Sherlock

"Find the evidence and catch the thief." It sounds simple enough, yet Sherlock from 1991 is definitely not a game for everyone. It's a text adventure for DOS where you're a detective with a deerstalker hat, tasked with solving several cases straight from the archive of the famous London investigator.

The game puts you in front of concrete mysteries — something from what Conan Doyle knew. There's no clickable interface here, just text and commands you type on the keyboard. You'll try "look at the table," "take the magnifying glass," "talk to the patient." You wander through the archive gradually, collecting evidence, asking questions, and it takes a while before you feel like you have no idea what you're doing.

The problem is that you often don't know what the game wants from you. Sometimes a synonym for a command works, sometimes it doesn't. You pick up an item that will be useful later, but you won't know it exists, and you'll get stuck. The hints are sparse, so you often flounder in the dark, trying "examine the house" and hoping something happens. Sometimes it does. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes you end up in a dead end.

Still — and that's where its magic lies — Sherlock will gradually win you over. It surprises you when you solve a case on your own. The text is thoughtful, the atmosphere lit by Victorian gas lamps. This isn't about graphics or sound; it's about ideas and the feeling that you have the chance to look under stones like Sherlock himself. The game forces you to think, and when you manage it, it's a much sweeter feeling than clicking on everything around you.

Today you'll try it more out of nostalgia or experiment — you want to play a retro text adventure without graphics, without having to remember all the texts by hand. It's not comfortable casual gaming. It's a puzzle for the patient. For those who remember how adventures were played before everything got beaten down by clicking.