The Dame Was Loaded

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The Dame Was Loaded
Thedamewasloaded.jpg
Developer(s) Beam Software
Publisher(s) Philips Interactive Media
Director(s) Cameron Brown
Producer(s) Beam Software, Philips Interactive Media, Vixen Films
Designer(s) David Giles
Writer(s) Mark Morrison
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Macintosh
Release1996
Genre(s) Adventure game
Mode(s) Single-player

The Dame Was Loaded is a first-person point-and-click adventure game for MS-DOS and Macintosh created by Australian developer Beam Software (now Krome Studios Melbourne). It was published in 1996 by Philips Interactive Media.

Contents

Gameplay

The game is a detective film noir set in the 1940s. It combines live action cinematic's with pre-rendered point-and-click gameplay much like previous games in the genre like Under a Killing Moon and Myst . [1] The live action was produced by Vixen Films, director Jo Lane, and was at the time the largest multimedia production ever made in Australia.

The game is nonlinear, having nine possible endings featuring over thirty fully acted and voiced characters to interact with and over one hour of fully performed cinematics.

Plot

Innocent-looking dame Carol Klein hires down-on-his-luck hardboiled private dick Scott Anger to find her brother, since she hasn't heard from him for some time. Anger learns that his case is connected to some murders and a bank robbery. [2]

Reception

A reviewer for Next Generation panned the game, citing the use of still shots instead of FMV for most of the character interactions, the low difficulty, and the "cheesy, ersatz Maltese Falcon story". He scored it one out of five stars. [3] Scott Gehrs of Computer Game Review wrote, "The Dame Was Loaded has an interesting premise, but unfortunately I can't recommend it even to mystery lovers". [4]

Quandary wrote "In the end, the real time nature of the game prevented me from enjoying this outing...Timed puzzles are anathema to many adventure players". [5]

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References

  1. Hall, Mike (10 September 1996). Deckert, Rod (ed.). "Extra goodies make Dame a challenge". Albuquerque Journal . Vol. 116, no. 254. Albuquerque, New Mexico: Journal Publishing Co. p. B1, B3 via Newspapers.com.
  2. Lane, Jo (1996-04-30), The Dame Was Loaded (Adventure, Crime, Mystery), Matthew King, Randall Berger, Tiffany Lamb, Shanyn Asmar, Beam Software, Philips Interactive Media of America (PIMA), Vixen Films (I), retrieved 2021-02-02
  3. 1 2 "The Dame Was Loaded". Next Generation . No. 19. Imagine Media. July 1996. p. 87.
  4. 1 2 Gehrs, Scott (July 1996). "The Dame Was Loaded". Computer Game Review . Archived from the original on December 21, 1996.
  5. Ramsey, Steve (March 2003). "The Dame Was Loaded". Quandary. North Fremantle, Western Australia: Quandary Computer Game Reviews. Archived from the original on 27 May 2008.