I’ve been getting quite into the stories of Sherlock Holmes. It was a natural step after Agatha Christie, I suppose. But where Hercule Poirot is all moustache combs and sickly-sweet hot chocolate, Holmes is much more of a mess. Prone to either dashing about the place, or melting into a slurry on the sofa. He does various drugs, leaves reams of paper all over the place, and thinks the sun revolves around the Earth. And yet, he is an unquestionable genius in the field of observation. It’s up to his partner, Dr. John Watson, to bring his stories back down to sanity. Given my recent liking of these stories, it seems Crushed In Time came out just in tim- oh, I just got that.
Still, this is a slightly bizarre inclusion of Holmes and Watson. I won’t go too much into their characterisation, as it’s basically fair game at this point, but they don’t feel like themselves. It’s a sacrifice in the name of comedy, and there certainly is a lot of silliness here. The main gameplay mechanic, for instance, is silly in concept and in practice. There are moments where both comedy and gameplay are used to great effect, but it’s definitely a scattershot approach. The whole thing feels rather loose, with some sections that I liked and some I really disliked. It’s unique, no doubt, but I can’t help feeling like it wallows in that a bit.
Bit Of A Stretch
This unique gameplay mechanic can be nicely illustrated by the screenshot above. Basically, everything in Crushed In Time can be grabbed and stretched. This will do everything from moving a jar of honey along a floor, to moving a character out the way, to building a grandfather clock out of various components. So if you’ve ever felt a little annoyance towards Sherlock Holmes, you’ll be pleased to know you can grab him by the face and smack him with his own moustache. It’s a creative little mechanic and while it does get diluted as time goes on, it’s impressive how much life they ring out of it. Even in the in-game menus rely on the stretching.
It’s used in some clever puzzles too. For the first third or so of the game, it’s used in a mostly adventure game way. We open doors, find keys and other objects, and slap them into their proper place. There are some good puzzles in this bit. For instance, we need to recreate a ginger woman’s portrait by smacking her in the face with the painting, then throwing a pumpkin at it. It’s logical and silly. Best of both worlds. Then when the story starts getting meta, the gameplay does too. Like when we’re in a prototype version of the world and we’re connecting up terms like ‘Interactive’ and ‘Rotate’ to in-game objects. Seems like a shift, but Crushed In Time does explain it. Sort of.
Before we pivot to story though, I’ll say that the gameplay is a definite sine wave. It has a love of fiddly quick time events, for one. Then there are times when the humour starts to intrude on the gameplay. For example, the section that pokes fun at remasters. This has a long section where you do a bunch of repetitive tasks before going through a dialogue tree, where options are picked pretty much at random. It’s definitely the nadir. Even in other sections, there are puzzles that grate. Quite a few rely on looping animations to finish before prompts appear, which is really annoying when you’re trying to figure things out. So it’s definitely an up and down sort of game.
Elementary
The story is all over the place too, though on purpose this time. It kicks off with Watson receiving a letter from a woman he’s never heard of called Emma. They go to the address, and find a strange looking man named Emmett Placeholder. Emmett proceeds to nick their car and, from what they can tell, turn it into a time machine. Holmes cobbles one together and follows suit. They find Emma and soon end up shattering the fourth wall. Turns out the whole thing is about the game itself. A character has disappeared, and negative reviews are rolling in. Holmes’ time machine is actually taking them back and forth through versions of the game. Even as far back as post-it notes on a whiteboard.
It’s complete nonsense and I really like it as a plot. Not being a designer myself, I can’t say if there were any industry gags hidden throughout, but it was fun seeing all the different versions. It even goes back through a gaming history. Right the way back to the oscilloscope, as it happens. When Crushed In Time was making jokes about its story and world, I really liked them. The highlight was when the three of them meet the prototype versions of Holmes and Watson. They just bounce around saying ‘Testing’. It’s funnier than it sounds.
That said, I found a lot of the character and dialogue jokes to be misses. The character of Emma, for instance, is a soft-spoken lady who will suddenly go into a deep-voiced shout at the slightest provocation. The voice acting is great, but the character is predictable. It also relies way too much on repeating jokes, in a way that’s most definitely unearned. Then there’s our two heroes. I get that Holmes is public domain, but you can at least try and make it sound authentic. The Holmes here is lazy, stupid and careless. Watson is grumpy and resentful. I’m no top-tier Sherlockian, but that’s pretty damn far from the actual characters.
Crushed In Time – Up And Down
Maybe that’s part of the overall joke, and I’m too miserable and overheated to get it. I don’t know. I just didn’t find the character interactions very funny. When irritating people are going on, I prefer to just slap the scenery about. That at least was quite fun, but as the game start to fall deeper into its meta-narrative, it began to lose me a little bit. A bit too much dwelling on gaming history. It picks up a bit after that, but then at the end it tries to pull a heartfelt moment, which completely failed to land. I will hand it to the voice actors though. All four members of the main cast really elevated the writing.
As a result, Crushed In Time feels just like the oscilloscope we end up in. If I look back over my time with it, I can think of moments that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, I can think of an equal number of moments where I was just resting my chin on my hand. It makes the abiding image of a wall of post-it notes feel a bit too real. Crushed In Time feels like a big collection of ideas, all of which were Frankenstein’d together into a single game. Sherlock Holmes was then taken out of the public domain bucket and stretched over it. The end result is a game that feels at once unique and tired; electric and dull. It never quite picks a lane and suffers as a result.
