Mystery Mansion is an interactive text adventure programmed by Bill Wolpert for a mainframe or university computer similar to PLATO. There are a lot of moving parts in this game; some of them work quite well while others left me extremely frustrated.
Mystery Mansion was not a commercial release in 1978. It was played by university students on campus much like Dungeon, Moria and Zork. Therefore there is no official documentation or instructions which come with the game nor did the game itself offer any. The picture above depicts the start screen for the game. A taxi has dropped you off at the front gate of an old mansion and the game begins there. There is no explanation of any kind as to why you are there or what you are supposed to do. I decided I would walk around the mansion and explore my surroundings before trying to venture inside the gate.
Your movement while you are outdoors is controlled by the compass directions N, S, E, W but the system of movement changes once you are inside the mansion. More on this later. I began exploring to the east and three moves later fell over a 500 foot cliff without warning and I died. This would not be the first time that I fell to my death. It was then that I noticed my score was 47 out of 999 possible points placing me in the Incompetent Asshole category; the latter being my own designation not the games’. I continued my exploration of the grounds outside of the mansion and mapped them out by hand. I encountered a hunter and a woodsman while I was exploring and found a double-bladed axe and an old rusty shovel. Once I was satisfied that I had seen all there was to see I decided to go through the main gate and make my way into the mansion. Now remember up to this point I still had no idea what my purpose was in this game or what I was supposed to do. This will all change soon enough but let’s move away from the story itself and talk about a couple of the games moving parts that I had referred to earlier.
Once inside the mansion movement is no longer dictated by the N, S, E, W commands. It completely changes to Left, Right, Forward and Backward. It took me quite some to figure this out and I found it to be frustrating and not very intuitive. Even after learning that there was a new, unique way to move throughout the house I still found myself having terrible difficulty mapping out the mansion. Rooms and exits that had not been on my left before were suddenly on my left and nothing ever seemed to stay the same. I thought perhaps something was wrong with my version of the game. Then I realized that the new Left, Right, Forward and Backward commands were not static! Meaning that each time you made your way into an area your perspective changed. It always depended on which way you were facing. So maybe the living room was to the left of the main hall; but if you entered the main hall from the ball room then the living room would now be on your right. I have to tell you; I found this to be so frustrating that it was almost a deal breaker for me. It was the first time in my exploration of these older games that I had encountered something so maddening that it almost ruined the entire experience for me. If you find the compass in the mansion it will revert movement so that you can then use N, S, E , W and get a true read of the map of the mansion. While some might have appreciated this I found the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. The idea of finding an item to fix a game mechanic didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t find the compass, which was located on the second floor, until much later in the game because I wanted to explore the lower levels first. In later games I would rush upstairs to go get the compass so I could quickly put this issue to rest.
The writing in Mystery Mansion is extremely well done. It is far superior to the other text adventures which we have experienced in 1978. This was the first piece of interactive fiction where you really had to pay close attention to room and location descriptions. You have the ability to manipulate and remove items based on the descriptions. In this game nothing is apparent. Everything is hidden. An example of this can be found in the game room. One of the objects described there is a radio. You can actually turn the radio on and it will provide you with an important clue. In interactive fiction we have experienced thus far, items you can take or manipulate have been kept separate from location descriptions. This is still the case with Mystery Mansion however there are so many other things you can manipulate that are embedded in the location descriptions now. The words confuscate and obtuse come to mind.
The more exploration of the mansion that you do you come to realize that you are in the middle of a murder mystery. The main part of the game plays like a game of clue. There is a corpse, a list of suspects, and multiple murder weapons. In order to win the game you need to have the correct murder weapon in your possession; and you have to lure the murderer back to the scene of the crime. Once you have all three things: suspect, scene and murder weapon correct you will be awarded many points. None of this is very clear. You have to do quite a bit of exploring and combat the movement mechanics of the game in order to deduce that this is what you need to do.
This leads me to what was another infuriating aspect of this game. I had no idea at all that you could QUESTION your suspects. The only way I found this out was by obtaining a book found in the library. If you READ the book it will give you one word or verb that it recognizes in the game. I had died enough that eventually the word QUESTION was found in the book. I almost fell out of my chair. Once you begin to QUESTION each of your suspects they randomly offer you clues which causes the game to make much more sense and have more cohesion. I also spent a good number of minutes trying to figure out how to examine the corpse. LOOK AT CORPSE are the VERY SPECIFIC words you have to use to get a clue as to how the victim died. You will need to do this to find the correct murder weapon. There a number of these scattered throughout the mansion.
