When I first played Toby’s Nose, I just explored everything around me, and wasn’t certain who the killer was, so I just tried everyone one at a time.
I played it again recently (just looking through the most-rated games on IFDB), and tried to get more in-depth this time. After I finished, I looked at David Welbourn’s walkthrough and was surprised at how I never found most of the really good hints.
But what I did find was a lot of side-stories. One I thought was pretty cool was the goth sister who has gone to a church to sacrifice the songbird of her brother’s fiancee in an attempt at a ritual sacrifice pieced together from the gothic novels she reads.
I also liked finding a reference to Lime Ergot (specifically, the limes, when smelled, are St Stellio limes, which is the kind of lime featured in Lime Ergot.
A third plot thread I found was the crystallized ginger found both in the gardener’s bed and Lady Argente’s candy dish.
I know it’s been a while since some people played it and some have never, but does anyone else remember any interesting plot threads that aren’t part of the main thread?
I also found out this time that you can sniff through a lot of Baker Street.
We just had a book-club discussion of this… I feel like that’s most of them. Did you play with footnotes on? I think that’s where @pieartsy found out that the hedge and eggshell are a reference to jmac’s The Warbler’s Nest as well as repeating the description of the other body. Just don’t take it one step further and smell the yolk or the chick or it’ll spoil the sombre mood.
Did you see the cow in the upstairs apartment? And… Toby drooling and sneezing and snarking about Holmes’s obsession with chemicals (water, salt) and bad tobacco?
I also particularly enjoyed the fond of the custom failure messages for certain classes of objects: countries, figurative things (dragon?), Pompeii and a few other things lead to Stonehenge…
(edit: oh. you’re saying they’re great because you found them. Oh well, for anyone else who might not know…)
Your nose is an extraordinary organ. It can smell,
and keep smelling, and keep smelling smells within
smells. In fact, since you’ll be doing so much
smelling, simply entering S works as a shortcut for
SMELL.
You may not be able to collect physical evidence,
but you’ll always remember important clues in your
mental INVENTORY once you’ve smelled them.
When you think you’ve figured out the murderer,
then Holmes wants you to BARK AT (somebody) to
indicate their guilt. Scotland Yard will take over
from there.
The drawing-room is filled with sights and scents,
and some are references. You could toggle
FOOTNOTES ON to see their sources, but then that
might spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?
Finally, if you’re having too much difficulty, then
you can SHARPEN YOUR SCENT. Doing this once
will italicise most nouns in the text; doing it twice
will set important clues in bold. SNIFFLE to
unsharpen your scent and return to standard
gameplay.
I love exploring things that aren’t exactly mentioned. There are some good responses to things, if you just think.
I also had completely different pictures of the characters to what I think was intended (specifically Sherlock and Dr Watson). I think this is weird of me to say, but after reading Midnight Swordfight, I thought things would start getting weird or dark or rude. Like I expected weird hints to stuff like “you smell Dr Watson” when smelling Sherlock, or some side story with very creepy or horrible food references (well, he also did Jelly, what can I say regarding food…)
