Finally! I've been waiting for this game to be re-released for years. This lesser-known gem was a favorite of mine as a kid. It's a Sierra game from 1989, and if you've played any classic Sierra titles, you already have an idea of what's in store: a text parser interface, frequent (and frequently amusing) death, a need to pick up everything possible, the chance to shoot yourself in the foot and not know it until half the game has passed, a good ending and a bad one. I can't remember if there's a maze or one of Sierra's infuriating staircases. What's great about this game is the atmosphere. It's set in a grand but decaying mansion in a bayou, at night, in 1925. You're an outsider to the family and its secrets, and not an entirely welcome visitor. As time ticks by, people begin to die and the island feels ever more claustrophobic and paranoia-inducing. You can't leave. People stop speaking to you. Others will talk, but they stop making sense. Between the Spanish moss and the secret passages and the crocodiles and the flapper dresses and the stranglings, I have a visceral memory of the game, which I can't have played since the early 90's. If you like classic adventure games, this one is well worth your time.
It's pretty and atmospheric, but the gameplay is rudimentary at best, and consists mostly of wandering through the house and surrounding forest. There's not enough indication of where to go or what to do, and not in a fun "figuring out the puzzle is part of the game!" way, just a "I had no idea that a couple of chapters back I was supposed to trudge through the featureless forest for screen after screen after screen until a randomly generated encounter finally happened; now I can't progress, though I had to find a walkthrough to figure that out" kind of way. The dialogue is trying to be deep, but mostly winds up overwritten. It's too bad; there was the seed of a good creepy game in this.
