Review for Baker Street Breakouts: A Sherlockian Escape Adventure
As a public domain character, Sherlock Holmes is ripe for use in stories outside his appearances in Arthur Conan Doyle’s books. Decades of adaptations have either been radical departures from Doyle’s vision, faithful to the sources, or a hybrid of both. Baker Street Breakouts: A Sherlockian Escape Adventure is mainly in the first category, showcasing a newer iteration of Sherlock Holmes and his colleague, Dr. Watson, in a mystery that seems to be a simple escape room game but has much more profound implications. This is supplemented by intelligently designed puzzle rooms that make the player thoroughly ponder the solutions.
Published and developed by HiSv Studios, Baker Street Breakouts features a modern-day Holmes and Watson receiving an invitation from James Moriarty, Holmes’ nemesis, to complete a series of rooms that each contain a puzzle or mystery. The stakes include the life of Irene Adler, who is held hostage by Moriarty. Initially, the narrative and goal are straightforward: solve all the rooms and save the girl. The locales, such as a small hospital wing, a casino, and an interrogation room, seem randomly chosen. However, later levels reveal the actual significance and intricacies of these locations, how they reflect Holmes as a person, and even the sadistic and meticulous nature of Moriarty. There are also amusing, self-aware jabs by the developers, which shows how much of a good time they had making this game. However, characters like Watson and Irene Adler don’t get much screen time, which would have been welcome since they are essential to Holmes’ life and legacy.
The presentation is typical of an indie title but is supported by varied design and structure. The graphics and environments are rendered in the RPG Maker engine, which emulates the appearance of classic RPG games. It is viewed from a top-down perspective, with the characters appearing as little sprites with minimal animations. There is almost no dialogue, only text boxes with the characters represented in anime-styled designs. Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty are reasonably unique, but others range from somewhat similar to the same faces with a couple of changes in hair and color.
However, the style of each room is the game’s greatest strength. Besides those already mentioned, there is an office area with occultic flair and what looks like the back of a drug store. Each is thematically and mechanically built around the puzzles, meaning no room ever looks the same. Each level’s music is also varied, using different genres that can be somber or loud, ominous or upbeat, and elegant. Only one music track is grating, though it is relegated to the main menu.
The gameplay itself is an excellent exercise for the brain. The player interacts with the environment, picking up items to combine, use, or look at if they are part of an enigma. The puzzles are a considerable challenge, encouraging the player to read certain books or documents, take notes, discover connections with different parts of the level, or find which item works best. It encourages stopping and thinking, but the player won’t want to do that for long because of the sixty-minute timer given to solve an individual room. It is a very lenient timer, all things considered, but specific actions deemed wasteful can shorten it, such as getting an answer wrong or interacting with unnecessary objects. Discovering this makes players hesitant and ask what they SHOULD do without messing around with anything that could literally waste time. The end of each level ranks you on how quickly you solved it, finding a “Handbook of Deduction” that is concealed in all of them, as well as quotes from Doyle’s stories that are potentially tied to figuring out the puzzles within each room, which shows that the creators do have a passion for Holmes beyond modern interpretations.
The game does provide help for those stuck in certain sections. Players can use a hint system framed as a phone call to the Baker Street Irregulars. Other hints can optionally be answered by Moriarty at the cost of shortening your timer. Still, levels can be restarted anytime so players can get faster clearing times.
It also helps that the controls are reasonably simplistic. You can play using only the mouse, clicking on objects or icons for menus, though you can also control the character employing arrow keys plus a few of the lettered keys for the interactions. Both schemes work well and can be used in tandem, but clicking on mounted objects is somewhat odd. For example, interacting with a TV mounted to a wall requires clicking below it.
Baker Street Breakouts does what it advertises: It gives a Sherlock Holmes experience emphasizing “puzzles and deduction.” Given how enthralling the challenges are, HiSv has executed this exceptionally well. Though there could have been more room to develop the side characters, this game leaves a great impression overall.
