13th Disciple

Title: 13th Disciple

Author: Perry Hendriks (Royal Software)

Year: 2002

Engine: AGI

Description: "In January - March 2002, 8 women disappeared from a college high school in Boston, Massachusetts. Although the police found numerous clues that pointed to someone within the school's boundaries, no one was ever apprehended. The police are at a loss."

URL: http://sciprogramming.com/fangames.php?action=review&id=100

Thoughts:

This is a strong start, and I'm glad the author decided to give his game a numerical title. This is always a good way to consistently top the alphabetical order, and no Aaron Adelson will ever get in your way.

Although I have no idea what a "college high school" might be, the plot has its hooks in me from the start. Murder is a bit of a lazy gimmick that way: what better way to make people pay attention, to give your story that little extra buzz, than through senseless killing? Well, 13th Disciple delivers faster than you can even start counting disciples, hitting you with dead ladies during the intro sequence.

What the hell...?

Seriously, the art in this game is the best AGI gore this side of Manhunter, and I have rarely seen this engine put to use to such grotesque effect. AGI closeups are always a bit jarring, going from this:

To this:

Reminiscent of classic Sierra closeups from LSL, which I guess served to facilitate fapping in the '80s stone age.

Anyway, a brief synopsis of the 13th Disciple intro is that a woman linked to a string of local killings has "disappeared into the woods," and a cop who sets out to find her discovers her corpse, hands behind her head in full relaxation mode, sitting on a bench in the park. He heads back to his patrol car and then suddenly, an explosion. Or an earthquake. Anyway, the screen shook and then we changed scenes.

It turns out that this game is set at "Boston Community College," or "Boston College," or "Boston City College," depending on which text box you're currently reading. The protagonist is a devilish rogue of a student, Falco, who starts the game by being tossed out of a classroom by his teacher for pulling yet another prank. He's sent to see the dean of the school, which we're told is a regular thing for him.

The dean sends you off to sweep the floor as punishment, which sets you on your first Utterly Mundane Yet Strangely Difficult Puzzle. First, you talk to the extremely racist rendering of a Chinese janitor, who for unknown reasons refuses to let you use his brooms.

Is this a reference to a PQ1 character?

After some confusing shenanigans, you manage to swipe his keys to this broom closet, which is its own little corner of hell.

This room makes the fatal mistake of describing almost everything except the hotspot you need to interact with to solve the epic Quest for the Broom, which is that pile of clothes. Yes, you have to visually identify a pile of clothes in an AGI game, and asking the player to visually identify anything made out of fewer than 100 pixels is a tall order.

NOTE: This does not actually pick up the broom.

So after finding the hidden broom, you can finally progress the main story.

By the way, there's a huge murdery clue on the screen in that laundry chute, and it's identified with blaring horns by the text box. But it's out of your reach, and no, you can't use the ladder, nor can you climb anything.

When you get back, the dean's dead. (He looks adorable dead, btw.) You're the natural suspect, setting up an interesting hook for the first part of the game, as you try to solve the crime while evading the police.

The plot thickens.

This murder opens up a few new areas, as well, which had previously been closed off by Quest for the Broom.

Unfortunately, I ran into a major wall here. Despite the new areas and a couple of interesting leads, I couldn't seem to make any progress over the course of an hour or so. Combined with this message...

...which was a nice touch, very Sierra demo-esque, it sort of inspired the fear in me that the game was only partially done, as is true of many (most?) AGI fangames. So after poking around screens like the following and finding no way to make progress, I decided it would be wise to advance to the next game in the 2019 World Championship AGI/SCI Alphabetical Order Playathon: 

Literally every message here talks about how much it stinks.

Spelling is not emphasized at Boston Community City College High School.

So, that's 13th Disciple. I am very interested in progressing further in the game if anyone has made any progress. I have a whole bunch of clues and ideas (finding the keycard for the jock's locker, accessing the clue in the laundry chute), but I can't make any of them work. There are also a couple of empty rooms, only some of which are hubs like this:

I've seen this somewhere before...

But there's no telling with these fangames whether an empty room is just an empty room.

Anyway, let me know if you know how to progress further in this bad boy. It's got a great start!

Review: 8/13 Disciples.

Recommended? Only if you like AGI gore. Unless there's a huge plot there I wasn't able to access, in which case it could be quite good!