In the story The Call of Cthulhu, Thurston is piecing together notes left behind by his great-uncle, and a large portion of the action is dedicated to a detective, Legrasse in The Horror at Red Hook, the main character is Detective Malone. The Sinking City creates an incredible, creepy atmosphere that captures what it is like reading a Lovecraft story – and many of Lovecraft’s main characters were investigators, even if they weren’t specifically detectives. Players take on the role of a private detective, Charles Reed, who’s plagued by visions, nightmares and headaches since the disappearance of the USS Cyclops, the ship he served on during the first world war (a real ship that vanished without trace). Unlike in the Sherlock Holmes games, it’s possible to miss clues entirely during an investigation in this creepy fictional 1920s Massachusetts, and that can change the conclusions you reach. Being given the freedom to make a wrong deduction is part of what makes these games so interesting.įrogwares reuses some of the same detective mechanics (including the mind palace) in its open-world Lovecraftian game The Sinking City (2019). But making mistakes is a key part of puzzle-solving. These games let you wander Sherlock’s mind palace, where the evidence is summarised, allowing you to make connections between suspects and evidence and reach your (sometimes incorrect) conclusions. In a murder case about plant poisoning, is the main suspect the angry son of the deceased, or does the fact the son knows nothing about plants rule him out? Every story gives you the requisite clues and evidence for you to solve the crime – but you are at liberty to figure out the true criminal, how the crime was carried out, and what the punishment should be, and you can interpret a single piece of evidence in a way that leads to a wrongful arrest.
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They are full of brain-testing puzzles themed around everything from picking locks to chemical solutions to plant properties.
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Since Gabriel Knight in the 1990s – an endearingly trashy series of adventure games about supernatural investigators fighting evil – games have been refining the art of a great mystery story.įrogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games (2002-21), made by an independent Ukrainian studio, are for me the epitome of detective games. The Bafta-winning Return of the Obra Dinn is a self-contained black-and-white mystery set on a merchant ship whose crew is long dead, and is one of the best detective stories around. Detective games are sometimes sourced from the greats of literature, such as The ABC Murders, based on the book of the same name by Christie – but not always. In video games, though, the player has to solve the mystery themselves there are no cheap parlour tricks here, and that necessitates some especially clever techniques when it comes to design. The Bafta-winning Return of the Obra Dinn. Sherlock Holmes could see tiny stains on a hat and understand the entire life of its wearer. Poirot was a great detective because he obsessed over order and was more sensitive to misplacement. They no longer fit where we think they fit and when we find their proper place, a clear picture emerges.
In the eyes of a detective (or a great detective writer), everyday objects are imbued with alien significance. You are forced to look at the world anew: a misplaced chair is no longer just a chair, but indicative of a killer’s escape a removed lightbulb tells us the killer did not want to be seen. Uncovering the truth through clever reasoning, observation and logic is wondrous.
The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”Īll detective stories are an attempt to reflect this. I n one of her best books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie puts these words into the mouth of her least favourite character, Hercule Poirot: “Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth.