Poirot fiddles with his moustache, swooning over ladies and mysteries alike. The second Poirot game from Blazing Griffin studios, based in Glasgow, unites Poirot with his famous companion, Hastings, and sends them off on an adventure into pre-war London. Based on the ambiguous years before Agatha Christie’s string of novels documented the fictitious life of everyone’s favourite Belgian detective, the game has the freedom to dream up new mysteries, new characters, and new intrigue.
Both Poirot and Hastings are tasked with transporting a valuable painting to a fictional London museum. A number of socialites await the grand unveil - except there’s no painting. It has vanished. The room is locked, and no one has seen anyone leave it. So the mystery begins to unfurl. There’s smashed glass, a member of the party experiences an unfortunate turn of events, and Poirot must talk to each unique character and try to piece together a timeline of their comings and goings, as well as the intrigue between the characters.
The London Case takes place primarily in the museum itself, although the scope of the game is much larger than the studio's first game, The First Cases. There are multiple environments to explore and investigate (bedrooms, alleyways, bars), as well as a host of period-accurate characters who get themselves in a predictable muddle of lover’s spats and misplaced distrust. The uniqueness of Poirot as a detective, and the cases he must solve, is that he is someone who often finds himself in the middle of complicated social webs. It’s not just fingerprints and smashed windows he has to deal with, but the way humans can act under a lot of pressure. This is represented well with full voice acting for every character in the story.
There is an Agatha Christie lore-master on the team, as well as a consultant historian who helps to properly frame Poirot in his contemporary setting. The Agatha Christie company has one major requirement: Poirot must always remain as Poirot. His character traits, habits, voice, appearance, etc., must all be consistent with Christie’s work. But there is a lot more flexibility on the cases he can investigate and the spaces he can inhabit. The success of the first game, which saw the team win a Scottish BAFTA in 2021, has allowed the studio to expand on everything they got right the first time around.
Where The First Cases took place in a single house a la Cluedo, The London Case begins on a ship, then takes you to a splendid museum (inspired by Glasgow’s very own Kelvingrove Museum), then to the dressing room of an actress, then out on to the streets of London itself. Each area is littered with clues that you piece together via a mind-map. Much of the deduction is left up to you, but the game will slowly prompt you in the right direction if you’re struggling - you can just imagine it’s the mind of Poirot himself taking over. Both the level design and audio design are stellar, especially the music which takes cues from the first game’s soundtrack. The result is a nostalgia-drenched atmosphere that reminds me of watching a rerun of David Suchet’s Poirot on a slightly fuzzy CRT television.
This game will appeal to fans of Poirot, but also those who enjoy a good mystery and a healthy dose of deduction. Although the path to solving the mystery is fairly rigid, there are multiple methods to uncover evidence as well as plenty of branching storylines with the various characters. Much like Poirot himself, it’s up to you to determine the best route through the mess.