"Welcome to fart Basel. RIP Art Establishment (*~10'000 BC, †2023)."
Created for the #tezpole event over on X. 256 colors palette, 270p square native resolution upscaled to 2160p video file with audio. 20 seconds music loop created with MilkyTracker using Roland JV-2080 samples.
If you fancy a oozing-with-love-for-the-stories Sherlock Holmes point and click adventure and you don't want to wait a year or more for me to complete the Beekeeper's Picnic, might I suggest 30 year old obscure classic The Rose Tattoo?
I spent this evening playing around in this game and I'm in love, I think it's instantly become my favourite Sherlock Holmes game.
I've always thought that if I was writing a proper Sherlock Holmes mystery game, I would find some way for Holmes to be indisposed so that the player could play Watson acting in his stead, at least for part of the game. I feel like playing as Watson is so much more satisfying - he's able to be fallible, and we can join him in wanting to impress Holmes.
This game comes up with the BEST reason for Holmes to be out of action because it also sets the stakes very high - the Diogenes Club has gone up in flames and Mycroft is on death's door. Holmes immediately locks himself up in his bedroom in terrible grief, and it's up to Watson (and the player!) to pull him out of it by beginning to piece together what has actually happened.
The game uses actual actors in front of green screens for all the characters, which looks a little odd sometimes but it does mean they are expressive and grounded.
The voice acting generally seems good, although sometimes I think the quality of the dialogue surpases it. There is lovely a moment where Holmes laments that freak accidents seem awfully unreal until one happens to someone you know. His distress is palpable in his words, but not quite carried through to his voice.
The dialogue and expository text is aboslutely steller, though, so having voice acting to match is a tall order. It often has a very very dry sense of humour, and nails the 1890s parlance.
Also honestly I think I just love the Mycroft whump and Holmes being all 3 Garridebs about it. It's so personal!
The caveat is that this is a game from the era when you were expected to sit down with a notebook, with no objectives or tutorials or prompts. It also seems to rely on you spotting very tiny details and doing a bit of pixel-hunting. I have a feeling that completing it would take a long time, and a lot of brain-power!
You can download it from Archive.org, and I recommend playing it with the ScummVM emulator.