After buying and installing it from Steam, my father is having an issue with Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet and forwarded a summary to me. He's emailed Frogwares tech support twice but not received a response, so I thought it might be useful to get some Boomers' input.
Here's the problem: walkthroughs for the game mention a three-icon menu for navigating around. For example, the walkthrough at gamezebo starts, "It's important to familiarize yourself with the 3 icons on the top left side of the screen. This will help you navigate the game well and get through the game faster and in an organized fashion." Apparently these three icons allow you to go to 221B Baker Street, look at the map, or travel to Scotland Yard, from anywhere in the game.
Screenshots abound for the game, also showing these three icons.
Unfortunately, those three icons aren't present. Instead, they're replaced by a big icon that just reads "Puzzles." Clicking the icon inexplicably shows you a list of puzzles you've already completed, allowing you to go back and...solve them again? I guess?
As a visual aid, here's the menu as it shows up in the game:
Click here.
Compare that to
this image, which is a snippet of a screenshot posted on the frogwares website.
An image search shows that the 3-icon menu is by far the more prevalent interface, but the "Puzzles" interface menu does appear in a few screenshots at various websites. That's why this thread isn't posted in Glitches. (Yet.)
But the interface swap presents a huge problem. It's a little complicated, but here are all the necessary pieces:
1. The game autosaves progress, including what puzzle you're currently working on. If you leave and return to the game later, you start exactly where you left off.
2. If you start a puzzle, you MUST finish it before you go anywhere else in the game. That's because a) There's no navigation menu, so you can't leave the puzzle, and b) as noted above, if you quit the game and return, you'll still be in the puzzle you were in previously.
3. Some puzzles are not solvable when you first encounter them. Notably this includes the Deduction Board. It's possible to access this at many points in the game, but you can't solve it until the very end. Because of this, if you open the Deduction Board, you cannot go anywhere else in the game, ever again. (See points #1 and #1)
4. The ONLY way my father has found to go back to another point in the game is to use the "restart level" function in the menu. Unfortunately, the game's definition of "level" is very broad, and this often means losing an hour or more of work, all of which has to be redone. Then he ends up back at the deduction board anyway.
5. Clicking the deduction board is essentially forced, as he eventually arrives at 221B Baker Street, and though there are a few clickable objects around, there is no "exit", and none of the other objects seem to advance the game. So, inevitably, the only option left is to click the Deduction Board, which brings us back to point 4.
I searched around the forum to find if others had encountered the problem, and so far I did turn up
this thread.
It's a fairly long thread, but eventually Laurette asks, "How do I get out of the deduction board without finishing it?"
MaG posts a reply which reads,
"See the frame at top left.
See the 3 pictures above the word Main menu.
Click on the map or the desk. See what happens."
To which Laurette answers, "I don't have those icons in my game."
Then. Argh. The thread ends.
So. Has anyone experienced this problem? Is the game broken, or is the interface just horribly obtuse?