Celebrating All Things Mysterious: Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring

What better game for a mystery celebration than one starring the great detective himself?

Frogwares has developed a lot of Sherlock Holmes adventure games over the years, and I ended up with so many of them that the series made #5 on my list of the top 10 longest series in my backlog.

I’d already skipped The Mystery of the Mummy after trying it briefly, but I’d heard that the second game in the series was a big improvement, so I decided it was finally time to play Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring.

…or possibly Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring, or just Sherlock Holmes: The Silver Earring, depending on where you look. As far as I can tell, “The Case of the Silver Earring” is its European title, but why it has two North American titles, I’m not sure. (Both appear on the same Steam page, making matters more confusing.)

Whatever title you want to call it by, it’s a third-person point-and-click adventure game that follows Sherlock Holmes as he investigates the mysterious murder of a man shot at a reception right in front of his guests.

The basic gameplay is fairly simple. You click on a spot to have Holmes walk there and click on interaction points to examine an area or pick up an item. Occasionally you’ll need to use an item from your inventory, as well. Documents you find can be examined from your inventory, which then adds them to your notebook where you can read them in detail.

Unfortunately, even these simple controls can be a bit clunky. Getting Holmes to move in the right direction usually works, but sometimes he would just turn back and forth until I tried clicking somewhere else. He also moves slowly, with a jog available in some locations but a slow walk forced in many others, and several interactions require you to click with the magnifying glass or measuring tape so Holmes can slowly move into position to examine the area in question.

There’s no way to highlight items you can interact with, so it often becomes a pixel hunt – made worse by the fact that the hitbox for interacting with an item doesn’t always match up with its location. At one point I was stuck and consulted a guide, learned the spot I’d missed was something I tried interacting with and couldn’t, and went back to discover the interaction point was the empty space just off to the side.

And why did the developers decide this was the sort of game that should have a stealth segment that requires you to move swiftly and precisely past patrolling enemies?

I’ll admit I ended up playing with a guide open in another window to consult whenever I got too stuck, although in the case of the stealth segment, that required additional interpretation even with a video guide since what was happening on my screen didn’t quite match up with what was happening in the video. (The timing still worked if I acted based on the patrolling dog’s movement instead of location, which makes me think that part is bugged in some way – possibly connected to how the interaction points don’t always line up with the objects you’re interacting with. Occasional other visual oddities like Holmes walking partly on a wall support that as well.)

Despite this being an adventure game, there aren’t a lot of actual puzzles, even inventory-based ones. It’s mainly a matter of talking to everyone, examining everything, and trying your magnifying glass or measuring tape when Holmes indicates that he needs to use an item.

It does have a handful of actual puzzles, though their logic is questionable at times and others are just annoying.

All I’ve really done so far is complain about this game, so let me talk about some positives. The story is divided into days, and at the end of each day, you’re required to take a quiz in your notebook. The quiz asks several questions about the case, which you need to answer with yes or no and then substantiate with clues, documents, or testimony. I thought this was a pretty clever and fun way to make it feel more like a detective game – summarizing new information while making sure you can say which clues provided that information.

It’s also surprisingly funny! A handful of lines were clearly meant to be funny, but I also got more entertainment out of Holmes’s deductions than I probably should have. Maybe The Great Ace Attorney and Herlock Sholmes have ruined my perception, but whenever Holmes started rambling on about a dozen tiny clues and how they led him to an extremely detailed explanation of some minor event, complete with occasional cuts to Watson looking bemused and/or shocked, I couldn’t help but laugh.

(The Great Ace Attorney really has altered my perception; at one point they mentioned Inspector Gregson and I was startled for a half-second before remembering he’s an actual Sherlock Holmes character.)

Now, the overall mystery in this game is… difficult to follow. I picked up bits and pieces as I played, but by the end I still didn’t understand the full picture.

And the developers must have known it would be like this, because the final quiz is optional and the ending cutscene includes 20 solid minutes solely of Holmes explaining the case. That feels very fitting for a Sherlock Holmes story, but perhaps not so much for a mystery game where the player is meant to be him.

Playing Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Silver Earring was certainly an experience. I’m glad I got it in a bundle instead of buying it on its own, but fans of older adventure games might consider it worth a purchase for what it is. While frustrating at times, it has enough promise that I’m looking forward to moving on to the next one to see how the series evolved from here.