Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter is the latest entry in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series of games from Ukrainian developer Frogwares. The series is surprisingly old at this point, with the original Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy having been released in 2002. Fourteen years and a dozen consoles later, The Devil’s Daughter is set to be released for Xbox One and PS4 on June 10. Covering such creepy topics like Cthulhu and Jack the Ripper, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes games can go to dark places. So what does it take to make a convincing murder mystery? You have to think like a murderer.
“A story should start with an impossible mystery; it can be a murder, a disappearance or a theft,” Aurélie Ludot said to iDigitalTimes in an email interview. Ludot is a project manager at Frogwares. “It should also feature great characters who look all guilty or for the victims, peculiar.”
“Overall, any story has to be transformed into an interactive experience so after we choose pitches together, we also test the gameplay with prototypes; iterations go till we are satisfied with the inquiry process,” Ludot said. “So a compelling case is not a story but a game experience that is your own story.”
Fans of the Adventures of Sherlock series are in for a few changes with The Devil’s Daughter. The biggest one is that this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes is completely different from the versions found in previous games.
“Our main source of inspiration has always been the original Conan Doyle character,” Ludot said about creating a new Sherlock. “We had moved away from the almighty and placid Conan Doyle character to make a Sherlock you can play: more human, fragile sometimes, so that players can identify more easily with the character.”
One example given of how this Sherlock will be different is that he has a foster daughter this time around.
“The fact that Crimes & Punishments was broken into independent cases gave us the opportunity to build many different stories, characters and provide the player with all the tools he needed to conduct his own investigations,” Ludot said about the previous entry in the game series. “But we miss dearly the deepness we love to develop in an overall plot, many players felt the same.” This is why Frogwares has also created an overarching plot that will carry players through each of the five cases, progressively revealing itself the further in you get.”
One interesting note about the cases: it’s possible to fail all of them and still make it to the end. “The game won’t punish you for making a wrong conclusion, but you will have to carry its consequences until the end of the game,” Ludot said. “You will be reminded, in different ways, the mistakes you might have done and you, as a player, will have to live with it.”
As for other changes coming to The Devil’s Daughter, fans can expect to see more than the obvious technical upgrades.
“The core is still observations and deductions, but for this eighth episode, we really wanted to focus on emotion through immersion.” said Ludot. “Bigger areas, multiple choices and long-term consequences, an exciting meta-story, the possibility to fail some parts of the game while continuing the investigation and new action sequences to help [with] making the game more dynamic. And of course, we improved graphics and technology to have an ever better Sherlock’s experience.”
Frogwares was also recently included in the Xbox Live Games With Gold program. Ludot was happy with how the program turned out, and thinks it will work best for the Devil’s Daughter. “Games with Gold was indeed a great opportunity for us!” she said. “Many Xbox One players who had never played any Sherlock Holmes game before told us how happy they were to discover the series. We hope this will help [with] reaching a new audience that might have never heard about the game otherwise.”
Looking past The Devil’s Daughter, Frogwares has a new investigation game planned, but it’s not Sherlock Holmes -related. “We aim at doing a new investigation game, but even more open than SHDD,” Ludot said. “We now are working on a new game, The Sinking City, a Lovecraftian open-world investigation game. For Sherlock is still in our head, but he has to rest a bit to find a new breath…”
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter releases June 10 for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
So what do you think? Are you interested in seeing the latest incarnation of Sherlock Holmes? Have you played any of the other Adventures of Sherlock Holmes games? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
