I have been trying to go through all my board games and play any that I haven’t played yet. One of those games was Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. My brother bought me the game as a birthday gift a few years ago and I kept forgetting to bring it to a game night. Last weekend, I finally got to play the first two mysteries in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and I wish I had played this game earlier. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is an easy-to-learn, detective-solving game that can be played with friends, family, or by yourself.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has ten mysteries to solve. Each mystery has a case file for that particular mystery. This booklet will also have information on leads that can be gathered to help solve the mystery. Besides the case file, there’s a newspaper that’s dated on or near the date of the crime which might also contain leads to follow up on. The goal of the game is to be able to collect enough information to answer the questions in the case. Once the questions are answered, the solution can be revealed. There’s a scoring system to see if you or your group can score more points than Sherlock Holmes. If you score more points than Sherlock Holmes then that’s worth bragging about!

As mentioned, our group completed two case files. The first case file seemed a lot more straightforward. We had to solve the murder of Courtney Allen, the owner of a gun company who was murdered behind his office. There was evidence that was collected at the scene along with his notebook which indicated dates and phrases that weren’t clear right away. As our group put everything together, we ended up guessing correctly who killed Courtney Allen. We were a little off about why he was murdered, but our group felt proud that we figured it out. The second case also featured a murder of a prominent general. Unlike the previous case, this case was a little bit convoluted. We weren’t sure who killed the general as it seemed like we were missing information. Interestingly enough, there was information in the first newspaper from the first case that helped us with this one. I loved that each newspaper from each case built off of the other.

Another reason I liked Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was the amount of gameplay in the box. There are ten mysteries to solve and our group completed two of them. This leaves eight mysteries that still need to be solved. I kept comparing the Hunt a Killer box to this game as Hunt a Killer only had one case while Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective had ten. My brother told me that there are expansions to Sherlock Holmes which provide additional mysteries besides the ten included in this game. I like the ability to be able to replay a game over and over again versus playing it once and not seeing a reason to play it again.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a game I would play again because there are still mysteries to solve. I like that this game can be played alone as there aren’t that many games out there that are single-player. I can’t wait to go through the other mysteries and hopefully score more points than Sherlock Holmes.