The Dagger of Amon Ra

1992

point-and-click
adventure
mystery
single player

The story

The Dagger of Amon Ra is the sequel to Laura's previous adventure, The Colonel's Bequest. Laura Bow, fresh out of college, is hired by a New York newspaper and told to investigate a museum theft. The item is a priceless ancient Egyptian artifact, and possible suspects prove plentiful. During a party to celebrate the opening of the museum's new section, someone is murdered and Laura, after asking to be allowed to investigate, is locked in. This sets the stage for a series of murders, much in the same vein as the original game.

What it’s like

Warm, inky 1920s New York rendered in Sierra's hand-painted VGA: gaslit museum halls, mahogany-and-brass rooms, and a Nile-blue palette of sandstone and shadowed gold that gives the old-fashioned crime story a storybook richness. The sound is a sparse, jazz-tinged period score that drops to near silence while you read clues and click through rooms, with the occasional cabaret piano at the party sequences. The pace is deliberate and talky, built around interrogating a houseful of suspects, pocketing evidence, and checking timelines; tension builds through whispered conversations and slow reveals rather than action. Moods suit a rainy evening with a cup of tea, a slow weekend puzzle session, or a bedtime wind-down with a notepad at hand. Emotionally it is cool, curious and faintly arch, with Laura's sharp, plucky determination carrying the story. Violence is off-screen and cartoonish: murders happen in brief, offscreen-implied moments and bodies are discovered without gore, so the intensity stays low, mostly suspense and a little peril. It suits fans of classic whodunits and patient point-and-click players who enjoy deduction and period atmosphere.

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