The Clue! (known as Der Clou! in Austria) is a remake of the 1986 game They
Stole a Million.

It would form a two game series, with a sequel following in 2001, under the
guise of The Sting! or Der Clou 2!

A unique adventure game, assuming the identity of Matt Stuvysant, a burglar who
is looking beyond just the clothes on his back and a hotel room on Holland
Street, the player is tasked with finding accomplices, scouting potential
targets, and plotting plans of burglary, down to the finest detail.

Featuring the archetypal point-and-click interface during investigations,
engaging in planning a job would alter the controls to include keyboard, using
it to control the planned movements of the personnel.


Gameplay


The Clue! is mixture of many video game genres. It can be described as
role-playing adventure game with tactical/strategy elements and puzzles in the
form of burglaries.

The gameplay is composed of two different modes - most of the time, the player
is travelling around the city of London and talking with people using
point-and-click interface like in classical adventure games, while more
strategy-like top-down perspective is used for the actual planning of the
heists[2].

The adventure mode features static graphics depicting various places with menu
interface to control Matt's actions. It is in this mode, where the player buys
and sells cars, tools and other equipment needed for thievery, recruits
accomplices and scouts for possible target buildings. Every important
information as an amount of money, description of tools, cars, loot, etc. can be
accessed anytime through the Think menu.

Before committing a burglary, the player must collect all the necessary
information by investigation of the site. A car and at least one associate with
driving skills is also obligatory.

After these conditions have been fulfilled, the player can switch the game into
the planning mode by selecting the option Planning in the hotel room[4]. There
he chooses the escape car, accomplices and the driver. In the final stage of
planning, the player controls movement of the thieves by the keyboard and works
out the details of the plan in real-time like simulation.

The loot from successful coup must be sold to one of the three available dealers
in order to earn money[3]. Each dealer is specialized in different commodities
and will not accept or will pay less for other types of merchandise.

Essential part of the gameplay are skills such as driving, lockpicking or
electronics, which affects the time needed to complete specific tasks. Some
actions and tools depend on particular skill level of person doing it (for
example using stethoscope for opening a safe lock requies higher skill level
than using a welding torch for the same job).

Participants of a successful burglary also improve their skills. In addition to
skills, each character has various personal traits as dexterity, loyalty, greed
or nerves.

These traits affect things like proportion of share from the loot, how many
trails the person leaves on the crime scene or if he/she betrays his/her
associates when captured by the police.


Here is the command line usage:

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Syntax:
        derclou [-h] [-d[<num>]] [-f] [-m<num>] [-s<num>]
Flags:
        -d[<num>]  - enable debug output (debug level [1])
        -f         - fullscreen mode
        -g<mode>   - graphics mode (normal,2x,linear2x)
        -h         - show help
        -m<num>    - set music volume to <num> (0-255)
        -s<num>    - set sfx volume to <num> (0-255)
        -t         - trainer
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This game was ported by Curty in 2007 and still a beta software