The Scoop is an adventure game harboring a mystery theme that was released by Telarium in the late eighties. Telarium later became known as the more popular Windham Classics. It abandons the text command parser interface and allows you to select from a series of actions at each puzzle, making it somewhat innovative for the time of its release. The Scoop is based on a detective novel that was a collaboration/compilation from a variety of authors, that was published in 1931. Contributors who will claim some degree of inspiration for this detective game include Agatha Christie, Clemence Dane, E.
C. Bentley, and Anthony Berkely.
In the Scoop, the player will assume the role of a young journalist who is working for a failing newspaper called “The Daily Courier.” He is trying to write more thrilling articles on more important topics and does his own legwork to try to get the scoop on other journalists. In this case, he has been sent to investigate two different murders that may or may not be related. The journalist has five days to solve these crimes and point to a trigger-man. He has to write his story and publish it or his newspaper will go out of business and he will be left with no job.
The crux of this game revolves around the age-old journalistic tactic of the
stealth interview, also known as eavesdropping. The Scoop is riddled with non playing characters who wander around their areas, going about their daily business and having conversations with each other. The user will be able to gain many valuable clues to the murders, or at least leads to other leads, by listening in on these conversations. How you handle each clue is up to you, but you will have to be pretty efficient, since the game’s clock is going to keep ticking whether you are pursuing valuable information or a red herring. Aside from eavesdropping to attain clues, you will also be able to examine about everything in every room. You will also be able to talk to some of the characters, question their alibis and so forth to determine possible suspects.
There are many puzzles in the game, and the quantity of them alone makes the game challenging to complete within the time limit.
Overall, this is a solid game that is somewhat belabored by an old interface. However, it was very good for its day and still presents an excellent plot and some very surprising twists and turns. It should be an enjoyable adventure game for most classic gamers.
