Le Manoir de Mortvielle

Le Manoir de Mortvielle or Mortville Manor is another of those IIGS unreleased or unfinished game surprises.

The game was originally created by Lankhor, a name a new to me. According to the About dialog, the IIGS version is brought to us by Second Sight Software (SSS) which was another guise of the FTA. The game is entirely in French, except for the About dialog! As an interesting note, you'll notice that 'About the Authors' is dimmed. To see a silly picture (and learn no more about the authors) and access the menu, hold down the option key.

I've since been told that this was simply another the FTA's experiments in producing games. My only criticism of the FTA is that they rarely finished any of their experiments, including Mortville Manor but also Space Harrier, Blue Helmet and Oil Landers.

The game is entirely driven by pull down menus; no text parser to enter commands. Regardless of my lack of knowledge in French, I tried every menu option to which nothing much happened under the 'Act' or 'Self' menus, but 'Inv' is the player's inventory and 'Dep' moves you to and from locations. I'm guessing you have to solve a mystery of sorts: probably a murder, or something equally unpleasant.

The graphics range from excellent to average between different locations. Sound is nice, what there is of it. The game loads nice and quickly from ProDOS 8, but I guess we would expect nothing less from Second Sight Software/FTA. There you have it. Another reason to start practicing your French language skills!