The murder mystery is something that the game does very well. Examining corpses, finding the murder weapon, questioning the inhabitants of the mansion is very entertaining and quite a programming feat in 1978. Each new game the murderer, scene, and weapon randomly change UNLESS you type in the case number located in the opening scene. Doing so will keep the murderer, suspect, and scene the same. As entertaining as this is, once again Mystery Mansion mixes the salty with the sweet.
One of the things you have had to deal with in 1978 with every piece of interactive fiction is your light source. Mystery Mansion is no different. The lantern that you find in the game does not last very long. You have to be VERY economical with its use. There are secret passages scattered throughout the mansion that can economize movement between floors and you can also open the curtains in many of the rooms but you STILL have to be very conservative with your light source. You can find a battery replacement for the lantern in a, wait for it, maze which you have to map out which will help. This can become very frustrating.
The inhabitants of the mansion can be questioned but each of them tend to hamper your investigation in a very frustrating way. Let me explain. The list of suspects in the game are: the master, lady, maid, butler, cook, and gardener. Sometimes the suspects will begin to follow you around from location to location after you encounter them. If you come upon a location that you have not explored yet and have one of the inhabitants in tow; they may quite literally pick up and take an object in the room that you needed before you get the chance to. It does not matter if they are the guilty party or not; they pick up objects and take them and deposit them in other areas of the house. When you are dealing with a light source that allows for limited moves this becomes a headache. In one of the games I played I knew from examining the corpse (excuse me LOOK AT CORPSE) that it had died from poison. I knew where the vial of poison was located and went to go procure it. When I got to the location where the vial was located the cook picked it up before I could. I moved about the mansion and looked in each of the rooms and never did find the vial of poison again in that particular game. It was another frustrating aspect of the game that only forced you to have to begin again.
The main part of the game is arguably the murder mystery. There is so much that goes into the design and it is quite impressive. I was able to eventually solve the mystery and after doing so you actually use a phone located in the mansion to call the police who then come and take the murderer away. I was half expecting the murderer to exclaim; “..and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” but alas that didn’t happen.
There are other layers to Mystery Mansion however. There is a crypt located in the basement of the mansion which houses a vampire. I was able to lure the vampire upstairs and kill it in a very gratifying and original way which I’ll leave you to figure out on your own should you decide to play.
One of the inhabitants of the house is also a werewolf and I found a handgun and silver bullet in the house but never got the opportunity to slay the werewolf. I am not 100% positive that there is a werewolf but a note I found in the mansion suggested that is the case.
Mystery Mansion is also a treasure hunt. There is supposedly treasure or treasures hidden somewhere in the mansion or on the grounds and I am sure if you find these items it will greatly increase your score. I also found some sort of futuristic transmitter and receiver hidden in the house that you can use as some sort of teleportation device but I never used it. So there are all sorts of crazy going on at Mystery Mansion.
Once I had solved the murder mystery of Mystery Mansion I was ready to move on. There was a lot to explore and map and for much of that I was in constant combat with the movement mechanics, my light source, and the inhabitants themselves taking items from rooms before I could. I was in no mood to spend more time with the game looking for treasure to increase my point total. I was very happy to walk away.
I am usually a pretty big completionist, especially where CRPGs are concerned (look no further than my Moria victory), but I felt I met the minimum requirements needed to place this in the win column and be grateful for the experience. There are a few reasons I decided to end where I did: 1) the game can be very obtuse and I knew I was starting to get to a point where I might lose patience and resort to cheating. I was not going to feel rewarded for finding the treasure if I had to resort to a walkthrough in order to do so. I knew I could ask comrades in arms for subtle clues but that would have been a big expenditure of time 2) there is another maze in the game called the “mole maze”. I started to drop items and map out the maze on two different occasions but then the earth shifted and tunnels changed or collapsed which completely altered the maze and obliterated my previous map attempt. My patience was already wearing thin with this one and I knew that solving the maze would be tedious and a big investment of time. A couple of the puzzles that I had solved in the mansion on my own had been what I would term difficult and it was only time and luck which helped me there. In the back of my mind I am thinking that the mole maze and many of the secret passages hold the key and I didn’t have the patience for either and did not want to resort to cheating to find the treasure.
Mystery Mansion is large. It has murder, vampires & werewolves, and a hidden treasure to find. There were not many games available to play in 1978 and I imagine that many university students spent hours with this game competitively trying to get the highest score. There are too many other games awaiting my attention for me to spend hours and hours trying to increase my score. There are too many unfair or “gotcha” events that eroded my patience with this one as well. I enjoyed solving the murder and the writing and programming here are the best I have seen in interactive fiction thus far. If I had been warned ahead of time about the movement mechanics of the game it might have helped take some of the “mystery” out of the mystery.