Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments casts players as the celebrated detective across six varied investigations, including murders, missing-person cases and spectacular thefts. Some inquiries, the game’s description notes, reach into the fantastic. Rather than presenting detection as a matter of simply collecting clues, it frames each case around the choices Holmes makes while trying to identify the truth.
The investigation draws on Holmes’s fourteen detection skills. Players choose which lines of inquiry to pursue, question suspects and use their deductions to name the guilty party. The game then gives those conclusions weight: players can decide a culprit’s fate, while the consequences may affect Holmes’s reputation or emerge in unexpected ways. Its distinctive hook is the tension between following a personal moral compass and applying the letter of the law, with freedom to conduct investigations as the player sees fit.
Listed as a single-player adventure, Crimes and Punishments is structured around individual casework and decisions rather than shared or competitive play.
