Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

I went in expecting a fairly linear point-and-click, and what I got was one of the more thoughtful detective games the genre has produced. Crimes and Punishments is built around six standalone cases set in 1890s London, ranging from a whaler pinned to a wall by a harpoon in a locked Sussex cabin to a train that vanishes overnight on an open track. Each case runs roughly two hours, and the variety in setting and crime type keeps the anthology structure from feeling repetitive. The core loop is the thing Frogwares got most right here. You comb crime scenes for physical clues, rotate objects to inspect them, profile suspects using a snap-assessment mechanic that pauses time while Holmes reads clothing and posture for tells, then haul evidence back to the Baker Street lab. All of it feeds into the deduction board, where linked clues form a neural tree of possibilities. The clever wrinkle is that each clue node can branch two ways, and the conclusions you draw from them genuinely change who you suspect. You can collect every piece of evidence and still accuse the wrong person. That possibility of being wrong, without the game telegraphing it, is rarer than it should be in this genre. On top of identifying the culprit, you make a moral call: absolve or condemn. The game does not push you toward a correct answer, and several cases make that ambiguity feel earned rather than lazy. Beyond the deduction board, the game layers in 14 investigation mechanics including Sherlock Vision, a focus mode that highlights overlooked details the way the BBC series put Holmes's thoughts on screen. There are also minigames scattered throughout, arm wrestling, cylindrical lock picks, mental image assembly, and their quality is genuinely uneven. Several are skippable, which is the right call. The loading screens between areas are frequent and occasionally long, and a handful of clue triggers are poorly signposted so that Sherlock Vision feels mandatory rather than optional in spots. Hardcore puzzle fans expecting serious resistance will probably find the game too gentle. Once you understand how the deduction board works, the overall difficulty settles into comfortable territory, and experienced adventure players are unlikely to get stuck. The cases are also self-contained with minimal connective tissue between them, so anyone hoping for a cumulative, branching narrative is going to be disappointed. What is here is more like a very good short-story collection: each case is its own closed mystery, and the quality across the six is uneven, with a couple feeling noticeably shorter than the rest. For the player who wants atmosphere, credible Victorian detective work, and that specific satisfaction of watching a deduction tree click into place, this still holds up. It is Frogwares at the height of their pre-Chapter One form, and it remains a strong entry point for anyone curious about the series.

Alex · Scout Team

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