I’m not much of an Agatha Christie fan, but I have semi-fond memories of being subjected to Miss Marple mysteries on television when I was a child. That being said, I do have a healthy respect for the queen of mystery and was quite excited to play And Then There Were None. The game includes a paperback copy of the novel, which was a nice treat.
In the novel, ten characters are individually invited to a manor house off the coast of England. None of them are familiar with each other (except for Mr. And Mrs. Rogers who are the manor's newly hired butler and housekeeper) and none of them know their host, the curiously absent Mr. Owen.
This is where things get interesting. At first, everyone is excited to be there, even if there is a storm approaching. After a lovely dinner, the guests retire to the sitting room for drinks. Rogers puts a phonograph onto the record player, but there is no music. Instead, a voice greets the guests and then accuses each of them of having committed a murder. The voice is very specific in its accusations, citing names and dates. After the record stops, each guest admits that they are familiar with the person they are being accused of having killed, but they all deny culpability- the deaths were all accidents.
Almost immediately after this, one of the guests begins to cough and choke. Within a minute, he is dead. The rest of the guests are only slightly unnerved and they wonder if it could have perhaps been suicide. They retire for the evening, but by the morning, another guest is dead. At this point, the guests become paranoid, and rightly so. Someone knows what they did in the past and that someone is not going to let them get away with it. One by one, the guests continue to die. Curously enough, the deaths all correlate to a children’s poem hanging up in the house.
The game offers a rather interesting variation of the book by having the player assume the role of an eleventh character, who did not appear in the book at all. For some reason, the original boat driver, who dropped off his passengers and returned to the mainland has been replaced by Patrick Narracott, the original driver’s brother, who finds himself trapped on the island after someone scuttles his boat.
As an aside, I was quite surprised to see the butler instruct Patrick to sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. This would probably never happen in real life. Granted, you probably wouldn’t have a madman assemble a cast of characters, each with a dark secret, and then proceed to pick them off one by one. But, I digress. Most likely, our stalwart boat driver would have been sent to sleep in the woodshed, or if the storm was really bad, they might let him sleep in the kitchen. It’s also hard to believe that a house of that size would have servants’ quarters that consisted of one bedroom (shared by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers). In the grand scheme of things, these are minor issues, but since the game is a period piece, the historical inaccuracies were a bit of a let-down.
The player must move Patrick through the mansion and around the island, asking questions and picking up stuff. Of course, everything is not as it seems and there will be puzzles to solve and items to combine and disassemble as good ol’ Patrick takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of things and find out who is behind the killings. Patrick also finds himself in an interesting position. First of all, he is the odd man out- he was not supposed to be at the house, so naturally, he is a top suspect on many people’s lists. Second, in a curious turn of events, Patrick becomes somewhat of a pawn in the story when one character accuses another of allowing Patrick to assume the role of questioning the guests because Patrick is an amateur and will likely miss things that a professional would spot.
The actual gameplay is quite fun. The puzzles provide a good challenge, and are quite fun, but unfortunately, getting to the fun can be quite an arduous process.
And Then There Were None is a point-and-click adventure, so moving Patrick around is a huge chore. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Patrick appears to move on an unseen track and will only take a set path to get from point A to point B. For example, even though there is totally enough room to walk between the sofa and the easy chair to get to the fireplace, Patrick won’t go that way. Instead, he walks all the way to the other side of the room, then doubles back to the fireplace. This means that it takes so much longer to do things and it becomes incredibly frustrating.
Speaking to people is quite easy- simply click on them and a list of things to say will pop up. However, if there is more than one person with whom Patrick needs to speak to, he will do something very odd. When he finishes speaking to one person, the player needs only to click in the next person to initiate a new conversation. But even if that person is about five feet away from Patrick, he will swivel around from his current position, walk approximately three feet and then initiate the new conversation. It gets old fast.
A wise man once said, "You look good from afar, but you're afar from good." The same can be said about the graphics in And Then There Were None. From a distance, the graphics are quite nice, especially in the shots of the landscape. However, when the graphics zoom in to focus on a person speaking, everything becomes a huge mess. Watching the characters talk was like watching a badly dubbed movie: a character’s mouth would be moving, but no sound would come out. The lack of synchronization is pretty inexcusable, given the available technology, and it was really quite a distraction. Furthermore, character models were exceedingly bulky and when the characters used body language to emphasize a point or gesture at each other, it was overexaggerated and somewhat crudely executed.
Since this is a reenactment of a famous story, voice acting plays an absolutely critical role. I would have to say that the voice acting had approximately the same quality that you would find at an amateur production of And Then There Were None. That said, the voice acting wasn’t entirely atrocious, but nothing really stood out, either. Throughout the game, there are a series of one-liners, in which Patrick provides feedback to the player. This was really annoying. For example, let’s say that you go into a room and there’s a bunch of stuff on the table that you can attempt to pick up. If Patrick doesn’t need the item, he might snarl, "I don’t need that, and I’m no packrat!" or "I don’t want to call attention to my snooping." That’s all fine and dandy, but then you move onto another item, and Patrick will quickly pocket it. Furthermore, I don’t know who Patrick thinks he is fooling, because he is a horrible packrat. On a much brighter note, the musical score is brilliant- it is hauntingly eloquent and really adds a sense of desolation and fear. It is absolutely perfect for the story and adds a lot to the overall ambience.
This doesn’t really strike me as the type of game that you would play over and over again. There are multiple endings, so perhaps players might want to maintain multiple save files in order to go back and get all the endings, but aside from that, there really isn’t much incentive for multiple playthroughs. This is especially true, given that the game gets off to a slow start.
Overall, And Then There Were None has a lot of potential. Its story is masterful, woven by an absolute master of the genre. However, the graphical flaws and awkward missteps keep this from being a truly great game. According to a press release, The Adventure Company has the rights to four more (yet unnamed) Agatha Christie novels. I’m personally hoping for The Mousetrap, my all-time favorite Christie novel. Hopefully, the good folks down at the Adventure Company can learn from what didn’t work with this game and put together a presentation to match quality of the story. If you’re a big Agatha Christie fan or you just really, really love adventure games, this might be a game for you, but aside from those groups, it could really be hit or miss.
