The Collection Chamber: HEREWITH THE CLUES!

DENNIS WHEATLEY PRESENTS A MURDER MYSTERY

HEREWITH THE CLUES!

London - the year is 1939. You are the Assistant Commissioner of the Anti-terrorist squad. An IRA plot has been uncovered and the cell infiltrated. The net is closing in on them at their hide-out at a fashionable Mayfair nightclub. Then, before the well planned raid, your informant is murdered. You must discover the killer, prove their guilt and unmask the terrorists!

If you enjoy detective stories and like playing on your computer then this is just for you! Take the role of the detective as you examine the documents, clues and evidence to decide "who-done-it".

Leaf through letters, photos, files, suspects details, floor plans and exhibits in this new style of interactive computer game that moved ACE Magazine to declare "... more significant than any of the more ambitious 3D games currently on the market"

YOUR AMIGA Platinum Disc Award.
"Actual Screenshots have successfully programmed a new type of computer game."

~ from the back of the box

Every so often, tucked between the usual Amiga floppies containing euro-platformers or janky movie-licenses, you stumble upon something so anomalous, so un-game-like, that you cannot help but dive deeply into its origins to try and understand its strange existence. Herewith the Clues! (1990), published by Actual Screenshots, is one of those games. And boy, did I go down one hell of an interesting rabbit hole filled with murder, terrorism and the inner lives of high-class, pre-war London society and intelligentsia.

Written by Dennis Wheatley, a prolific author primarily known for horror, Herewith the Clues! was the fourth and last book in his and J. G. Links' Crime Dossier solve-it-yourself murder mystery series that was released in July of 1939. This updated adaptation (which also came out on the Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes), is simply the book in digitised form. Nothing more. It's a game that, uncannily, doesn't feel like a game. There are no choices to be made, no fail states - or win states for that matter - and no forward progression. Simply all the evidence laid out in front of you in a very pixelated matter.

All of the evidence are nicely organised (left).
Thankfully, digitized cigarette butts don't smell like they must've done in the original book (right)

To understand why this game feels so odd, you need to appreciate what Wheatley’s Crime Dossiers actually were. Imagine your hosting a murder mystery party. You might be given individual scripts to pass around to your guests who "act" as the suspects. You might have opted for an expensive package which comes with traditional puzzles like code-wheels, word searches or jigsaws. You gett none of that here. Instead, the mystery is solved not through puzzles or prose, but as an actual evidence pack. You get letters, photos, ticket stubs, coded notes, police reports, blurry snapshots, and the occasional ominous scrap of burnt paper. The reader - no, the investigator - pieces everything together to determine whodunnit. The answer was sealed in an envelope at the back of the book, but good luck finding an 80-year-old copy that hasn't opened it. This format predates Cluedo, predates Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, and arguably predates any notion of "interactive fiction" as we now use the term.

The original 1939 Herewith the Clues! was the fourth of these dossiers, released just a few short months before the onset of World War II. It follows a tangled high-society case involving blackmail, jealousy, and a gang of political agitators. The dossier came packed with facsimile documents typeset on convincing faux-official stationery and it was as much an objet d'art as it was a story. Holding one felt like rummaging through Watson's personal evidence drawer.

Serge Orloff is our murder victim. His stand-in was portrayed by Val Gielgud, radio broadcaster, creative
pioneer in early television, and brother to Oscar winner John Gielgud. Other stand-ins are also interesting.

So how do you convert a tactile, ephemera-filled book into a 1990 Amiga program? Actual Screenshots approached this projects more as archivists than game designers. Crammed onto two floppy disks are scans of (almost) everything. Every photo, every letter, every scribbled clue is reproduced on screen, and can be perused as a leisurely slideshow. As you click through images or scroll through text (which are re-typed rather than scanned), it is imperative you have a notebook and pen to hand. A pin-board and a bunch of post-it-notes with wool to string them all together is also a good option if you want to go all out. This is how you gradually collect your theories. The actual game side of the game is outside of it.

This sounds almost impenetrable, but the approach is weirdly addicting if you can get into the groove of it. The interface is minimalistic, but organised and functional. The scanned materials are surprisingly high-quality for the time, but the necessarily low resolution pixels do make some of the images - particularly a table - hard to make out. You cannot click on it for a closer look, but all of the evidence is accompanied with what it actually is.

