Sherlock Holmes & The Secret Weapon (A Novel Approach) $1.00 USD
Game title: Sherlock Holmes & The Secret Weapon (C64)
Game description: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is an interactive visual novel style of game in the vain of a Choose Your Own Adventure that is built using the BlocklyVN8bit game engine. Based on a paperback novel going by the same name - the game is set in 1940s London, where you investigate a sinister plot involving a stolen weapon that could turn the tide of World War II. You are presented with a scene within the story and you need to select one of two options to proceed. Selecting the wrong one will often result in game over, so your aim is to progress through the story by making the right choice all along the way.
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Production - 20%
20%
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Fun - 10%
10%
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Depth - 20%
20%
Summary
Sherlock Holmes & The Secret Weapon is a valiant effort to provide something different in today’s C64 gaming scene but its execution falls short to making this enjoyable in anyway.
The still graphic conversions just don’t really come out that well and the presentation of the story feels disjointed and difficult to follow. Each of the game scenes does take a very long time to load and draw up and as a result I had to run the game in Warp mode using the VICE emulator just to make it playable.
The game has a habit of crashing and I had trouble getting the second disk of the game to load up and from the looks of it, this appears to be a bug in the version that is available on the author’s itch.io site.
This is a case of a game design being severely undercooked and I don’t think it warrants to be charging $1 US dollar for it.
Overall
17%User Review
( vote)Pros
- I’m sorry I cannot come up with one
Cons
- Very slow loading
- Lots of bugs/crashes
- Story text is disjointed and difficult to follow
- Game play is very basic
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