It is time again: Equipped with the classic fedora and the good old whip in your hand, you are standing in front of an ancient temple to figure out one of mankind's best kept secrets. If you are now thinking about a well-known leather jacket salesman, I am afraid that you are mistaken: We are not talking about the escapades of Indiana Jones, but about Tex Bonaventure on the search for the water of life.
Though honestly, if the licence could have been financed, we certainly would have met Indiana Jones here. 'Tex Bonaventure', on the other hand, is a wordplay on 'Text Adventure', of course, which already gives us an idea of what's to come.
Professor Moriarty is the arch-enemy of Mr Holmes. The clash of these two well-known figures is undoubtedly of epic proportions. The result of the encounter decides the reign of good or evil over 19th century London. The mini adventure at hand takes the player to this fictional final battle, which, however, never occurred in this exact form in actual literature.
Sherlock Holmes finds himself in his flat, which is guarded by snipers on behalf of Moriarty. The arch-villain is about to gain access to the flat. Holmes is on his own. He has no weapon at his disposal and escape is out of the question. Therefore, the detective must quickly use his intellectual abilities to find sufficient defence of his life against the approaching criminal.
Good humour takes proper setup and precise timing: Leading up to and delivering a punchline is an art form of its own which is harder to master than most people tend to believe. Yet it is one of the most important skills that separates the amateur jokester from the true comedian. Of course this is also what makes or brakes any video game that tries to make its audience laugh and it is especially the adventure game genre that has a tradition of delivering prime examples to both the best and the worst in comedy. One of the former is Alias 'The Magpie', a piece of interactive fiction telling the story of a hilarious art heist in a masterful way.
