My friend Mark gave us a fantastic piece of advice that I’d pass along to any other first time players: “Just worry about solving the mystery,” he told us, “Ignore the score.”

I’m almost positive that if we had focused on our score and behaved like players in a game rather than detectives, we would have failed to answer the final questions correctly. Ultimately, solving the murder was incredibly satisfying, even if we didn’t beat Sherlock’s score. All we ended up caring about was the story we had created while solving the case.

In our game, there was a single clue that my friend Sean noticed and it cracked the case wide open. For a brief brilliant moment, he got to be Sherlock. In fact, we all had our own moments like that where we were able to share some clever flash of insight with the rest of the group. Afterwards, when the game was boxed up again, all we cared about were those great “Sherlock moments” and the hilarious hair-brained theories we had cycled through to actually solve the case. The score didn’t matter.

THE VERDICT

I can’t recommend this enough. The only real downside to the game is the replayability. Because of the inherit linear narrative nature of the game, once you solve the mystery, you can’t come back to solve it again. Each case only has a single possible ending.

It actually feels a lot like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met someone who doesn’t love Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Like really great puzzle games, it makes you very aware of your own limitations while also providing incredible “ah hah!” moments that make you feel like the smartest person in the room. Or, at the very least, 1/6th a Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Game