[Mikael]

I'm in a perfect position, since I can unconditionally praise some aspects in my own game, without feeling in the least bit embarrassed about it. The hint system is wonderful. But it wasn't implemented by itself, or mainly by me!

That some kind of hint system would be included in the game was decided quite early in the process. I had extensive discussions with the producer about this and was quite persistent in that the hint system should follow the player’s steps, rather than just being an in game walkthrough, or simply point the player to certain "goals" in each specific location.

I wouldn't be able to program such a thing, nor would I have the time. So we decided to get some outside help.

When the first playable version of the game was finished, a person who had been connected to the project got cold feet. This was understandable, since it was a decidedly nonlinear game, and the implementation of such a system would put both programming and logical skills to their severest tests, and would require quite a lot of guts, since time was very short.

In came Jan Kavan (metamorphium in this forum), and creator of Ghost in the Sheet and J.U.L.I.A.

I've had some (very pleasant) dealings with Jan before. I knew that he was an excellent programmer, but would he be able to pull this off in such a short time?

The answer was a clear and resounding YES.

We had no walkthrough for the game, no script other than in Swedish, and I had never made any graphical schemes of the actions and chronology in the games.

After playing the game for less than a week, Jan came up with this masterpiece.

I still don't understand it myself, but that’s not the point. It was the skeleton for the hint system. The hints were written by our producer and me, but the triggers for the appearance and disappearance of each and every hint, and the location related structure were all Jan's work. After thorough testings by our producer and his testing team, and numerous tweakings and rewrites by myself and Len Green, the structure itself only suffered from the occasional bug and one or two misunderstandings, all of which were fixed in no time by Jan.

Everyone may not like the system (even though I still haven't heard from a single player that doesn't), and some people don't even like hints implemented in games. But this is the hint system that I always wanted to see in a game, but never thought I would.

[silent_m]

The hint system has piqued my interest in this game, so I'll probably give it a shot.

[Len Green]

I've read member queries about other games here but none about The Colour of Murder.

Anybody here played it? If so, what's your opinion?

[LexSleuther]

I played it but never playing another one of the Carole reed games i cannot compare them but i thought that game was pretty good. I hated the voice acting, so cheesy and you can tell they are just reading lines. The story is pretty good nothing mind blowingly original but ok, the puzzles are good. One of the best things in my opinion is the use of real environments and not CGI or animation they are all real places and such which is neat in my opinion. If the voice acting would of been better i would of gave it a 4/5 but since its not i give it a 3.

[Romer]

There are a couple other threads here about this game. Here's one:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/forum...ad.php?t=23563

It's a marvelous, relaxing, satisfying game that doesn't cheat you, trick, or disappoint you. The puzzles are good, thoughtful, with plenty of red herrings. If you've never played one of these games, grab a nice relaxing beverage, some comfort munchies, and enjoy.

[Melanie68]

I merged a couple of the threads so we don't have too many floating around. Feel free to discuss the game here, just make sure you use spoiler tags if needed.

[Len Green]

Hi :-
I was looking for that newer thread.
Now I've found it !

[annatar2]

To Len Green:

I've bought the Colour of Murder and have been playing it for a while, but I'm having a specific problem with things I can't find, and the in-game hint system isn't any help in this case, since it only tells me to find those things but not saying where.

Could you please consider writing a complete walkthrough for the entire game, in the same style as your demo walkthrough (and the one for Time Stand Still)? I'd really appreciate that, since I can't get any further until I find certain things.

Alternatively - may I ask you for help to find something specific? Or would that be too spoilerish?

(In another thread I saw a link posted for a walkthrough, but that link didn't work. All I've found is the demo walkthrough.)

[Len Green]

A pleasure.

http://www.mdna-games.com/Colour/CoM_wt/CoM_wt.htm

AND Here :-

http://www.justadventure.com/Walkthr...~20_11_08.shtm

If you have any specific problem. my email address is on bot. Please mark as "Colour of Murder" or it may get deleted with spam !

[tsa]

I just finished the game. With every new game I seem to become a bigger fan of the Carol Reed games. Thw fact that I shot almost the same picture as in the game during my pilgrimage to Norrkoping had only a little to do with it. I just love the scenes and the slow, unhurried gameplay. I spend a lot of time just walking around on every spot, looking at things that have nothing to do with the game, and so move on slowly. I found this game better than the previous one in the sense that there was less needless walking around here, and looping through hoops to get simple things done. I needed the hint system only a few times, but I found that it was too easy to reach so I looked in Carols notebook more often than I should have. That is about the only complaint I have about it. Maybe you could take a look at Myst IV to get ideas about how to make the hint system less accessible. But I must say, the hint system worked perfectly for me. It pushed me in the right direction, often without really telling me what to do. Very nice. I hope we will see more of it in the future!

[Alianthia]

I am just starting this game and love it.
I have replayed both East Side Story and Hope Springs Eternal.
I was pleased to see the addition of the notebook as I was frequently floundering in the other two games and was loath to use a walk through.
Just wandering around in the scenes is very enjoyable...
I too hope that MDNA produces more of such high quality games!