SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE AWAKENED

The world's most iconic detective cross-examines an evil doll

- Robin Valentine

After 20 years and nine Sherlock Holmes games, Ukrainian studio Frogwares has established itself as the champion of making games about one of literature’s stuffiest Englishmen. The course of the series hasn’t always run smooth, but that’s never stopped Frogwares. It may be that nothing can stop them, as it’s making its latest game in an active war zone.

After a Kickstarter last summer to shore up funds, the studio has been hard at work on Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, a full remake of a game it first released in 2007. The idea is that it’s a smaller, faster project the team can focus on amongst the chaos of the Russia-Ukraine war – the plot and cases are already mapped out, and mechanically it picks up right where the most recent game, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, left off.

It certainly doesn’t feel modest in the slice I’ve played, though. The Awakened doesn’t have the open-world scale of Chapter One, but it’s far from just a prettied up version of the original. The beats of the plot are the same, but that’s pretty much it – it looks and feels modern, and the characters, mysteries and situations have all been rethought and, in many cases, completely changed.