Given away previously on 1 December 2019 when it received a 78% approval rating - https://game.giveawayoftheday.com/amy-s-murderer-the-adventure-game/ There are some informative comments on gameplay (including a walkthrough!), but also a number of people mentioned problems, especially on Windows 10. As I write this there are no other comments published here yet, so look at the previous giveaway for info.

+2 Time Zone __07:01 22/5/2023

Amy’s Murderer: The Adventure Game was available as a giveaway on December 1, 2019!

https://game.giveawayoftheday.com/amy-s-murderer-the-adventure-game/

Had the game installed under Windows XP back then .
I've found the old installation .
The game works just fine .

I don't know when the last time I uninstalled an offering, but I did this one. The reason that the project didn't post a homepage in the blue box above was that this game wasn't in the inventory of either of the 2 sites that GGOTD usually references in the blue box for reviews. Though I suspect it may have been on BigFish once, but may have been dropped. It can be found on Toomky, which only publishes stars and not reviews, where it has an average 3 star rating, though it is in their list of popular games. And for some it may be great. But my impression was that it wasn't really fully developed. And, for me, it was glitchy.

It appears to be an attempt by a team that was either making one of their earliest games, or who wasn't familiar with the conventions of the genre. A clue might be the options. Sounds and music are there, but default to turned off. That may actually be better, but turned on is the standard. Sound level really couldn't be set initially because there was no audio prompt when you adjusted the level. I mean there is normally a typical sound when you do that adjustment, to help you hear and adjust the level. But not here. Also, full screen is off by default. This, again, is not necessarily a problem. In my case, though, it was just a tad confusing because it seemed to be set to my native screen size, and I wouldn't have known except for the Windows bar at top. That didn't really confuse me, but it might confuse a few with resolutions lower than 1200 x 768. And, if you're saying, "well nobody uses resolutions that low of a resolution, anyway" you're mostly right, but, I'm sure this game was developed quite awhile ago when resolutions were lower, so it's hard to say that's not a misstep. That was it for the options, which is not a criticism.

Starting the game, you are presented with a step by step short opening, "click to continue", in other words - and no skip I can see if you start a new game (which I was forced to) - which depicts a short dream, and then the heroine - one of Amy's best friends - is awoken by the phone to be informed that Amy's been murdered. Since she realizes that Amy knew enough dirt on their acquaintances that her murder wasn't surprising. So, she rushes to Amy's house - which, STUNNINGLY, is not being turned upside down for evidence by the police, and is not EVEN cordoned off by police tape - and thus begins your adventure.

You find yourself in front of Amy's house. The game starts with a forced, though reasonable tutorial, where they show you the menu button, you click anywhere, and they show you there's a clipboard right next to the menu which has your objectives, then your show the magnifying glass which is the tutorial button on the other side, and finally the map, which never opened for me, because, when they wanted you to do something where you were, you'll get a notice at the top of the screen that you aren't ready to leave this location. Outside, one of the hanging flowerpots is sparkling. Turns out, it's where she hid the spare house keys. You have to click through the 4 part tutorial, and I had to click the pot twice after that, and the keys go into your inventory, and that's it. Nothing else to do but go inside. You don't check her mailbox. Nothing else hidden outside. You go in to the foyer, where you have her purse, a bag, a journal like book, which you would think you would look into, but nope. You also have the staircase to the upper rooms - must be where her bedroom was - but you can't go there. You can go to the kitchen, - the cursor changes to an arrow - the living room, or the basement - if you find it's key.

So, I went to the kitchen. The only place sparkled was the refrigerator. So I go there, and I can't do anything. There are 2 or 3 things of interest, including a piece of paper with her full birthdate, and a photo, but you can't grab them, at least I couldn't. To grab the keys outside the cursor changed to a hand, but not at the fridge. So, I tried to leave the fridge. Couldn't work it out. Couldn't open the back door, partially shown to the right, couldn't move left, tried to go down (even up), but didn't see the cursor change to an arrow to go back. It may have, but I didn't see it. Then, I went so far off the screen that I couldn't get the cursor back. No matter what. And it was going off fullscreen. I wasn't in a window. So, I had to hit ctrl and esc to get back to my desktop, and then kill it with the task manager. So, I came back and continued and got stuck immediately again at the fridge. So I killed it again, opened it and started a new game.

