Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One review – a gripping interactive detective drama

PC, Xbox One/Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5; Frogwares
The detective returns to his childhood island home to solve an elegant series of cases in this lively open-world story

Developer Frogwares has been making games about the world's most famous detective for a long time now, but Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is the most personal. A 21-year-old Sherlock has returned to the fictional island of Cordona, where he spent his childhood, kicking off a chain of events that leads him to uncover a missing element of his past: how his mother died. Cordona draws inspiration from real-world places that have changed hands many times, and different districts of the island display a melange of cultures. I once heard the athaan, or call to prayer, from a nearby mosque. Shortly after the prologue, the whole island opens up, and you can fast-travel around it in seconds as you dig into Sherlock's cases.

These setpiece mysteries are varied in both tone and theme, and the solutions are almost always elegant. I won't easily forget the case of the murderous elephant, or the siren serial killer. Crime scenes are where both the game and the protagonist himself are most at home. Evidence litters the scene; Sherlock surveys every piece, linking them to accounts given by suspects and witnesses, and pieces together what happened. You can manipulate the ghostly outlines of suspects' positions and actions at particular junctures - a clever way to convey Sherlock's thinking. Even after solving a case, the grand unveil always revealed some element that I'd overlooked.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is out now; 39.99