The Clue! - One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Written by MenhirMike

Last time, we burgled a Kiosk and stole 380 pound sterling worth of loot. But let’s travel back in time and explore what I could have done differently, because the game actually offers alternate approaches.

First, I could have gone to the Hotel and said that I reserved a room under the name Mark Goldberg, who is apparently a millionaire. Doing so gets me into the hotel room, but without getting Gludo’s identification card - I do not know what the ID card is useful for, so I have no idea if this is a good or bad thing.

Another option would’ve been to go to the police station and insult Gludo instead, which gets me kicked out without the 10 pounds, but with the identification card. Since I don’t have money for a hotel room, I eventually ended up at Cars & Vans, where a Mr Danner thinks I’m a relative of Sir Henry of Yorkshire and insists on giving me 20 pounds. So this gives me both the ID card and an extra 10 pounds.

Excuse my French.

20 bucks is 20 bucks…

I tried to softlock myself by buying a bunch of tools before getting the hotel room, which got me kicked out of the hotel for lack of funds. However, I can sell tools back to the tools shop at full price and thus eventually book the hotel room.

The conversation with Mr Briggs allows me to turn him down. He leaves me alone and Matt first turns to whiskey, and then to religion, spending some time in a monastery. We can choose to spend our life here. Roll Credits.

When’s the OneShortEye episode on The Clue! speedruns?

I actually do like the graphics!

Wait, this is only the third entry and I’ve already Won! the game? Awesome! Though probably not what our readers are looking for, so let’s instead decide to not spend our lives dedicated to a higher power and leave the monastery - with one of the abbot’s precious rings. We can sell this ring for a whopping 296 pounds, of which we’ll have to spend 260 pounds on the cheapest car as we’re not getting one from Briggs. Still, this leaves us with 49 pounds, compared to 18 pounds with the way that I did it.

The Loot had different plans for me.

I could have also chosen a different accomplice, for example Marc Smith. His skill in cars is really good, but he wants 90% of the loot rather than Justin’s 47%. But the real problem is that he rats us out to the police which ends with our arrest and a life in the monastery.

The English localization accidentally a word.

I don’t know if there are yet more ways to approach the introduction to the game, but I was really impressed that a game that may not even be an adventure game in the traditional sense offers more alternative solutions than even the best entries in the genre. And this opening burglary serves as a well-made tutorial because we learn that we absolutely need an accomplice (you can’t plan without a getaway driver, and choosing Matt has him tell us that he’s not the right person for that), that the accomplice needs skill in cars, and that we need tools (because none of the accomplices that I could find with car skills had the ability to break the front door with their hand or feet).

Speaking of finding accomplices with the right skills: The game makes it a bit complicated. When I talk to a person, I sometimes get something useful (“I know one or the other thing about cars”) and sometimes not (“Well, I’ve been a waiter most of my life”). I need to actually offer them a job, and then go into the Think menu afterwards to get more details (Justin has a 43% skill in cars and several attributes that the manual explains).

Taken from a later point in the game. Skills and attributes can improve over time.

Whatever we do, we will get a phone call from Briggs after our first burglary, so the game does keep us on track for the story. Speaking of the phone call, let’s continue where we actually left off the last time. Briggs calls us to congratulate us on our successful burglary, and to tell us that our services are not actually needed. They found another source of money for their big coup - codename Blue Fish - and that this whole thing would be too difficult for us.

I once knew an ornamental droid who used “FISH” as a password.

Our goal right now is to fence the stolen goods, find a new target, and burgle it. As we leave the hotel room, we are accosted by a poorly disguised Inspector Gludo, poorly imitating a Frenchman trying to buy the loot off us. If we offer it to him, it ends poorly for us and if we don’t it ends poorly for him. Poor Inspector Gludo.

Gludo is an obvious pun at Inspector Clouseau, but I wonder if the intermixed French is a nod to Hercule Poirot.

There are three dealers in this game: Mr Pooly and Mr Maloya on Holland Street, and Mrs Parker on Watling Street. They each specialize in different goods, and will give us different prices (or not buy stuff from us at all). Mr. Pooly specializes in jewelry, vases, gold, and furniture. Mr. Maloya prefers curiosities, commodities, and delicatessen. And finally Mrs. Parker wants paintings, statues, precious historic objects, furniture, and especially flowers.

We stole 280 pounds in cash and a cigar case worth 100 pounds from the Kiosk, but to turn it into actual money we can spend, we need to sell it to a dealer (even the cash that we stole). Mrs. Parker does not want any of this stuff. Mr Pooly offers us 210 pounds for the cash, and 33 pounds for the cigar case. Mr Maloya offers 259 pounds for the cash and 88 pounds for the cigar case. I can choose for each category individually whether I want to sell it or not, and in this case Maloya is the clear winner for both.

We can do better.

Because we have to split the loot with Justin White, we’re only retaining 214 pounds out of 347, leaving us with 224 pounds in our purse. I think I really lucked out meeting Justin, because the only other people with car skills I could find were Marc Smith (who betrays us) and Frank Maloya (who wants 90% of the share).

