Friday 3 January 2014

Agatha Christie's Parrot

By Jason Railton

Genre: Arcade: Swoop ‘n’ Snoop

Jason points out that the idea for this game was conceived decades ago “when a children's nature programme on BBC TV asked viewers to send in wildlife-themed computer games”, but only now has he realised this vision.


We can breathe a sigh of relief in that unlike Jason’s other entries, Agatha Christie’s Parrot doesn’t attempt to be a technical marvel.  The first ‘flaw’, as Jason points out, is that it doesn’t actually even feature a Parrot – it is in fact a Scarlet Macaw (Ara Macao)!  As a keen birder of course I recognised this instantly as I keep several in my study at any one time.


These instructions were provided:
****
In this you take on the role of the famous crime-solving bird, flying
high and swooping down to collect important clues to solving a great
murder-mystery.  Press any key to dive, and try to collect more clues
than you miss in order to solve the mystery.
****


It’s actually quite fun!  As you press the any key, the bird follows a nice character spaced swoop (perhaps Agatha Christie’s Peregrine would be more appropriate?) down onto a passing clue and upon acquisition you are one step closer to solving the mystery.  The bird animation is great, as are the UDGs, representing typical clues you might see in a murder mystery, like the dagger, the cocktail, the bomb, the train (?) and the err teddy bear.

Barmy, funny, simple and a bit crappy.  Ticks all the boxes for me.

Ah mon ami, ze little grey beak ‘az eet all.

Merci beaucoup Jason!

Download here.

2 comments:

  1. Nice post, Parrot is special type bird that can speak or copy of speech of any person. it helps also in astrology. now you can get lovely parrot at online pet store.
    ______________________________________________________
    http://www.dogbazar.org/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Indeed Komal! The Parrot is a special bird that has a place in all our hearts, though I don't know about the astrology side of things.

    I assume the above post, and online pet store is fully endorsed by Jason as part of his CGC entry, so I will leave the link live.

    ReplyDelete