This time I went to the living room. A door at the bottom of a cabinet sparkles. I open it. It contains, books placed both vertically and horizontally, bottles, and glasses. She stores her liquor bottles and multiple glasses with her books. And doesn't store the books where anyone can see the spines. A fair amount of books, and the hutch seems to have place for them in the glass cabinet on top. Ok. Anyway, it's a puzzle. Without a single instruction. I guessed that the purpose was to get all 3 of the items together, the typical move one item at a time to an empty space, then figure out how to move the next item. There was so many items that I figured it would take most people a half hour, or more. Who knows? As I said, no instructions. Luckily, there was a skip button. So I skipped and got the basement key. There was other things there that looked interesting, but no sparkles, no way to interact. So, on to the basement. You end up at a fuse box with tangles wires. But it's not a fuse box. It's a switch box with refrigerator size lights that could serve no really purpose that I can see. After I fumbled a bit and got 1 switch activated, I was informed that I had to turn them on in the correct order. If you hit the next switch incorrectly, and I think there were 9, the correct switch or switches that you've found already all turned off, hardly real world. So, it was basically a memory game, though you could just write them down. No deductive challenge and a LOT of switch re-flipping. So, I hit skip. I got something else, but I forget what it was, but it was an immediate use item. Them I'm in the basement and it's the standard hidden object scene. Standard. Fine. Not too cluttered. The item names made sense, with a little experience. Got to the last item, and ended up with the cursor off the screen and unrecoverable. Would occasionally, while moving the mouse back and forth, flash quickly across the screen, no matter that I wasn't moving it that fast but unrecoverable. So, I killed the program again, and uninstalled. The cursor glitch, well maybe it was my machine. But, I was already convinced that the game had important flaws.

My final impressions: too many missed opportunities to sprinkle in clues - I hadn't run into any real clues in my short time, though it was likely there were 2 or 3 on the fridge, but couldn't add them to my inventory, and too much of a combination of hand holding - your options are limited - but lack of info: an unresponsive map and no or late instructions on the 2 puzzles I played. And of those puzzles, the 1 without instructions was too challenging, and the other was practically unchallenging and a waste of time. Probably the biggest indicator of the game's flaws was the objectives clipboard. These were the only objectives on the clipboard that I saw in my time: "Find some clues (part 1). Find some clues (part 2). Find some useful items". No, REALLY??? Sorry, but there was no way I was going to avoid that sarcastic comment.

I think the developer's were just too green in what was needed for an adventure/mystery game. I think this game would be frustrating for most, and probably a miss.

But, a noble try, thanks GGOTD and Toomky.

The opening set of dialogues has little windows that the dialogue is written in, but the dialogue is too big for the window, so I can't read it all.

I've installed this game, but I have problems.

When I start the game and goto the options, both the music and sound are turned down to zero. Slide the sound up to full, but nothing happens, same with the music slider (although, I usually turn the music right down, as I tend to find it annoying)
.
Other thing is, when i click on the option to go fullscreen (initially, its turned off) and then I click on OK to apply the changes, the game then drops out and exits.

When I then re-start the game, these options have gone back to being turned off (fullscreen), and the volumes are re-set to minimum.

Y'all know I'm a big adventure/HOG fan, so I was happy to see this offered, but it is mediocre at best. Old style graphics, clicks don't always work at first try, a bit boring so far (about a half hour in) without the interesting puzzles and story that set apart the best in the field, just HOGs and very brief puzzles so far. Grateful for any freebies, this one is working okay (not always true with these oldies) and it's a good time-killer, I guess, so if you're desperate...

Today's game seems to be very buggy in a sense. When I open up the game there is no sound only to find that in the options menu that by default the sound is turned off and you must enable it.

Also when I turn on the sound and hover my mouse over the buttons in the main menu the sound seems to skip like a scratched disk.

There are other technical glitches with this game which may affect the way it plays. I got as far as the living room where the TV was and I read the notes at the bottom left hand of the screen which helped tell me what to do but all I was able to do was manage to find the key.

The one scene where it was a mini puzzle there really was not a description of what to do in order to solve the puzzle and I had to wait for the skip button. I would really appreciate that in hidden object games it auto solves after the skip button so I can figure out what I did wrong. Sadly it's not here.

Unfortunately I cannot suggest this game in the state it's in even though I like hidden object games we've been given away better on this site.