<!--
	Title: (Software Reviews) The Witness
	Subtitle: A prose murder-mystery game for detectives whose business is trouble
	Author: Dennis Barker
	Source: BYTE, v9(3)
	Date: March 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<p class="tight"><em>Somebody was nuts. I was nuts. Everybody was nuts. None
of it fitted together worth a nickel . . . . I was in bad with the
police, I had spent ten dollars of my twenty expense money,
and I didn't have enough leverage anywhere to lift a dime off
a cigar counter.</em></p>
<p class="tight" style="text-align: right;"><em>-- Philip Marlowe, speaking in</em>
	Trouble Is My Business <em>by Raymond Chandler</em></p>

I can understand Marlowe's lament now that I've
played The Witness, the second prose murder-mystery
game from Infocom. I logged a considerable number of
hours trying to crack this programmed puzzler, but the
case remains unsolved, wide open, no good leads, no
evidence that sticks. This is one mystery-game review
you can read without worrying about the solution being
revealed.

Stu Galley, the author of The Witness, has styled his
prose after that of Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and other
captains of the hard-boiled mystery. Galley, a programmer
at Infocom, has apparently read enough of the genre
to emulate the style without mocking it. The descriptions
are well done -- quick but thorough and evocative.
The narrative is detailed enough so that the player can
imagine the surroundings but not have his mental picture
cluttered with knickknacks. Because they provoke
use of the imagination, the all-prose games are like the
radio dramas of pretelevision days.

The story of The Witness begins: "Somewhere near
Los Angeles. A cold Friday evening in February 1938."
The player is the detective, dispatched by police chief
Klutz to assist a nervous Mr. Linder, who says his life
is being threatened by a somewhat sleazy Mr. Stiles.
Linder's wife has recently killed herself. Stiles has
allegedly been sending nasty notes.

A taxi drops you off at the Linder joint. The questions
and decisions begin before you enter the house. Do you
go to the front door? (Nah, too obvious.) Do you check
out the garage? Do you stalk around the backyard? Remember,
you have only 12 hours (720 moves) to solve
the mystery, and every move kills a minute.

If you take the right steps, you can meet the main characters
before they get away from the house. There's Freeman
Linder, who's made millions in the Orient trade.
There's his daughter Monica, a tough dame who acts "as
though you were a masher who just gave her a whistle."
There's Phong, the mysterious butler. And there's
Stiles, who apparently was on very good terms with the
late Mrs. Linder and allegedly wants Mr. Linder to join
her in that Big Sleep.

The best detectives operate in a mode that balances
logic and instinct. The Witness gives you plenty of opportunity
to exercise both. You can minimize dead ends
by keeping a list of questions asked and responses
received. I sketched each room as it was described.
Because the Linder house is big, I had to make lots of
maps. However, the maps I drew were not much help.
Despite an effort to diagram the layout of the place and
to chart my steps, I frequently ran into walls and windows.
This can be a problem when you're trying to
shadow someone. At one point, I gave up mapping and
relied on instinct, luck, and the handy LOOK AROUND
command, which flashes a description of the surroundings
on the screen. I have yet to determine if the trouble
is due to a bug in the program or in the player.

Infocom's parser, the program's language analyzer, is
obviously a remarkable improvement on the simple two-word
verb-noun commands of earlier adventure games.
A player can interact with The Witness on a more articulate
basis, which makes for a greater sense of realism.
Despite this remarkable addition of adjectives, prepositions,
indirect objects, and compound verbs, I still felt
considerably limited in the vocabulary I could use. The
rule book points out that the parser uses far more words
than it understands, but when you're onto a hot lead,
with clues and questions running through your mind,
it's hard to remember that you're talking to a computer
program. Generally, the linguistic limitations cause only
a minor inconvenience; you may have to rephrase a
question until the parser understands. But in a few cases
the restrictions impede the detective work. Here's a perfect
example.

I asked one character to please tell me about Monica
and her father. The program informed me that I couldn't
use multiple indirect objects with the word "tell." This
is an unfortunate snag. A detective dealing with several
characters, particularly characters who are suspect,
would want to know about the relationships between
them. It's a line of questioning that can help reveal
motives, and unearthing motives is what investigation
is all about. Certain grammatical constructions are important
to the detective of a programmed mystery.

