The Sydney Mystery

The Sydney Mystery is a point-and-click Adventure game released by American studio Twilight Software on April 13, 2003. The game takes place in Sydney, Australia.

The Sydney Mystery
Cover art
Developer(s)Twilight Software
Publisher(s)Twilight Software
Designer(s)Brendan Reville
Writer(s)Brendan Reville
Composer(s)Brendan Reville
EngineAdventure Game Engine[1]
Platform(s)Windows
ReleaseApril 13, 2003
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Plot

In the city of Sydney in Australia, a retired detective has been kidnapped. The detective's niece looks for leads to rescue him.

Gameplay

The gameplay is simplified without the need to click on any verbal commands or items in an inventory. The player interacts with the current area by hovering the mouse over particular objects or any people present and left clicking to perform an action. The mouse pointer changes to an icon that matches the appropriate action. Right clicking cycles through any available items the player possess. Left clicking while holding the selected item uses it. Whenever the player leaves a starting area, the game switches to an over world map of Sydney, allowing the player to travel to any known locations to progress.

Development

Brendan Reville was inspired by many story-driven Sierra and LucasArts adventure games to create his own, and distanced his title from other FMV video games instead hoping to make a first-person adventure game that happened to be photographed and filmed on location.[2] He started the creation of the game from scratch in the year 2000. He programmed the entire game engine AGE (Adventure Game Engine), but much work had the project in progress for three years.[3] In addition to coding the engine, Reville almost singlehandedly designed the game, photographed and filmed all live action sequences, scripted the game, compiled and created the art, video and sound, programmed the puzzles, recorded the dialogue, tested the game, made a demo, created an installer, built the website, and did PR.[2] The game's budget was around $500.[4] By Monday 9 September 2002, Brendan had presented his game to the Independent Games Festival.[5]

Filming

Filming of the game was done in the very plot-centered city Sydney itself around 17 different locations with over 240 scenes in total.[6] Capturing pictures was done using a wide-angled SLR Camera provided by Shanno Sanders. Paul Fiore also lent a digital video camera which was used together with a Shotgun microphone for quality filming.[3] Due to the low-budget, the cast of 11 actors were either friends or friends-of-friends of Reville, and only one cast member had previous acting experience.[2]

Reception

Michelle Whicker of PC Gameworld argued that the game could be used as a public relations marketing tool for Sydney due to its use of several scenic locations throughout the city.[9] Meanwhile, Alex Tait of Just Adventure described the game as the equivalent of buying a CD based on hearing one song on the radio only to be disappointed, and thought its unintentional humour was stylistically to that found in The Curse of Monkey Island and The Feeble Files.[10]

References
  1. jkdmedia (September 27, 2011). "The Sydney Mystery price reduction & Bonus Game Engine!". Gamezone. Retrieved September 4, 2017.
  2. "Exclusive: Sydney Mystery Interview". PC Gameworld. March 20, 2003. Archived from the original on March 9, 2005. Retrieved September 4, 2017.
  3. "The Sydney Mystery - Production". Archived from the original on December 5, 2004. Retrieved September 4, 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  4. "Independent Games Festival: Sydney Mystery". CMP Media LLC. 2002. Archived from the original on October 20, 2002. Retrieved September 5, 2017.
  5. "The Sydney Mystery - News". Archived from the original on September 19, 2008. Retrieved September 4, 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. "The Sydney Mystery Demo". SPOnG. April 11, 2003. Retrieved September 6, 2017.
  7. Eivind Hagerup (September 7, 2003). "The Sydney Mystery Review". Adventure Gamers. Archived from the original on February 3, 2004. Retrieved September 4, 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. Steve Ramsey (May 2003). "The Sydney Mystery Review by metzomagic.com". metzomagic.com. Retrieved September 6, 2017. All in all it was a middling experience, enjoyable in a low key way but reaching no great heights, and better for being a shared experience.
  9. Whicker, Michelle (May 7, 2003). "The Sydney Mystery". PC Gameworld. Archived from the original on 2003-06-02.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  10. Tait, Alex (May 20, 2003). "Review: The Sydney Mystery". Just Adventure. Archived from the original on 2004-12-04.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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