The game starts fairly simply. You are in your office and some people enter. They inform you that one of their employees has gone missing and not only that but he has stolen the blueprints for their new (unspecified) project. They want YOU to find him. Are you a detective then? A private investigator? An officer of the law? No. You're Samuel's psychiatrist of all people. Quite why you'd be more qualified to find him than a detective or, indeed, anyone else is never made clear and nor is it made clear just who these people are or why you should feel some kind of obligation to find him. But set off to find him you do.

Travel around the city is provided for by hailing taxis which can take you to any of six different areas. Fortunately you always have enough money to pay for the taxi fare but not, for some reason, the train fare you need later in the game. Strangely, you can travel around the city to your heart's content, revisiting the same locations literally dozens of time, without ever running out of money, yet the train fare is always beyond your means. Go figure.

One puzzling things happens after finding a set of blueprints in a locker at the train station. Returning to your office, you find yourself face to face with the person I had assumed you were: Ms Efros. But no, obviously you aren't Ms Efros because here she is right in front of you. It seems you might well be Samuel Gregor himself (despite what it says at the start of the game). Stranger and stranger. Now, unless I'm missing something here it looks like logic and common sense have flown right out of the window. You, Samuel Gregor, have been ordered to find Samuel Gregor - wouldn't the people doing the ordering know what Samuel Gregor looked like? Even stranger, at one point in the game you visit Samuel's workplace and are recognised by no one there so clearly you aren't Samuel Gregor. So who are you? Beats me. Maybe the powers that be in the city in which you live just randomly order the first person they see to find people they're after.

Or is there some kind of conspiracy here that I missed out completely?

Oversights
There were a number of oversights in the game that really should have been covered. The "talk to [name]" command doesn't work. Instead you have to use "ask [name] about [subject]", but this doesn't work in the normal way. You can't ask questions with this method, as might be expected, but are given a list of dialogue options to pick from. I think "talk to [name]" would have worked better or at the very least should have been covered.

Lack of descriptions for a lot of items left the game with a rushed feel to it. Quite often I tried to examine items I was standing in front of and yet was told I couldn't see them. In one location I was unable to get a proper description for Samuel Gregor's apartment and instead was told the door was locked. Yes, I know the door is locked - but what does the apartment look like?

Non-Obvious Commands
This was a major failing. In Samuel Gregor's workplace I found a key. Later on I came to the locked door of his apartment. A-ha! Guess what opens this door? Nope, not the key. Instead (and this I only got from the walkthrough - a necessity for a game like this) you have to give a roll to the juggler who will then start juggle with it and scatter some crumbs for some birds. The birds will disturb a vagabond who forces the apartment door open! Talk about a convoluted way of handling a simple problem! And no, you can't force the door yourself. Apparently that's a power only vagabonds have.

The walkthrough also makes mention of a watch, an item I never found on my own. This turns out to be in the pocket of a trenchcoat which mysteriously appears in Samuel's closet after you speak to Ms Efros. How anyone is likely to find the watch I don't know as neither it nor the pocket are referred to when you examine the trenchcoat! To make matters even more confusing, the time is conveniently displayed at the top of the screen throughout the entire game so the whole complicated mess of finding the watch in the first place and then repairing it seems doubly pointless. If anything, it seems like a puzzle the writer hit upon and decided to use despite the fact that it makes precious little sense.

At the train station, Mika only turns up and puts the blueprints back in the locker after you examine the train departure timetable. No real explanation is given for this and it's possible to stand around for hours waiting for her if you don't realise you have to examine the timetable.

Too Much Waiting
The Case Of Samuel Gregor is a time-based game. Which is to say that everything you need to do has to be done by a certain time. For the most part, you're able to just simply wander around to your heart's content, finding clues and trying to piece together the various sections of the puzzle. But one time-based event - the catching of a certain train from the train station - happens around 7.00 PM. In my case, I arrived at the train station about two hours early and found I had to stand there and type wait over 120 times for the train to show up. Yep, 120 times. I was fair cursing the fact that the game has a time-based even but not any means to advance the time on more swiftly than one minute at a time. Why not a "wait until [time]" command? Better still, scrap the time puzzle altogether and allow the player to board the train at whatever time he arrives at the train station?

Conclusion
All in all, The Case Of Samuel Gregor isn't a terrible game, it's just not a very good one either. A lot of the puzzles involve some considerable guesswork and trying to figure out just what was in the writer's mind at the time of writing. Some explanation as to who you are and just what is going on would have been nice as well.

4 out of 10