There are a lot of board games that have you playing Sherlock Holmes and we have covered a bunch of them over the years. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most well known detectives, and getting to solve mysteries is always fun! In 221b Baker Street, you are actually racing against other Sherlock Holmeses, to solve a mystery.
221b Baker Street does have a bunch of different stories within the box, getting more challenging as you get deeper into the game. The first story is quite straightforward and aspects could even be guessed once the story has begun, but you will need to roll dice to make your way around the town, going into buildings to get little clues and bits of story that may or may not help you.
As everyone is working to solve the same mystery at the same time, there are ways to lock areas, forcing someone to use a key if they want to come in, which can only be refreshed by going to another specific building and gaining one! You’ll need to decide carefully what you want to hide from people and where to lure others.
When you enter a building, you can flip through the instruction book in 221b Baker Street, to read out your clue. The pages don’t have clues to your mystery right next to each other, and with so many mysteries, you don’t really need to worry about any sort of cheating, which is always good to note.
As you explore around and people fill out their little clue cards, it becomes a sort of race as you wonder what clues other people have had access to. In our first game, one team rushed back to the building to make their guess, just to be incorrect and out for the rest of the game. The rest of us continued to explore the town, and then suddenly race back to the building ourselves, all basically at the same time.
It almost becomes a challenge of dice and hoping you have a good roll. 221b Baker Street is a super fun game, with everyone in our group wanting to take on other mysteries. There is something so fun about racing to the buildings, and some of the clues are actually nothing. Other clues don’t tell you the exact answer, and need to be split with others. Some clues have labels that show they are major, which is worth noting!
At the price point of this game, you will get more than enough playtime out of it, especially with all of the different mysteries to solve within the same town of clues.
You can find 221b Baker Street on Amazon.
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
