Quid Pro Quo
Quid Pro Quo
A deduction mini-game made for DOSember Game Jam 2025.
Brought to you by:
- mausimus: coding, writing
- joker: art, music
HOW TO PLAY
- you play using the mouse
- investigate clues under question marks
- collect words underlined in red
- use arrows on the sides to switch locations
- assign names you found to character portraits
- assign senders and recipients to letters
- press TO QUIZ button to enter the quiz screen
- fill in blanks in the Quiz using words you collected
- the Quiz will accept synonyms and alternative order
HINTS
We believe the game is best enjoyed by taking your time, some notes and good old fashioned deduction. However if you feel like you could use a boost, check out our click-to-reveal hints page.
REQUIREMENTS
- IBM PC/AT (286) running DOS
- 512K RAM
- EGA graphics card (256K)
- mouse
- AdLib/OPL2 sound card (optional)
- or... the default DOSBox environment
SOURCE CODE
https://github.com/mausimus/dos2025
No AI has been used to make this game.
Download
Development log
- Difficulty tweak - letters trackingDec 16, 2025
- Minor patch - paragraph statusDec 04, 2025
- Hints now available!Dec 01, 2025
Comments
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very good
Really cool, I very much enjoyed the writing. The graphics are incredible as well and add a ton of value.
Thanks so much!
I really enjoyed this, the art, the sound, the atmosphere, everything!
I basically solved it without resorting to hints, which is to say, I figured out what had happened. But I couldn't figure out the right combination of words in the blanks to solve the puzzle, until I looked at the hints. I am glad I did, because my mistake was that I did not think that "passkey" referred to a physical object!
Maybe it should have been obvious, I know they weren't using digital encryption in 1934, I guess I was just primed by reading "password" and thinking "passkey" was just a term the alarm company used to sound more secure.
Thanks a lot, that's awesome! I did think about the possible confusion with modern passkeys, but eventually decided that shedding contamination with 21st century knowledge is fair as part of the puzzle.
Apparently “passkey” appears in exactly two movie titles (according to IMDB): The Devil’s Passkey (1920) and Passkey to Danger (1946). So it was probably more frequently used in 1934 than now. The poster for the latter implies that a passkey is an enormous six-foot long key. (jk)
Citations are thin, but the original definition (a skeleton key, opens multiple locks) seems at odds with WebAuthn (an individual user’s key for a single website).
Why the heck did “skeleton key” stick around and “passkey” fall into disuse? Sure, it sounds way cooler, but I would assume people who carry skeleton keys would prefer boring, professional terms for things.
It’s good to know you considered it. At the time it didn’t feel fair. But I guess that’s just how it goes with puzzles. There’s not much point to this comment other than maybe it will help someone else avoid the spoilers on the hints page.
What an excellent game! The visuals and atmosphere are top notch. This sort of deduction games seem like a fairly recent trend, but I think it lends itself quite well to the DOS era limitations. Besides a few demos, I haven't really played any of the games in this niche, so I did feel a bit out of depth and overwhelmed with the difficulty right off the bat and probably would have never gotten everything right without the hints.
I guess it's the kind of game that requires you to actively take notes and maybe screenshots, because what I struggled with most was the constant back and forth menu navigation to keep track of everything. But I'm very impressed to see something this complex designed for a game jam.
Thanks a lot and 🤜🤛 to a fellow DOSjammer! Yes the idea was to take this new genre back into early DOS era and due to limited timeframe it's perhaps not the gentlest introduction to it. Larger games have multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty but here we just had one shot, and chose to target players with some Idol-like experience. Taking notes and paying close attention to all the clues (everything matters!) is of the essence. I love this playstyle myself and sincerely recommend checking out key titles of the genre.
This is awesome, and was the perfect thing to finally get me to learn how to use Logseq, and it worked great! I’m so stumped on the word stuff, though… I checked the hints, and they were all what I figured but I’m messing up something up on parts 2 and 5 :\
Thanks a lot for giving it a shot! The purpose of the quiz is to check if the player has uncovered the whole story (which is slightly broader than just what's explicitly in the quiz) so please try reviewing if you've connected all the events and motives of the characters. If you do find what you're missing, please feel free to DM me on Discord so I can improve the hints page.
I had to cheat and dig through the source to figure out what I had wrong… I was trying to describe the wrong situation in paragraph 2, and while I referenced one of the things they did at the end of P5 it wasn’t the thing the game was looking for haha.
😂
This game is too good. It elicited a type of response in me, similar to cuteness aggression, where I was essentially overwhelmed by how impressive it is. So excited to give it a proper play (and I really enjoyed the diverse name choices!)
Thank you so much for creating the opportunity for us to make it and for the kind words on stream! Your enthusiasm for all things DOS is in a class of its own and has been all the inspiration we needed to give it our best shot. Please look after your superpower.
VERY HARD
That's also a "period accurate" part! Hope hints helped!
Incredible presentation, feels great to play! I couldn't solve it even using the full hint sheet (I could never figure out the last paragraph), but I still had fun.
Thanks for giving it a shot!
I enjoyed this, despite being terrible at deduction! :D I love the pixel art.
(Web version didn't seem able to capture my mouse - couldn't get past the title screen. I'm using Safari if it makes any difference. Actual executable worked fine!)
Thanks a lot! Sorry about Safari, unfortunately I don't have access to a Mac right now, must be some web DOSBox issue.
compelling vibes and design all around! instant dos classic
You're too kind!
really cool game!
Thanks a lot!