Murder in the Abbey is a throwback to the old-time adventure game genre. While there are some differences in the puzzle quantity and type as compared to older classics, there are more similarities than not. As a result, GameZone had a distinctly pleasurable time playing Murder in the Abbey.
The game takes place in medieval times. A monk and his novice are traveling to a remote abbey, located on a precipitous cliff. As they near the abbey, a large stone is suddenly loosed from above their heads. They narrowly escape death from the falling rock. The monk, Leonardo de Toledo, sees the culprit above them and gives chase on his horse. He isn't able to catch him, but realizes that the man must be from the abbey, as it is the only place he could be.
AVault:
"I didn't know what to expect when I started playing Murder in the Abbey, but I was not anticipating a plot seemingly reworked from a mildly obscure 1986 Sean Connery film. The children's cartoon art style is at odds with the decidedly adult nature of the story, which includes some disturbingly creepy double entendres (parents, be prepared to answer some uncomfortable questions). The interface, although pleasingly simple, is filled with bugs. Any murder-mystery game that has you spending more time reading than you do playing is bound to lose the interest of its players long before the killer's identity is revealed. With so many other choices in the adventure genre out there, Murder in the Abbey is one that can easily be skipped."
Melissa Walther writes:
"If you've seen the movie "In the Name of the Rose," you know the basic premise of this game. Of course, if you've seen "In the Name of the Rose," you'll also be wishing the main character, Brother Leonardo de Toledo, had half the brains of Sean Connery. And his acolyte, Bruno can't hold a candle to Christian Slater, either in looks or wit, or voice, or well, much of anything.
If you haven't seen the movie (which you should go out and rent), the basic premise of the game is that you are a monk in some vague middle ages area in Spain, traveling with your pain-in-the-butt acolyte Bruno to a distant abbey to visit their library. Before you can even get there, you're ambushed on the road and someone tries to kill you by dropping a boulder on your head.
This doesn't really seem to bother you, and as soon as you meet the abbot, you're given the task of solving the murder of the gatekeeper. Simple enough. Only problem is, the game moves at the pace of the monks themselves; ponderously slow."
Murder at The Abbey (or simply The Abbey, as it is known in Europe) is an adventure game and it seems one of the few releases these days which doesn't try a million things at once. If one could peek into the The Book of Game, one would find The Abbey under point-and-click adventure. It follows strictly the tested and tried formula of classics in this genre, and this may or not be a plus, depending on what you want out of a game nowadays.
