The Dagger of Amon Ra

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Roberta Williams' Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra
Developer(s)Sierra On-Line
Publisher(s)Sierra On-Line
Designer(s)Bruce Balfour
EngineSCI 1.1
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows
Release1992
Genre(s)Adventure game
Mode(s)Single player

Roberta Williams' Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra (usually just called The Dagger of Amon Ra) is a computer game published by Sierra On-Line in 1992. The game is the second and final installment in the Laura Bow Mysteries line of adventure games, the first of which was The Colonel's Bequest. The sequel, unlike the first game, was not written or created by Roberta Williams. It uses 8-bit color and a point-and-click interface. It contains voice acting, though this is only available on the CD-ROM version. The Dagger of Amon Ra was developed using Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI1.1).

Overall, this sequel owes little to the original game and is a much more traditional point-and-click game.

Story

The game is set primarily in a museum circa the 1920s, and reflects the Egyptology craze of the period. The protagonist is Laura Bow (a pun on Clara Bow), a Southern belle who has just graduated from Tulane University and moved to New York City, where she has landed a job at a prestigious newspaper. For her first assignment, she is asked to write a straightforward, lightweight story on a benefit held at a local museum to celebrate their new Egyptian exhibit. When a murder occurs during the party, however, she is locked inside with all of the other suspects. As other guests begin dying one by one, Laura must solve the numerous crimes occurring before the culprits escape or kill her.

The Laura Bow games were distinctive in that they required some actual logical detective work on the part of the player; for the most part, though, the puzzles were of the typical variety of inventory and environment interaction (and frequent, often unexpected, player character death) found in most Sierra adventures.

The identity of the murderer is not automatically revealed at the end of the game. Instead, the player is asked a series of a questions, ostensibly by the police, to prove that Laura had solved the crimes and discovered the secrets of the other suspects. If the questions are answered incorrectly, the coroner will give a hint to point the player towards the path that would have revealed the correct answer in subsequent playing of the games. The ending of the game can change depending on the answers given to the questions, most notably in that Laura can be killed if the player doesn't know the identity of the main murderer. Some fans[who?] have complained about this approach, since it can require replaying the game from nearly the beginning to reach the optimal ending.

Trivia

  • The visual style of the game is based on on the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker. In addition, the cover for the game is based on Leyendecker's cover for the 18 March 1905 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.
  • Pippin Carter, one of the characters of the game, is a parody of a real archaeologist named Howard Carter. Pippin, in the midst of dialogue, even references Howard's discovery as the Tutankhamen exhibit and noting that he would "hate to embarrass [his] relative by putting his Tutankhamen artifacts on display here."
  • Roberta Williams, creator of Laura Bow, served as creative consultant, while Bruce Balfour wrote and designed the game.
  • The last reference to the series was in a nod in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993), where an octogenarian Laura Dorian is scheduled to speak at a New Orleans university.

External links

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