Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is the kind of game that makes you wonder if the current model for reviewing games is working. It’s the tenth game in Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes series, but as Frogwares is a Ukrainian developer, it’s the first game they made since the country was invaded by Russia in February 2022. Looking at their social media presence over the last year has been heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure. Posts about the devastation caused by the war, including the tragic loss of a former colleague, and posts about their hope and perseverance, were regularly paired with updates about the game they’re making.

Most modern game reviews treat games as apolitical creatures unrelated to their developers, but I don’t know how to do that here. It’s remarkable that a complete game of this scale was made in less than a year, let alone during a war. It’s important to remember that human beings are more important than the games they make. It shouldn’t matter if the game is “good” or not, just the fact that it was made is an achievement on its own. But as you’re about to find out, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is a fantastic detective game, one of the best Frogwares has made. Let’s get into it.

As mentioned, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is the tenth game in the series, but it’s also a ground-up remake of their 2007 game of the same name, as well as a direct sequel to its predecessor, 2021’s Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One. After a string of games about a middle-aged Sherlock Holmes, as he has been portrayed in most films and TV shows, Chapter One rebooted the series to star him aged 20. This new Sherlock Holmes is younger and more impressionable. He is prone to making mistakes and letting his emotions get the better of him. This characterisation continues in the new Awakened, as it shows his first major collaboration with his new housemate, Dr John Watson.

The game’s marketing implies that it’s full of dark, gloomy, horrific scenes involving a cult that worships Lovecraftian god Cthulhu. Don’t worry, it is, but you don’t get there until the second half of The Awakened’s 8 chapters. The first few chapters are a wonderful slow burn, with our detectives solving increasingly larger, seemingly unrelated cases that slowly reveal a conspiracy running through them. Unlike the most recent games, The Awakened does a great job connecting each chapter’s standalone cases together into one large mystery. Each chapter contains a couple of optional side cases, and I was surprised to find that some of these cases also tie into the overarching narrative, so they’re worth your time to explore and find out.

As expected, the writing here is stellar. Frogwares has been helming this series for 20 years now, and their imagination is crisper than ever. Despite being a remake of, and following roughly the same beats as the 2007 game, the new Awakened feels like a totally different experience. This is not just because it’s a third-person adventure game with different mechanics, but because of Sherlock Holmes himself. Much like the previous games Devil’s Daughter and Chapter One, The Awakened consistently focuses on Sherlock’s mental state, and that the horrific things he sees during these cases begin to affect him in the long term. This is the darkest game Frogwares has made in a while, even darker than their other Lovecraft-inspired title, 2019’s The Sinking City.