Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Silver Earring

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

In October 1897, Sherlock Holmes and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, are invited to a party hosted by Sir Melvyn Bromsby, a construction tycoon, in honor of the return of his daughter, Lavinia, from London. During his opening remarks, a gunshot kills Bromsby on the spot and creates pandemonium.

What is this?

Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring is a point and click adventure game and the second in the Frogwares series. It was released in 2004 and is pretty clunky and glitchy even for the standards at the time, nevertheless, it's still pretty decent to play and holds a lot of charm.

LP details

This will be a video LP and I will be recording as I play. I aim to upload a video at least once a week.

Let's Play: Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Silver Earring

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

Already off to a good start, I copied and pasted the wrong game name.

Edit: The first upload also missed an edit.

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This video concludes the first day of the investigation and we also get to control Watson for a short time, which is nice. This game also features Holmes scientific table, something which we also saw in the second Lost Files game. Even though the table is mentioned in the books, this game does feel like it has taken some notes from the Lost Files series. There is also a quiz at the end so I hope that you have been paying attention.

I did try to upload an update last night, but occasionally I have an issue with XSplit where there seem to be intermittent pauses during playback of a recording. It's happened twice within the past week and it's happened two or three times this past year. I'm not sure what the issue is as it's only happened a few times and I experience no issues during actual gameplay.

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

I'm adding the notebook entries from the previous day. There's going to be a boatload more of them in the next update.

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This is the start of the second day of the investigation. We return to Sherringford Hall and then take a trip to Flatham to continue the investigation. I think that I need to make more adjustments to the game volumes, the music is already at 1/5th and it's still overshadowing everything. I'll turn everything down a few notches in the next recording. This page is already flooded with images, I think that from now on I will upload everything for an update to its own Imgur folder. I'll continue to post them in the thread if it's what people want, but in the interest of keeping the scrolling down to a minimum I'll see how this goes for now: https://imgur.com/a/xT0dBEq

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This update concludes the second day of the investigation, it's a bit of a mix compared to the first day but that might be down to not having a dozen different characters to speak too. We continue on with Holmes' investigation and then branch into Watson's concurrent shenanigans. One of the things that I like about this game is that Watson is an integral part of the investigations and hasn't been reduced to just being a sidekick. This update also launches into the third day of the investigation as this video was already getting shorter and shorter with the increasing amount of jump-cuts.

Notebook images for this update: https://imgur.com/a/UYNoqaI

[Wakkerdis]

Seems fine to keep the images off-site to me. I usually end up checking in the video as it goes.

This game seems an improvement on the Mummy one _{(psst the old game name is still at the head of the video links in the OP)}, not just in the performances but in the tone. It's less... silly, I guess? and feels more like an actual investigation.

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This recording did not go smoothly at all. Firstly, I didn't realise that the graphics had reverted to default until towards the end of the recording. I would go back in and re-record but I haven't yet got to the second part. Which is that there are two timed sequences in this game which are reliant on the positions of two characters on the map, for some reason they became broken. During my test playthrough, it was fine and I learnt the pathways and timings fairly confidently. During this playthrough, their paths decided to double and their range of view became extremely weird. It took a lot of tries and banging my head against the wall to finally get things timed and by that time my brain was frazzled. The video is a little shorter than intended as I had lost all sense of timing and I forgot to look at the last document that I collected.

In this video, we open Fowlett's safe and uncover a new location, where we spend most of our time at in this update.

Imgur album for the new notebook entries: https://imgur.com/a/1RcrqX5

Seems fine to keep the images off-site to me. I usually end up checking in the video as it goes.

This game seems an improvement on the Mummy one _{(psst the old game name is still at the head of the video links in the OP)}, not just in the performances but in the tone. It's less... silly, I guess? and feels more like an actual investigation.

Thank you for the feedback and for letting me know about the incorrect name.

Despite the bugginess and graphical glitches, there's a lot more charm to this game compared to the first in this series. I feel like they've taken some notes from the second game in the Lost Files series and added to it somewhat. I definitely prefer actually having an investigation over a third-person puzzle game. I'm also really enjoying the background music.

[Wakkerdis]

That safe combo puzzle seems to have been altered to be as obtuse as possible. Even knowing the answer, I had to stare at it for a few minutes to figure out what was going on.

They either should have just had the last line, which would have made sense as an actual hint, or made it clearer what was happening on the other lines:

1 = 1 1 (One 1)
2 1 = 1 2 1 1 (One 2, One 1)
1 1 1 2 2 1 = ? (Three 1(s), Two 2(s), One 1)= 312211
So in the game's form, the line that follows every other line is the 'tallied' sequence of that line.
As another example: 3 4 4 5 = One 3, Two 4(s), then One 5 = 132415.

I do definitely like the characters better in this one; they seem to be actually trying to get closer to the stories.

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

That safe combo puzzle seems to have been altered to be as obtuse as possible. Even knowing the answer, I had to stare at it for a few minutes to figure out what was going on.

They either should have just had the last line, which would have made sense as an actual hint, or made it clearer what was happening on the other lines:

1 = 1 1 (One 1)
2 1 = 1 2 1 1 (One 2, One 1)
1 1 1 2 2 1 = ? (Three 1(s), Two 2(s), One 1)= 312211
So in the game's form, the line that follows every other line is the 'tallied' sequence of that line.
As another example: 3 4 4 5 = One 3, Two 4(s), then One 5 = 132415.

I do definitely like the characters better in this one; they seem to be actually trying to get closer to the stories.

It actually makes sense after this explanation. Thank you!

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This video covers the last part of our adventures at the Fairfax Theatre, the quiz at the end of the day and we make good headway into the next day and in a couple of new locations. I made a mistake during the quiz which was quickly rectified, this recording endured a few false starts so I was okay with letting that mistake slide as I didn't fancy another restart. There's also a timed event which finishes off the video, it endured several reloads because it triggered some anxiety and my sense of direction flew out of the window. Thankfully, even with taking a couple of wrong turns, I got through it in the end.

Edit:

Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/OiHVBXf

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

Things are starting to heat up now. Holmes explores the ruins and returns to Sherringford Hall, Watson has an unusual encounter with Grimble and the Silver Earring finally makes an appearance. We start the fifth day with a visit from Lestrade, followed by a visit to the theatre where we meet some rather colourful characters.

Notebook screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/m1W6PBR

[Rocket Baby Dolls]

This is the finale of The Silver Earring and I've split it up into two videos for a very good reason. The first video contains the gameplay footage right until the end. It's a fairly normal length for an update and when it comes to the finale I don't mind extending the time somewhat for the ending footage and credits. But the ending video to this game is twenty-four minutes long and that isn't including the credits!

Notebook screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/g3Vlz9H

This has been a lengthy after-work recording and editing session and it's getting ever later. I may make a more in-depth summary at another time. But for now, despite the graphical glitches and obtuse gameplay, it's had some areas of charm in places and I hope that Frogwares expands upon the strengths of this game. I will most likely start The Awakened before this week is over. It's going to be new territory for me as I've only played a few of the Frogwares releases.