<div class="article-sidebar-box float-right-half" style="border: 3px double;">
<span class="larger"><strong>At a Glance</strong></span>

**Name**<br>
The Witness

**Type**<br>
Prose murder-mystery game

**Manufacturer**<br>
lnfocom Inc.<br>
55 Wheeler St.<br>
Cambridge. MA 02138<br>
(617) 492-1031

**Author**<br>
Stu Galley

**Price**
$49.95; $59.95 for DEC RT-11, NEC APC, and CP/M versions

**Format**<br>
5¼ - or 8-inch floppy disk

**Computer**<br>
Any of the following with 48K bytes of RAM, one disk drive,
and a black-and-white or color monitor: Atari 400 or 800,
Apple II, Commodore 64, DEC Rainbow or RT-11, IBM PC, NEC
APC or PC-8000, Osborne, TRS-80 Models I or III, TI Professional,
CP/M-based computers

**Documentation**<br>
A computer reference card, National Detective Gazette, and
assorted props (including a suicide note, a telegram, and a
matchbook)

**Audience**
Game players

</div>

The game's designers have provided some very helpful
commands. The ones I used most frequently, besides the
usual legwork commands (e.g., WALK WEST), were EXAMINE,
which lets you look closely at something;
ANALYZE, which includes checking for specific substances
and fingerprinting; and SEARCH (something or
someone), to which some characters do not react favorably.
And as Holmes had his Watson, you have Sgt.
Duffy, who can be called in for assistance. Duffy can
handle analysis, booking, questioning, and other tasks -- if
you can find him. Failing that, you can still shout
obscenities and even shoot at characters. (Galley anticipated
certain input statements and apparently expected
some players to get very frustrated.)

The Witness, in the Infocom tradition, is attractively
packaged. *The National Detective Gazette*, the main piece
of documentation, is cleverly and clearly written and features
some nice illustrations. The graphic artists involved
in this project deserve a round of applause. The reference
card is straightforward and explains booting and playing
procedures in terms simple enough to be followed
by the village idiot. This is commendable.

Playing time varies greatly. Infocom games have reportedly
taken from 20 to 60 hours (real time). You can
play The Witness for five minutes if you like, store your
game position, and resume the investigation later. If you
arrest a character judged innocent by the grand jury (it
takes a lot of evidence to convince the jurors), the session
is ended for you. Wrong moves can be counted
against you. Think before you act; think again before you
enlist the steel.

Frustration is a part of this game. Questions multiply,
answers are scarce. Hours after suspending play, you
might find yourself evaluating a move you made or pondering
that response a suspect made. How often have
you played Monopoly and then wondered hours later
why you didn't buy Baltic Avenue?

Remarkably, The Witness gives you an idea of the sort
of situations an investigator is up against. Dropped into
a situation in which a crime has been committed, you
have to decide what questions to ask and whom to ask.
You have to determine who's lying and who's got something
to hide. You have to make assumptions about people
you've only recently met. And your approach is
based on scant clues: a note, a matchbook, a trace of gunpowder,
a conflicting statement. Kojak never had it so
rough. Of course, there is one big difference between
being a detective and playing an adventure game. Real-life
detectives sometimes must look down the barrel of
a gun; the game player only has to look down the tube
of a video display.

No law-abiding gumshoe likes a dead end, a lying suspect,
or a stiff. But these are the elements of a good
mystery and a good mystery game. Galley and the Infocom
staff have succeeded in designing what Sherlock
Holmes would call "a three-pipe problem."

**A Tip**

If you begin to feel as if the district attorney is breathing
down your neck, everyone's lying to you, and the Scotch
is starting to taste sour, you probably need some help.
An Invisiclues booklet contains some hints that might
assist your investigation. It costs $7.95 and comes with
a special pen that lets you reveal clues one at a time. To
order, telephone (800) 262-6868; in New Jersey, (800)
238-2200. Above all, keep cool. And remember: it's
Chinatown, Jake.