Accuse

An interactive fiction by David A. Wheeler (2007) - the Inform 7 source text

"Accuse" by "David A. Wheeler"

The story title is "Accuse".
The story author is "David A. Wheeler".
The story headline is "A small replayable puzzle".
The story genre is "Mystery".
The release number is 4.
The story description is "This is a small puzzle/game where you must determine who murdered someone, with what, and where, by making a series of accusations. The solution, suspect placement, and weapon placement is random each time. It's a fun little puzzle on its own (murder mysteries are still a common genre), and perhaps more importantly it's a small demonstration/trial of Inform7's new English-language syntax (which the author wanted to try out). This is a different game than Clue/Cluedo: it has different game rules, goals, and names. For example, each accusation must be completely different from the previous one, and your goal is to minimize time. You can get this game from http://www.dwheeler.com. This game is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later, so you can even make modifications to this or include a modified version of it in your own games."
The story creation year is 2007.

[This produces a game in Z-machine format. You need a Z-machine player to play it; thankfully, there are Z-machine players available for just about any computer that you can turn on, and they're generally free. Frobnitz is a good player for PalmOS PDAs, while Windows and Linux users might choose Frotz; both players are open source software.

This is a different game from "Clue"/"Cluedo" ((TM) Hasbro). It has different game rules, e.g., everything has to be in that room before an accusation, every accusation must be completely different from the last one, and there's only one player. It intentionally uses the traditional adventure mechanisms of going places, picking up items, and directing other characters, which results in many subtle differences in this game. There's a different goal: to have the lowest time. You win as an accusation, not a separate claim. There are different character names, and there is a different number of everything. There's no equivalent to 'cards', either.

This document was written using "Inform 7" by Graham Nelson, version 4K41.]

Release along with a website, a file of "Accuse in Z5 format" called "Accuse.z5" and the source text.

Use no scoring. [A larger amount of time is BAD, so we must do the scoring ourselves instead of using the built-in scoring system.]