Remember to take tea breaks if you've been working to long. This is England after all (left).
There are mistakes in the text. "Finger-paints" is humorous. Missing words and maps are not (right).

This is perhaps the only way the game is superior to the book. And, if you're like me, I consider it a downgrade anyway. One particularly clever "a-ha" moment is lost due to the fact that it cannot possibly translate to the monitor screen. The black-and-white stills require colour to be described, which in one instance gives the game away of what one exhibit actually is. Worse than that are a couple of transcription errors. I noticed two instances where half a sentence is missing completely altering the meaning, and - rather hilariously - "finger-prints" is misspelled as "finger-paints". I have the actual book to hand (the 1982 reprint to be precise) so I could cross-reference but these errors do make it a lesser experience.

On the flip side, the book is old. My 40-year-old copy of the reprint contains some disintegrating evidence. Thankfully, this edition replaces the cigarette butts with a small photograph but I can imagine their presence in the 80-year-old original makes quite the mess. These weren't facsimiles but actual-to-goodness tar-filled cigarette butts. For an extra creepy factor, there was also real hair. Also, some of the references are extremely dated. Having read the solution, I can't imagine anyone without extensive knowledge of pre-war social norms could reach it. Nowadays we have Google which, unless you're cheating by looking for the solution, is a good resource for this.

Pages from the 1982 reprint. Some of the evidence have aged so badly they've disintegrated (left).

A phot of fame author Peter Cheyney and Wheatley's own stepson. Are they portraying the killer? (right)

At least Herewith the Clues!, the book, actually has the answers. Herewith the Clues!, the game, does not. Inexplicably it has no ending and no way to know if you're deductions are correct. Once you've examined all the evidence, you were expected to write - physically write, with pen and paper - to Actual Screenshots' office address and describe your solution in detail. In return, the company would mail you back the verdict. Imagine an entire generation of Amiga enthusiasts waiting by the letterbox like Victorian correspondents solving crimes by post. And, with this being the only game they published, the company would shortly be as dead as a murder victim not long after release. If you finally cracked it a year or two later, you're fresh outta luck. You'll have to wait until the birth of the internet to Google-search if your right.

This is utterly bananas by modern standards, but in a weird way it's in keeping with Wheatley's sincere ethos. Actual Screenshots weren't trying to fleece players but merely attempting to preserve the social, tactile spirit of Wheatley's original. In some ways, this gimmick elevates the whole enterprise. It forces you to treat the investigation as something serious, something requiring commitment - far removed from the instant feedback loops we expect from digital mysteries.

The answer input checker I created. Write a suspect's name then Accuse or Absolve them to see if you're right (left).
You can even enter other relevant names to uncover some interesting information about them (right).

Regardless, the the book-dossier remains the definitive experience. You can't beat the tactile joy of evidence you can physically shuffle. But the Amiga adaptation - finger-paints aside - stands as an earnest and surprisingly respectful homage. It makes Wheatley's meticulous clues accessible to modern audiences (well, 1990's modern audiences) without diluting the core investigative challenge.

In an extra attempt to update the experience, I've also created an alternative to the sealed solution envelope. In the custom menu, click "Enter Suspect" and you can type in a name to accuse or exonerate them. Unlike the previous the entries in the series, Herewith the Clues! actually provides a score card to tally your correct deductions and I've made an attempt to recreate that here. I've also added fun little asides for any other relevant name you choose to enter. I'm due to host this murder mystery soon so it will come in very handy.

Ultimately, Herewith the Clues! is a historical snapshot of a 1939 experience of interactive storytelling from a 1990 perspective. It's not flashy, not fast, and not conventionally fun, but it's captivating in its own stubborn way. Its value lies not in gameplay but in the faithful preservation of Wheatley's Crime Dossier for the digital age. And if you feel compelled to gather your notes, draft your deduction, and post it off to a company that hasn't existed for decades… well, that just proves Wheatley's absorbing experiment still works.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses WinUAE to emulate the Amiga. Manual, Flyer, Printable Mark Sheet, custom-created Evidence Package and interactive answer input checker (these created by me), and a bunch of Crime Dossier game books included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 108 Mb. Install Size: 136 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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