Laura Bow
Laura Bow is the heroine of two adventure games, Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest (1989) and Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Ra (1992), both created by the computer game company Sierra Entertainment (formerly Sierra On-Line). Laura Bow was created by Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra On-Line and creator of the classic series King's Quest. The Colonel's Bequest, along with King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, was one of the first computer games to feature a female lead. The Laura Bow games take place in the 1920's.
She is portrayed as a young woman in her early twenties who is headstrong, determined, somewhat naïve, and extremely clever. She is a student at Tulane University in The Colonel's Bequest before she becomes a journalist in The Dagger of Amon Ra. Her father, John Bow, is a retired detective and taught her everything she knows about detective work.
Both games featuring Laura Bow are murder mysteries, but only The Colonel's Bequest was actually created by Williams. She took a backseat role in the creation of The Dagger of Amon Ra, making sure that Laura Bow herself seemed like the same character in both games.
The Colonel's Bequest
The Colonel's Bequest uses 16-bit color and a typing interface. It uses the same point system that was prevalent in most adventure games at the time. Simply getting to the end does not guarantee a perfect score, as the player must find everything possible in the game to get every point. However, The Colonel's Bequest is different in that it uses a Detective's Notepad that contains a list of facts that should be discovered (i.e. the ultimate location of the bodies, who has a distinct smell, which items required close scrutiny, etc.) This list is only accessible at the end of the game, where it will show what you found and how many things you missed. The game is divided into eight acts, all of which take place over the course of a single evening.
Summary
The Colonel's Bequest opens at Tulane University, where Lillian Prune, Laura Bow's friend, invites her to a family reunion at her uncle's estate in southern Louisiana. Apon arriving at Misty Acres, Colonel Dijon announces that all his relatives in attendance are listed in his will, and that his money will be divided equally among them upon his death. The evening takes a turn for the worse when Laura discovers the body of one of the guests, but no one believes what she finds even as the body count rises steadily throughout the night. In the end, Laura discovers that Lillian is the killer, driven mad by what she percieves as her relatives' attempts to drive her and her uncle apart. The final scene shows the last remaining relative and the Colonel fighting in the attic, and Laura must get there in time to save the Colonel from an early demise.
The Dagger of Amon Ra
The second and final instalment of the Laura Bow series uses 32-bit color and a point-and-click interface. It is divided into six acts. It was released as the popularity of adventure games was ending and therefore achieved low sales. Because of the poor reception of The Dagger of Amon Ra, a third Laura Bow mystery has not been made to this date. It is the only instalment of the Laura Bow series to contain voice acting, though this is only available on the CD-ROM version.
Summary
The Dagger of Amon Ra takes place after Laura Bow's graduation from Tulane University. She moves to New York City where she becomes the first female reporter for the New York Daily Register News Tribune (The Trib). Her first assignment is to investigate and write about the theft of a valuable Egyptian dagger from the Leyendecker Museum. After finding a dress to wear and picking up preliminary clues about suspects and informants in Act I, Laura goes to a museum fund-raiser at 6:00 pm to investigate further. By the end of Act II, Laura has found her first body crammed in a sarcophagus, but it is not her last. Locked in the museum for security purposes, the guests are killed one by one until the killer finally goes after Laura in Act V. In the last act, Laura must show the evidence she's collected and use it to decide who killed the guests and why. Incorrect or unsupported answers have disastrous consequences for Laura and other characters.
Name
Laura Bow's name is an allusion to 1920's actress and sex symbol Clara Bow. Laura's appearance (especially in The Dagger of Amon Ra) closely resembles Clara Bow's, particularly her curly red hair.
External links
- "The Laura Bow Coalition Headquarters", a petition to revive the Laura Bow series