In Colonel's Bequest, you are Laura Bow. She's invited by a friend to spend a few days with her friend's family on a very isolated island. Laura is a young college student majoring in journalism at Tulane University in New Orleans. She's a courageous, intuitive and also very curious girl, but she's also a little naive. You'll guide her through this night.

One of the unusual things about this game is that the whole story occurs in one night, while it is not a timed game. The game is divided into eight Acts. Every Act consists of four &QuotMust Do's&Quot. A Must Do can be noticing things, over hearing a conversation and more. So time only progresses when you do certain things.

Furthermore, The Colonel's Bequest does not contain a score system. In the official HintBook, Roberta Williams says that they chose to don't do this, because it was felt that a score system would detract from the story and make The Colonel's Bequest look too game-like (I completely agree). Instead of a maximum score you can earn, the Sleuth-O-Meter will rank you at the end of the game. It will rank you from Barely Conscious to Amateur Gumshoe to Super Sleuth. And if you're not a Super Sleuth, it gives you the option to review the notes which Laura made that night and finally it will give you hints of things which you missed, if you want (these hints won't tell you complete answers, luckily, it will only provide mere hints)

It's really not easy to be a Super Sleuth. You must have talked to everybody about almost everything, you must have been on the right places at the right time, you must take the right conclusions, discover all the secrets of the estate, etc, etc, etc.

It's almost unbelievable that this game is eight years old now!

There are also some sub-mysteries, which makes The Colonel's Bequest even more interesting. I'll name a few: the ghost at the cemetery and the previous family (the Croutons) which lived on the island before the Colonel did.

The game is more story oriented than puzzle oriented (like traditional adventures). But that doesn't mean that there are no puzzles to solve. Far from it. And one of the other things which I really like, is that while the game is very serious, there are some hidden humurous messages and things if you look carefully.

And finally, the quest can be ended in very different ways, which I won't discuss here (otherwise I would probably spoil the game for you). It's worth playing again and again after you solved it.