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An evil legacy awakes.

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is a 2016 adventure mystery video game. It is the eighth game to be released in the Sherlock Holmes (Frogwares) series, and is a Broad Strokes sequel to The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. It can be played on Xbox One, Play Station 4, PC, & as of April 7, 2022, Nintendo Switch.


This game provides examples of the following:

  • Absurdly-Spacious Sewer: London Sewers where Holmes investigates the Rasco gang's break.
  • Adorably Precocious Child: Katelyn, Sherlock's daughter.
  • Age Lift: At least visually. Though Holmes mentions having been working as a detective for at least twenty years prior to the game, he and Watson now appear to be in their thirties, perhaps placing them in their forties, making them younger than their pre-Crime and Punishment incarnations.
  • Alliterative Title: The Devil's Daughter
  • Always Murder: Subverted. The last case is a kidnapping.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: You play as Wiggins, one of the Baker Street Irregulars, in "Prey Tell" while tailing a suspect, and control him through a variety of mini-games during the chase. Also in the "Prey Tell" case you can play as Sherlock's pet dog Toby who assists him in tracking down a suspect's trail from sniffing an oily rag.
  • The Artful Dodger: While Wiggins doesn't seem completely happy with his lot in life, he's incredibly savvy and observant for a kid who looks to be barely in his teens, and very willing to use this to his advantage when helping Holmes on a case.
  • Artistic License – History: George Hurst is an Englishman from London who served in the Lovat Scouts. The problem is that, at the time, the Lovat Scouts recruited almost entirely from Scottish gamekeepers from Highland Estates, and even afterwards they were a Scottish unit and therefore primarily recruited in Scotland. As well, the game is implied to take place in 1894, six years before the unit was formed.
  • Avenging the Villain: Alice De'Bouvier wants to do this for her father, who was one of Sherlock's arrestees.
  • Balcony Escape: Holmes uses the balcony to get inside Alice's apartment.
  • Bed Trick: An emotional one. A young woman with an inheritance who lives with her mother and stepfather is tricked by the latter in disguise into believing he's a charming gentleman caller. He disappears in order to put her off men permanently. She reacts with appropriate horror to the revelation.
  • Big Bad: Alice De'Bouvier kidnaps Sherlock Holmes' daughter with plans on brainwashing her into evil.
  • Big "WHY?!": Katelyn when asking Holmes why he killed her father.
  • Broad Strokes: While Word of God states that this is a Continuity Reboot and these versions of Holmes and Watson are not the same iterations of the characters as those seen in the seven earlier games, explaining the different actors and physical appearances of the characters, Katelyn's presence implies that the previous games, most importantly Testament, are still canon. Besides the physical and slight personality differences in Holmes and Watson compared to earlier games, there's actually very little to firmly set The Devil's Daughter in a separate continuity to the original.
  • Canon Foreigner: Even the most casual fan will probably immediately identify Holmes's daughter Katelyn as one.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Moriarty appears to have been one, calling his daughter's supposed rise as that of an "Empress of Evil".
  • Concealing Canvas: In Prey Tell, Holmes finds a safe behind a painting in Lord Marsh's house.
  • Curse of the Pharaoh: What drives the mystery in A Study in Green.
  • Dark Action Girl: Alice De'Bouvier who is the loyal disciple of Moriarty as a Dark Messiah.
  • Disaster Dominoes: The inciting accident in Chain Reaction is this, including Bookshelf Dominoes.
  • Expy: Alice De'Bouvier is one for Bellatrix Lestrange. She's a former disciple of Professor Moriarty and fantastically devoted to him from beyond the grave. She's also completely insane. Played with as it's highly likely Alice never met Professor Moriarty and just took up his cause as a way to ruin Sherlock Holmes.
  • Gambling Brawl: Holmes has to start one in the Infamy case (by exposing a man cheating at cards) in order to distract a guard to sneak outside.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: During the Bar Brawl, Holmes defends himself and Orson Wilde by hitting an opponent with a bottle over the head.
  • Happily Adopted: Holmes's daughter, Katelyn, is aware that she's adopted and (despite the highly unusual circumstances of being raised by an adoptive single father and his close male friend in Victorian Britain) seems to be perfectly content with her situation in life. In fact, it's learning the identity of her biological father that sends her temporarily off the rails.
  • Hollywood Exorcism: Holmes performs one to fool a witness into believing he is a priest. Amusingly, while he sets up the "supernatural occurrences" beforehand, he appears to be making it up as he goes along when it comes to the exorcism itself.
    (shouting dramatically) "Fire and brimstone
    Are much better for crumpets
    Than fire toothed demons!
    "Amen!"
  • Hotter and Sexier: The new character models for Holmes and Watson seem to owe a lot to the 2009 film and its sequel, which made much of the sex appeal of the lead actors, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Previous entries in the series had based their appearances on the older, less self-consciously attractive portrayals from the Grenada TV series.
  • How We Got Here: Prey Tell begins with Sherlock being pursued in the woods. Then we cut back to 3 days earlier to see how this all started and return to the forest scene in the climax.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: What the Quartermain Club does in the first case. They recruit the poor to serve as their targets under the guise of philanthropy.
  • The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Unfortunately for said club, one of the men they rejected ended up figuring out what they were up to. Said man was a decorated combat veteran from the Lovat Scouts, one of the British Army's premier sharpshooting units.
  • I'm a Monster: Katelyn thinks this of herself in the climax after some brainwashing by Alice.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Zacharias Greystoke, the victim in the A Study in Green case, was killed by a thrown spear impaling him.
