The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Hello, everyone! I made a game, based on the public-domain book, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. I tried this project last year, but there were copyright issues. Thank goodness the issues have been resolved!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216691320/web_sh/mygame/index.html

The game follows the original book very closely. I figured I could submit this project to Hosted Games as is, or try adding more mysteries. Is four a reasonable number? The game is about 42,000 words long.

Error: The first case a scandal in Bohemia doesn’t work but definitely will to follow this

Sounds fun, but how can we make choices for a known story?

None of the mysteries works. At least two of them have no “begin” scene labeled and I don’t remember what the final one was – I think a variable already labeled somewhere else.

You can take several routes.

Cinders does an excellent job of taking a pre-existing story and then letting you make choices pertaining to it. http://moacube.com/games/cinders/

I haven’t played it but Matches and Matrimony does something similar with Jane Austen’s work (and all without adding zombies) http://www.matchesandmatrimony.com/

You can also have it so that choices don’t impact the story as such, instead there’s a linear story, and the challenge is in solving puzzles and problems instead of there being lots of branches. There’s plenty of ways.

@lost_gamer Good luck with your game.

I’d say if it’s finished at 42,000, do a beta-test here, polish up the first mystery as best as you can then release it. If it’s successful then work on releasing the second.

Good point. I'm looking forward to the game.

Thanks for the heads-up! They should be working now.

I do things like “pick who you think the culprit is”. If you guess wrong, Sherlock will correct you. There are also a lot of small decisions, like “pick which question to ask”, where the game gives you the information you need to solve the mystery, no matter which option you pick.

Oh, cool. Sounds interesting.

There’s also the awesome example of To Be or Not To Be:

1 Like

I think, for a lot of people, the game would make more sense if you tried to flesh out the alternatives rather than simply lead the reader down one path. Simply converting an existing book into choice format, while keeping the story the same, is going to seem confusing. There’s not much point having choices that literally don’t change the story.