The game keeps track of our career stats.

Now it is time to commit our second heist. The taxi offers a bunch of new locations:

• Aunt Emma’s Shop, South East, Waterloo
• Old people’s home, Maida Vale
• Pink Villa, Limehouse
• Old Curiosity Shop, Kensington Church Str.
• Highgate, Highgate Cemetery

I’m choosing Aunt Emma’s shop, which is another translation that misses the mark. In German, “Tante Emma Laden” is a little corner store owned by a single proprietor or family. I think the English term would be a mom and pop store - though arguably, one can argue that it’s just simply a shop owned by a woman named Emma who has a niece or nephew.

Because we’re not given information about the building by Briggs this time, Matt has to stake it out for himself. This is where the “Investigate” menu option comes in, it causes Matt to observe the building for up to 24 hours and report on things like police patrols. At the end, we are given information about the degree of guards or the maximum noise level we are permitted.

Every location offers some flavor text when investigating.

If the business is open, we can also walk into it and look at the items to burgle in a blueprint-like view. It is here that the keyboard shortcuts seem to only work intermittently, requiring the mouse to click on Examine. The detail of this blueprint depends on how much investigation was done, with less than 100% information we’re not getting to see all the items and information about the loot contained in them.

They drew a blueprint.

I stopped by the Tools shop to buy a picklock for 17 pounds, a rope ladder for 10 pounds, and a lock breaker for 6 pounds. Tools only need to be purchased once, and are available to all accomplices.

Back in the hotel, I notice that I can’t add Justin as an accomplice - after every coup, I need to re-contact accomplices! Thankfully, I don’t have to rely on random chance to meet them in the pub again, once you know someone you can call them up through the hotel phone. This time, Justin only wants 38 percent of the loot - I’m not sure what exactly determines that number, but I am very happy about retaining more money this time around!

This is a great quality-of-life feature.

For the plan, I decide to let Justin do a lot of the work because I am worried about building up too much evidence against Matt. I do not remember how many burglaries are in the game and don’t want to softlock myself accidentally - the game has been excellent about avoiding softlocks in the intro, but I wonder if the training wheels fall off at some point.

The plan:

1. Justin walks up and breaks the front door with a jemmy (15 secs)
2. She walks to the back storage room door and breaks it with the jemmy
3. She walks to the left-most cupboard, breaks it open (8 secs) and takes 110 pounds worth of delicatessen
4. I did this to get the longest parts out first because I want to optimize the time taken. We’re at 1:32 minutes now.
5. I switch to Matt, wait 15 seconds, then walk in behind Justin to the back of the building and break open the cupboards there.
6. The rightmost contains articles for daily use (20 pounds)
7. The one on the left contains articles for daily use (30 pounds) and delicatessen (40 pounds)
8. The showcase below contains delicatessen worth 60 pounds
9. On the way out, Matt breaks into the cash register and take 128 pounds of money
10. Matt is at the car at the 2:35 minute mark. I switch back to Justin and continue from her 1:32 minute position
11. Justin takes articles for daily use (10 pounds) and delicatessen (60 pounds) from the middle cupboard, and another 60 pounds of delicatessen from the refrigerator on the right, along with a lobster valued at 35 pounds.
12. She arrives at the car at 2:49 minutes

Let’s not think too much about Aunt Emma’s family and the hardships of the post-WW2 economy.

During this planning session, I had to fiddle a bit with the interface. The isometric perspective makes it a bit hard to line up characters with the objects or doors they need to interact with. I don’t know how precise I need to be, but I made good use of the undo function to smooth out all the movements. There’s also no way to face up without walking up. For the cupboards that are next to each other, I walked to the side to get from the first to the second one, but now the character is facing to the left and I can’t interact with it. I can’t face up because there’s no room. So I had to take a step down and then up.

It’s not awful and becomes muscle memory quickly, but I don’t know how the game deals with evidence - are those extra steps going to leave more traces? I hope it’s insignificant, and commit the burglary.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Once again it succeeds without an issue, but now I’m wondering if the time of day plays a role. During the investigation, Matt observed a police patrol multiple times, and the store is open from 8am through 6pm. So I waited in the hotel room for times when it overlaps with the patrol or when the store is open, but the burglary executed perfectly every time. It seems that the text during the investigation is just flavor text? I’m not really sure if the date and time has any real use here outside of flavor, but maybe time will tell (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Anyway, I’m back in the hotel room with loot valued at 553 pounds (cash worth 128 pounds, delicatessen worth 365 pounds, and commodities worth 60 pounds). As soon as we arrive, Matt gets some very worrying news that I will use as a segue to the next posting.

This second burglary introduced a few more concepts: The need to investigate the target, the need to re-recruit accomplices, the choice between a variety of targets, additional tools, and splitting up the work to be done as fast as possible. The learning curve has been excellent so far, and I can see myself replaying the game and trying to start with harder heists from the get-go.

Session Time: 1 hour 30 minutes (of which about half was replaying the intro a few times)
Total Time: 2 hour 30 minutes