Godawful. Terrible terrible terrible. "Find-the-object" puzzles where you need to find, literally, a strand of hair in a complicated scene. Or, in another instance, a trace of dust that's barely a shade lighter than the ground it's resting on. And then the puzzle that broke me, and made me stop playing and delete the game from my computer: it instructed me to recreate a tatoo that a suspect had. Helpfully, it told me I could visit the suspect's file to refresh my memory of what the tattoo looked like. However, **there is no way to revisit a suspect's file in the game!***

Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet doesn't have an individual Wikipedia entry unlike almost all of Frogware's Sherlock Holmes games. This is because the game is nothing but a horrid mutant sibling that the family kept locked in the basement out of the eyes of the world. For $10, you'd expect it to be at least similar to the other Sherlock Holmes games. Wrong.

The game was designed to be a casual take on the Sherlock Holmes games. Given the price and tedious gameplay, this game wouldn't even suit mobile phones. It feels more like a forgetable flash game that you found on the internet but with a price tag. It is nothing but a shallow attempt to emulate the classic Sherlock Holmes stories. The story is simple. A painter was found dead and wrapped up in an expensive Persian Carpet and the Holmes/Watson duo must solve the mystery. The story is however minimal. At the beginning of each level, Holmes explains to a mostly silent Watson that they need to look around somewhere to get closer to solving the case. Watson, we need to check the theatre. Watson, we need to look at the garden again. That's it. The story is told through the witness testimonies and clues you find across the game. But you don't get to take a second look at most of the clues and if you try to critically think about the crime, you'll soon enough forget it due to the incredibly frustrating gameplay. Don't worry. There is no bad ending. The final puzzle will explain it all.

The gameplay of The Persian Carpet is made up of two parts. The first is the puzzles which are fairly challenging and enjoyable. There are unfortunately a few frustrating ones that you can use your limited "Skip Puzzle" tokens to get through. One such puzzle was stroking water over a picture and then sponge it to reveal the image. The cursor doesn't read well and you have to spend minutes having to stroke every square until the game decides "Good enough" and finishes it for you. The second part is the most infuriating element of the game. You're sent to a room where you have to play I Spy for clues. But I Spy is fun. Many clues are either camoflagued with the environment or almost the size of a grain of sand. Even in my years of experience with all kinds of adventure games, this game has the most infuriating pixel hunts I've ever seen. I spent 30 minutes in a room trying to find this door plate that turned out to be the same color as the floor and that I came across by rapid clicking.

The game is thankfully short, only 1-2 hours in length. It doesn't help that the entry price was $10, the same price as most of the Sherlock Holmes games on Steam. Just after finishing the game, I went on to Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silver Earring (thankfully a much better game). But I soon discovered that some of the scenes were used for the Persian Carpet game. It turns out that Mystery of the Persian Carpet is not only shallow but lazy, stitched together with images from other games like a braindead Frankenstein monstrosity.

It's very disappointing to see The Mystery of Persian Carpet worth the same price as the Case of the Silver Earring. The Case of the Silver Earring has great voice acting, great graphics, less pixel hunt frustration and a much more interesting story. The Case of the Silver Earring came out in 2004. The Mystery of the Persian Carpet came out in 2008. The opening cutscene of The Case of the Silver Earring alone is much better than the entire Persian Carpet game. How did this mess happen? Perhaps I should send a letter to 221b Baker Street to have them investigate how such a terrible game was made and sold at equal price among its superior siblings.

Sherlock Holmes: The hunt for the hidden pixel


If you enjoy trying to find a small white dot in a large room buy this game and don't think twice. Otherwise keep looking. The puzzles are almost the same as in some of the other installments in the series and pretty much the entire challenge is around finding tiny click zones. Some are challengingly well hidden, others are just kind of absurd.

Another good Sherlock Holmes game.. 10/10!

This was harder than the other one =D

Stay away. This is pixel-hunting at its worst, clumped with a dull story and re-used puzzles. If you want a Sherlock Holmes Hidden Object game, check out the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Not worthy of a review, but I REALLY wanted to downvote this, because of how blatant a money grab it is. Backgrounds and assets from other Frogwares Holmes games are reused to dress a horrible hidden object game with abysmally bad puzzles and 30 seconds worth of music looping in the background (reused music of course). It can literally not have taken them more than a week to put this piece of trash together. I'm a big Holmes fan and even with the TV on I literally had to force myself through this abomination. Zero redeeming elements. If someone gifts this to you, refuse to accept it.

bRavO, hOLmES! sUcH tAlEnT!

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This will be your brain after finishing this experience
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Send help

just don't

Skip to the bottom for TL;DR summary.

I took a chance on this game despite the mostly negative ratings, since many of those ratings seemed based on the fact that it's a Hidden Object style game instead of the usual Point-and-Click style Holmes games that Frogwares puts out. Since I like the hidden object genre as much as I like P&C games, I grabbed it (on sale, just in case).

In short, it's terrible. Not because the game is in a different style that the other Holmes games, but because it has made every error that a developer could possibly make for the HO genre.

The most egregious of these is the setup of the hidden objects; they are tiny, sometimes blend in perfectly with the backdrop, and many (if not all) require a great deal of pixel-hunting to find. While it's great for a scene to have difficult-to-find objects, there's a difference between "cunningly hidden" and "so ridiculously hidden that no normal person could find it without using a hint" where these games are concerned. I love a challenge; I don't love having my time wasted with nonsense.

On the topic of hints, there is a limit (seven hints per "level" with no way to acquire more). This means that while you're desperately trying to find the miniscule-and-seemingly-invisible objects, you also have to try to budget hints. I found this both baffling and irritating. The combination of limited hints and impossible objects made the game complete torture to finish. I had to find a walkthrough for when I ran out of hints, and I generally pride myself on not using hints at ALL in these types of games. You are also limited on skips for minigames (only seven per the entire game) so if they're not your favorite thing, be careful where you use your skips.

By the time I got to the end, I didn't even care who commited the crime anymore. There was very little dialogue in this game (and none whatsoever was voice acted), which took away from the plot. There was very little tying the player into the game and drawing interest. It was just "find this stuff for some reason, not sure why."

The deduction board that is familiar from the other Holmes games is present and does help tie things together, but it is handled so badly and is so tedious that I simply couldn't bring myself to care once I finally solved the case. There is more dialogue at the end, summarizing your findings and tying the ends together, than in the entire rest of the game.

Also at full price of $9.99 it's WAY WAY too expensive for 2 hours of gameplay. I'd be full-on angry had I not gotten it in a good sale with a lot of GOOD games.

If you like the HO genre, go look up The Hound of the Baskervilles on Steam, which is much much better. If you're looking for point-and-click, just grab the other Frogwares Holmes games; the ones I've played are quite good.

TL;DR: It's horrible, don't do it. Not because it's a hidden object game but because it's the worse possible example of a badly made hidden object game. Expensive and tedious. Spare yourself.