Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (SHCD)

  • Type: Co-op
  • Players: 1 - 8
  • Time: 60 - 120 minutes

Contents

Some might not call SHCD a boardgame, the contents are a map of london, a directory of names, some daily newspapers and 10 scenario books (I hear there is some typos and an errata is available online). There are no playing pieces, no cards, or dice, nothing is printed on card. It is all good quality though and very reasonable priced. The contents feel very like a roleplaying game. With such limited contents how do you make a boardgame?

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Play

SHCD is 10 scenario books, each of which can only be played once, the flesh of the game is in these books, but the bones are a simple and clear system of following clues and gaining information.

You and your friends play The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes trusty bunch of investigators. A game consists of reading the introduction of the scenario, brushing up on that days current affairs with the relevant copy of The London Times, and then setting about solving the case.

To solve the case you use the starting information you have to decide where in London you would like to go/who you want to talk to, you use the directory to look up where in London it is, and with this area code you find the relevant section in your scenario book and read it out. It might be the crucial extra bit of information you need to prove your case! or it might be the butler telling you they aren’t at home…

A turn is every time you read one of these locations. The game is in trying to solve the mystery by looking up the fewest locations. When you are confident in your deduction you go to the back of the scenario and compare yourselves to Sherlock Holmes himself. You score some points for correctly solving the mystery and then lose points for every location you looked up! And the thing to remember is that Sherlock Holmes is the best around! This is a very simple boardgame but each action feels heavy and important.

Lots of cases to work through.

Thoughts

I had heard about this game from a few of my friends, but its description didn’t really sound appealing to me. I couldn’t quite hear the game, and I’m not generally a huge fan of cooperative games. Then I watched Shut Up and Sit Down’s review of it, where they said it was one of the best couples game they had played. This piqued my interest! Finding good couples games can be hard as often you both don’t like the same type of games.

Having played my first game of SHCD detective my first impression is I agree! I played with my girlfriend and had a great time. In most cooperative games you are playing against randomness and it can sometimes feel like either there is just a perfect strategy you should both be executing with no discussion or no matter what you do you’ll just end up losing. SHCD is different, you can win in the sense of figuring out the mystery by just working through lots of locations the stakes are in doing it in the least number of steps but there is no going back! you are also both working to figure out as much as you can without going to the next location. It never felt like we were just going through the motions, we were constantly discussing what we had learned and where we should go next to learn more. The game feels enhanced with the second player, and it feels like you are having a conversation more than playing a game.

In some ways SHCD does feels like a role playing game, where you have a set scenario and free reign to go about it, but it also has solid boardgame elements and so plays like a boardgame. Each location you look up is a fixed cost, a reducing of resources to gain information. There is a clear risk reward structure here and at some point you need to guess the solution to the mystery and will either be right or wrong. The cause and effect of your actions feel real and also acts as a timer to stop the game dragging on.

Bottom line is that I enjoyed my first game, the thrill of the hunt and the tension of following a lead hoping it will pay off, and the positive feeling of working together with someone means I’m looking forward to playing again.

First Impression

Enjoyable couples game, looking forward to playing again.