Absorbing, thrilling action in a creepy setting by using minimalist design was another attempt Richard Bayliss tried to implement into the game Darkland with the help of the SEUCK (Shoot'Em Up Construction Kit) engine. The programmer is no stranger to this type of development environment. He has his own website on which several hundreds of his games and demos for the C64 are offered. The screenshots on the itch.io website gave me reason to hope that the creative spark leaps over to him and that the result was not just another faceless blast-the-baddies game.
Sherlock Holmes is one of those literary figures which has transcended its original source material. At the time of rationalism, his logical deduction techniques struck such a nerve with the audience that his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was forced to resurrect his by that point hated and buried character. The fascination with the theory that everything can be figured out by just applying careful observation and reasoning still resonates today, even though the public image of the legendary detective is nowadays mostly fed by secondary material created by others.