marlowe, Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey. Dan Gutman in Compute! praised the game's feelies and period-accurate prose, and noted that the addition of Duffy avoided the tendency of Deadline to bog down. He cautioned that only those who enjoyed intricate puzzles would like it. BYTE agreed on the game's difficulty and stated that author Stu Galley emulated the hard-boiled mystery genre style without mocking it, with quick but thorough descriptions.

The magazine praised the feelies and concluded that the game was what Sherlock Holmes would call a three-pipe problem. PC Magazine gave it 11.0 out of 12 points, stating that the quality of the text parser and intricate plot balanced the scant 28 locations. The Witness won the 1984 Best Computer Adventure award at the 5th annual Arkie Awards, where judges warned that those who thought text adventures were passe should note that the game had run away with the Arcade Award, as Deadline had the previous year.

Did You Know?

• Stu Galley enjoyed playing Deadline more than Zork, which led him to write another mystery game as its counterpart.
• While Deadline is set in the eastern United States on a summer day, Witness is set on the West Coast at night.
• For authenticity, Galley obtained a 1930s Sears catalog and researched contemporary slang; the radio plays the programs that aired on the day the game occurs.