At One Point Frogwares Used To Have A Studio Focused On More Casual Adventure Titles Including A Few

At one point Frogwares used to have a studio focused on more casual adventure titles including a few hidden object games. One of these is Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, the basic premise inspired by the homonymous title: Sir Henry Baskerville arrives in London to consult Sherlock about the murder of his uncle. It is said that a curse haunts his bloodline, a demonic hound causes the premature death of many heirs and he worries to be the next to fall victim to it. And that is as far as this game sticks to the original novel.

Once arriving the location is in a rather ghastly state; the servants left and most of the areas are locked, moreover, the hall of portraits looks abnormal: every single painting have changed and displays a cursed form of its subjects. It doesn’t take long until supernatural happenings start to take place and different mechanics are introduced while the three characters explore the secrets of the state.

The game follows a comfortable loop that can be even more predictable than most hidden object titles: you enter a room and find pieces of the crest that will be used to purify the portrait, clear a HOS and a puzzle , scavenge for objects until you find both eyes to insert in the sockets of a hound statue that transports the player to the past soon after the death of the room’s owner. Some more HOS and puzzles take place until all the pieces of the crest are pieced together and will grant the player a new skill accessed in the medallion in the lower right corner of the screen. The skill will allow to revisit previous rooms for extra clues, like the ability to break vases or to pay closer attention to darker areas. Once the entire estate is fully explored it will be the time for the preparations of the final showdown with the beast.

The puzzles themselves are the usual fare of the genre, some can be good brain teasers and require some thinking and not brute-force a solution. The hidden objects scenes can be a mixed bag, some can have bad contrast and make it harder to locate what you are looking for. Still, the game has a beautiful design and the soundtrack stands out for its high quality.

The Hound of the Baskervilles has no ties with the Frogwares’ titles at large, only cursory mentions of other cases like Holmes’ encounter with the Ripper and they use the background of the apartment for the scenes in Baker Street. Sadly, the standard version on steam leaves a lot of questions unanswered and the Collectors’ Edition is unavailable to purchase. It can be an enjoyable hidden object game with a unique mechanic and familiar characters, but If you expect it to stay close to the source material you might want to look elsewhere.