The Witness
1983
- adventure
- thriller
- mystery
- single player
The story
The Witness was the seventh game released by interactive fiction pioneers Infocom. The player character is a detective who has been summoned to the Cabeza Plana, California office of Mr. Linder, a millionaire. Linder fears that his life is in danger... and indeed, as he sits in his office with the player, he is murdered before the player's eyes. The player then must solve the murder.
What it’s like
Text only, rendered in plain monochrome on a 1980s home-computer screen, so the atmosphere lives entirely in the prose and in your imagination. Each room arrives as a short paragraph of description, and the rhythm is set by typing: a command, a pause while the machine thinks, a terse reply. The mood is a cool, hardboiled noir in a dry Californian town, with a wealthy man's office, half-drawn blinds, and a sense that the afternoon is slipping away. The violence is over almost before it begins, described in a sentence or two and never lingered on, so the register is tense and unsettling rather than gory. Expect slow, deliberate pacing: you examine objects, question people, and weigh what you have found, with long stretches of quiet between small revelations. It suits a rainy evening with the lamp on, a retro-computing session, or anyone who enjoys a puzzle that rewards patience and close attention. It is for readers who want a mystery built on atmosphere and deduction, and who are happy to let the story unfold through words alone.
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