Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is the last ‘new’ game for me in 2014.

Is it any good?

Have you ever had the desire to walk the streets of Victorian London with Sherlock Holmes in search of Professor Moriarty? To search the docks for the giant rat Sumatra? To walk up Baker Street as the fog is rolling in and hear Holmes cry out, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”? Now you can! You can enter the opium den beneath the Bar of Gold, but beware, that may be Colonel Sebastian Moran lurking around the corner. Or capture the mystery and excitement of Holmes’ London in this challenging and informative game. You, the player, will match your deductive abilities against your opponents and the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes.

In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you are presented with a mystery to solve, and it is then up to you to trace the threads of evidence through the byways and mansions of nineteenth century London. You will interview suspects, search the newspapers for clues, and put together the facts to reach a solution.

Game Play

In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you are presented with a case. Both you and your team of investigators, as well as Holmes, are there to study the initial crime scene.

Then, you and your team will decide who to question, where to visit and what to inspect. You travel around London, hopefully, from clue to clue leading to the finding the culprit.

You have resources in the form of a newspaper…

As you would expect the Newspaper isn’t going to lead you in the right direction as it’s filled with fluff and unrelated news of the day. But, with careful study, you can pick up on a clue that can help in your investigation.

You also have a Directory of people and businesses in London…

Like the Newspaper, it is FULL of information with most of it being useless to your case… But again, if you find something you need it can be a real help.

You use the information you gather from crime scenes, the Newspaper and Directory to visit places in London using the Map of London you carry with you…

Visiting locations and talking to people will either lead to dead ends or help you in your investigation… or lead you off in the wrong direction!

Once you feel you have all the information you need to make an accusation and compare your results and findings with that of Mr Holmes himself. How did you do? Well, it’s highly unlikely you outdid the master detective but surely you arrested the correct suspect… right?

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Summary

This is essentially a very thematic and tough ‘Choose your own Adventure’ game. Each Person or Location is related to a map reference which correlates to a relevant passage in the book for the case you are following.

You read it out, maybe it’s helpful, maybe not, but you then have to decide as a team where to go next.

At the end of the game, you’re going to have a number of questions relating to the case. You gain points for each of thee you get right.

Also, for each step, you take (person/location visited) you mark it down… For every step you take MORE than Holmes, you lose points.

This gives you your final score.

There’s not much to it mechanically, but thematically it’s great. It’s a really fun game with almost no replayability but it’s fun to play none the less.

I’m looking forward to playing more cases in the future and hopefully doing much better than we did the first time 🙂

Jesta ThaRogue