Murder on the Zinderneuf

1983 video games Commodore 64 gamesApple gamesPC games

puzzle gamesadventure games

Classic murder mystery game set aboard a luxury Zeppelin airship. Among 15 passengers on board you are the only one that can solve the case before Zinderneuf will reach its destination, New York City. While the graphics side of the game was in most versions rather abysmal (even by 1983 standards) in fact it was rather complicated game, in which you could move between locations and other passengers are on the move as well, which means you have to be in the right spot at the right time to speak to them. And speak to them you shall - you can interrogate them in different ways (friendly, aggressive), you can ignore them (which would in some cases be helpful) or follow on leads.

It is hard to describe this game in few words - it was a meticulous network of connections between suspects, but hidden beneath the not great interface, which actually made the game much harder than it should be. On one hand it was very ambitious, but on the other it took a lot of patience and time to actually get to the bottom of the mystery. And to show how ambitious it was - the game had in-built scenario generator, which meant that in each replay you would get different murderer and different motive, so you could play Murder on the Zinderneuf over and over again and each time get slightly different gameplay. Oh yeah, and there was one more detail - the gameplay time was limited. In game you had time until Zinderneuf will reach New York City, but the time in real life was limited to about 36 minutes, which did not gave much space for mistakes.

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Murder on the Zinderneuf screenshots