Sherlock Mysteries and how The Man Who Died Twice Graphic Novel Came to Be

Technically the cases follow Mr. Wiggins, one of Sherlock Holmes’ irregular street kids now an adult working under Holmes learning to become a detective in his own right.  Of course, Holmes and a number of canon characters make regular appearances throughout the stories.

Sherlock Mysteries published by Ilya Platonov, is available on Google Play currently for android devices.  — And a soon to be first of its kind interactive comic book! more on that later —

Before I go any further, let me tell you that Ilya’s game is awesome. It’s really top notch and I was honored to be a part of it. 

If you’re into murder mysteries, Sherlock Holmes, or interactive fiction, you absolutely need to go check out this game.

The game is basically a novel, where the chapters are read to you by a voice actor. As the story unfolds you choose which clues to pursue in an effort to solve the crime. Kind of like the old “Choose your own adventure” stories.

There’s either A LOT of listening, or A LOT of reading… so if you’re looking for any kind of typical mobile game app with a lot of swiping and exploding eggs or something, that ain’t this game.

It’s really cool to play alone OR even better in a party game setting. With everyone listening to the story and working collaboratively to solve the crime, taking notes, referencing the map, etc.

BUT BE WARNED, Take Notes.

These murder mystery cases weren’t written with a cheap novelty mystery element. The answers aren’t simply handed to you as the story unfolds.

No, no, the cases are written in a manner that takes a real detective’s mindset to solve.

You’ll need a focused intellect, attention to detail, and have to earn the answers to solve each case!

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Shortly after Ilya launched, he approached me to do an introductory case for the game. A case that oriented the player with the mechanics of the game.

This case, “The Man Who Died Twice” is the story I converted to hardcover graphic novel format.

I guess you could say the publisher received good feedback on my case and he enjoyed working with me enough to bring me back to do the game’s first pay-to-play series of cases. Don’t stress, the games are ridiculously cheap, I think $3 ea with a 5 case bundle discount for fans.

131,000 words and about 8 months later, I’ve finally finished five new cases, all quite unique in their manner, but all revolving around initial corpses being discovered in the Thames.

The Man Who Died Twice book is an interactive graphic novel. The comic format version plays quite similar to the mobile app, with the player choosing which parts of the story to investigate and read, all the while trying to solve the mystery and identify the murderer of the story.

It’s been fun and challenging trying to adapt this unique interactive nature to a comic medium.

More detailed rules on how to play the graphic novel can be found here.

 

A couple of the interior pages for your previewing pleasure:

 

 

And here, a couple of pencil panels of the graphic novel during production progress, illustration by Diego Garavano.

 

Perhaps if the Man Who Died Twice graphic novel does well, I’ll bring additional cases from the Thames series to life in the comicbook medium.

If anyone heads over to check out the game on Google Play, feel free to tell em you came from this website.

And after you take a crack at a case, check out the Sherlock Mysteries reddit for further discussion!