  • Incredibly Obvious Bomb: The bomb meant to destroy Bakerstreet in Infamy is a ticking clock with wires and some explosives. Lampshaded later by Holmes who deduces that the bomb builder was poor and couldn't afford a more advanced type.
  • Let Off by the Detective: Sherlock Holmes has the option to let the guilty party go free at end of the cases.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Alice De'Bouvier is carrying out a post-mortem plan by Moriarty.
  • Mask of Sanity: Alice seems to be merely a little strange at first, but by the fifth and final case, she is revealed to be insane, to the point of sleeping with a mummified corpse in a room near her family crypt.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Alice De'Bouvier is an extremely attractive woman in flattering period attire.
  • Mythology Gag: A clue in one case is a copy of The Strand Magazine, the periodical in which the Sherlock Holmes short stories first appeared; the names of Sherlock Holmes and of Arthur Conan Doyle can just be made out on the cover. (Specifically, it's the November 1903 issue, containing "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", although the dateline has been altered to 1893 to better fit the setting of the game.)
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Orson Wilde, a playwright from America? Sounds like a crossover of Orson Welles and Oscar Wilde.
  • The Nose Knows: You take control of Toby, Sherlock's pet basset hound, in "Prey Tell" and use his sense of smell to follow the suspect's trails.
  • Off to Boarding School: A rare use of this trope by the protagonists. Katelyn apparently spends the vast majority of her time at boarding school, presumably to explain how Holmes can freely go off detecting for weeks at a time and share a small two-bedroom flat with Watson without his daughter getting in the way. (Also, possibly, to appease fans who might regard the idea of Holmes having a child dubiously, by explaining that he doesn't actually see her very often.) However, the rest of the trope more or less fits: Katelyn is an adopted/step-child (check), Holmes did away with her biological father before assuming parenting responsibilities (check), and though her mother is never even mentioned and so naturally Sherlock didn't marry her (cross), he seems to worry that more prolonged contact with him would lead Kate to uncover dark family secrets such as the truth about her original dad (check).
  • Outside Ride: When the man Wiggins is tailing for Holmes gets into a carriage, Wiggins rides along on the back.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Holmes is supposed to be a master of disguise, but simply wearing glasses or a little facial hair will be enough to fool everyone.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: George Hurst plans this as he hunts down the members of the Quartermain Club after they hunt his fellow members of the working class for sport. The climax has him planning to slit Lord Marsh's throat after revealing the man decapitated numerous individuals. You can shoot George to stop him but most players don't.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: Of the Tiffany Problem sub-category. The name "Katelyn" for Holmes/Moriarty's daughter sounds painfully modern (not helped by the spelling or her Canon Foreigner status, of course), but "Caitlin" (though it should really be pronounced "Cat-lin", as the Irish version of Catherine) isn't really out of place for the time period given the character's Moriarty ancestry.
  • Removed from the Picture: In A Study in Green, Albeit was painted over in a photograph.
  • Roofhopping: Wiggins during his Stalking Mission.
  • Secondary Character Title: The "Devil's daughter" turns out to be Katelyn Moriarty, who outright calls herself this but who is the Living MacGuffin and only appearing in a couple of scenes.
  • Secret Room: Holmes discovers one behind Marley's office in A Study in Green.
  • Shrine to the Fallen: Alice has a shrine room for her deceased father. In fact, she keeps her mummified father in the room as well.
  • Spanner in the Works: Orson Wilde is making Holmes' life hard. First he destroys Holmes' lab station and later he compromises his undercover mission at the tavern. Turns out it was done on purpose.
  • Stalking Mission: Wiggins has to stalk the doctor across town in the first case.
  • Stealth-Based Mission: The end of Infamy has a sequence where Holmes has to sneak around a number of guards in order to get into a church where Wilde is held.
  • Temple of Doom: Holmes enters one in A Study in Green. It comes with all sorts of relevant Death Trap tropes like Ghost Butler, a boulder to escape from, Spikes of Doom, an Advancing Wall of Doom, Deadly Gas and a dangerously failing Rope Bridge.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Alice is fully intending to commit suicide with Kate by crashing the boat and causing it to explode.
  • Title Drop: Twice: at the end of "Fever Dreams", a distraught Kate claims that she doesn't deserve saving, as she's the Devil's daughter. Minutes later, after saving Kate from the Madam Destiny's fiery wreck, Holmes mutters that Alice was "truly the Devil's daughter".
  • Two Shots from Behind the Bar: The Bar Brawl in Infamy has a barkeeper going for Holmes with a shotgun.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The adventure gets interrupted as several points for time-critical mini-games.
  • Unflinching Walk: The cover art shows Holmes and Watson rather casually strolling away from a London that looks downright apocalyptic, with menacing and unnaturally red storm-clouds and what appears to be a rubble-strewn roadway. Even the US cover gets in on it which otherwise depicts Sherlock and Watson chasing after someone by adding a few citizens acting completely unfazed by the goings-on.
  • Victorian London: A major setting for the game, as might be expected. One interesting aspect of this game's use of its setting is that you get to experience it from different perspectives: while Holmes finds welcome reception in the homes of gentlemen and can go in disguise to seedy workingmen's pubs, Wiggins sees the city from the point of view of an underclass child, being hired to shine shoes and sweep chimneys but otherwise generally disregarded by adults and the higher classes.
  • You Killed My Father: One of the first conversations between Holmes and Watson reveals that Holmes killed Katelyn's real father and subsequently adopted her, though she is unaware of this. One possible reason for his decision could be his attempts to avert this trope. And also because said father was Moriarty.

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