Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is an investigation game developed by Frogwares and published by Focus Home Interactive.The majority of the game involves exploring crime scenes and examining clues. Once discovered, clues are added to a "deduction board", a gameplay mechanic which involves linking pieces of information together. It will lead to possible different deductions. Once deductions are connected together, player will have a full tree of deductions.
Depending on how player interpretes the clues, they will have different conclusions. Therefore the player can fail or succeed in finding the culprit. He also decides whether he wants to absolve or condemn the criminal. The moral choice the player makes will influence the further gameplay. Each case will have 3-5 possible solutions; in total there will be 6-10 different endings for each case. In total, the game offers 14 investigation mechanics, including Sherlock Holmes' skill to guess many details about someone's life simply by glancing at them or to imagine and reconstruct the course of event by carefully observing all the key details of a crime scene.
