Alone Against the Boredom

Another week in the Land of Haggis and the announcement as I am writing this that our lockdown is being extended and toughened. We must stay indoors more and for longer… I remain wholeheartedly behind the First Minister’s decision to justify my solo gaming habit.

I closed my last post about SHCD talking about not wanting to rush through all the cases and after a bit of thinking, I’ve decided to make an event out of it once a week. Sherlock Sundays, 7pm bagpipe time (GMT). This week I supplemented the candles and pot of tea with a YouTube video called Sherlock’s study ambient sound or something along those lines. I pulled out the second casebook, my notebook and the appropriately dated copy of The Times, which I prefer to read first to feel clued in from the start. Halfway down the page for the news on the 17^th of June 1887, my peace was shattered by a vacuum cleaner! The Sherlock ambiance creator and I have very different ideas about the role Hoovers in peaceful setting.

Case #2 The Mudlark Mystery begins with one of our Baker Street Irregulars making a gruesome discovery during his second job as a Thames Mudlark. Mudlarks are people who comb the riverbanks whilst the Thames tide is out for anything valuable or interesting; it is still done today though nowadays you need a license and it is no longer considered an acceptable way for children to earn enough money to feed themselves. Ah yes, I don’t think I mentioned that in my last post, did I? The Baker Street Irregulars who you play as throughout the 40 or so available cases for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective are a ragtag group of child labourers whom Sherlock encourages to visit crime scenes, interview criminals and generally put themselves into character building situations to suit his needs. God bless the British Empire!

With less preamble than previous cases, our little scamps set to race around London showing said gruesome discovery to several adults, not one of whom appears to have taken a Child Protection course, trying to threaten homeless people and checking in with Porky Shinwell, their contact for the criminal goings on at The Rat and the Raven pub.

The case itself brought in some new challenges adding to the go from one numbered paragraph to the next with more interaction with the map than before. I hit a bit of a slow patch where I seemed to lose the thread but the game has shown me enough about how to play that I realised there was something wrong within ten minutes or so. A bit of backtracking and sure enough, through user error, I had thought a lead was a deadend until I got a certain clue letter (this is the game’s way of tracking what you have done and opens up whole conversations or extensions to other ones) was open to me after all. A wonderful moment was introduced in which, whilst calling on a suspect, the Irregulars pissed them off and had to run away. As the adult gave chase, our scamps lost them in and then the option opened up to double back and search the now empty house. Very in keeping with a bunch of smart-ass kid detectives, like the Hardy Boys but with lice and possibly scurvy.

The beauty of the game from a mechanics standpoint is that you choose when to stop. The end questions are divided into two groups – primary ones relating to the main mystery and secondary ones about supplementary information and side stories which are worth fewer points. For every lead you follow more than Sherlock’s total, you are penalised 5 points so there is a balance between more information and diminishing returns. In this case, a lead that I followed early on appeared to be a waste of time however by the end it tied to a secondary question for 15 bonus points.

I haven’t checked in advance the difficulty levels for these cases and there’s no indication in the game itself but I suspect that this one is on the easier side. Even with my mistake causing unnecessary legwork and my final tally being more than double Sherlock’s, I ended the game with 120 points which is higher than the game defaults Sherlock to. Having said this, it didn’t feel easier in the moment and the story itself was exciting. No hints about an overarching narrative this time but it felt very much like a Holmes case.

Playtime was around two hours and I was engrossed to the point that half the pot of tea was stone cold when I remembered to lift my head long enough to pour it. Getting more interaction with the Irregulars was a nice addition and I hope there is more of it in the rest of the box.