Sherlock: The Network
Since season 4 of BBC Sherlock will be arriving in a couple months, I spent time to rewatch the whole series. While I may hate how little episodes there are, it does make rewatching do-able. I do recommend watching this show back to back since it makes the most sense to me that way. Every time when new episode comes out, its been so long that I forgot the details and even some minor background characters. While I was searching about the show, their official app game came up. I got curious so I downloaded it.
The game makes you one of Sherlock's homeless network. In the show, the homeless network helps Sherlock gather information and in the game its the same but you also solve some things for him too. You are given a case and you are to go around places to talk to people, find clues, and solve the case.
The main screen is a map of London. There will be things you can tap on the map like money and people. When you need to get to a place, the game will give you a choice to walk, train, or taxi to the location. The game has a leaderboard so it has a scoring system. The faster you finish the case the more score you earn. The method you take to locations does add to your case timer. I personally don't care about score. When you choose train or taxi, both cost game money and have a mini game puzzle that you must solve.
The game does feature clips and audio from the actual actors for this app. Its kind of nice having them talk to you. They will have you find clues and solve puzzles. These are in the form of mini games. Finding clues is like a point and click game. You are shown a scene, a newspaper, or whatever and you are to gather clues. The number of clues you can find are shown. There will be a timer as well, and as time goes on it will give you a faded circle to show you where to tap. You don't have to find every clue, but one clue is the most important clue that you have to find. There's also an audio scrambler mini game, passcode cracking, and other mini games that find clues. Once you have all the clues, you are given a Mind Palace. A list of keywords from the clues circle around and you have to choose three that will solve the case.
While this game is free to download, the majority of the cases you need to pay for. The first two are free to do. Currently there are 11 cases. Unlocking 4 is $1.99, but you can unlock 8 for $2.99. There's one extra case you can do that cost $0.99 and it is not included with the 8 case pack. The extra case is just one case and not a set. It is harder in a sense that its on a timer, but if you're on a puzzle you can just tap retry to keep at it till you solve it. There's no skip on the extra case. While people may not want to pay for something like this, but I did buy it since I didn't find the price to be unreasonable. The game also has been around since 2013, but it isn't updated often. I got the app in October 2016 and the last update was in March 2015. Though this is kind of understandable as the game requires the actors to do video and audio, and they are busy people it seems.
The puzzles aren't the greatest or maybe I'm just not good at it, but it is nice to play this as if I'm part of the show. Completing all the available cases would take a few hours to do. Although you can shorten it if you decided to not solve the puzzles and just let Sherlock solve them. There's a skip button that comes up after a couple minutes during the puzzle. It will forfeit your score and lower your reward if you skip. Overall, I did enjoy this game as a fan of the show and the actors. I didn't regret buying all the cases. There is an option to connect to your Facebook but I haven't been able to manage to get that to work.
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