A small adventure in WebAssembly @ Things Of Interest

We've started playing a new board game. An old board game, actually; it seems like it's originally from 1975 and has gone through a few iterations.

221B Baker Street comes with a deck of 75 unique, original Sherlock Holmes mysteries and a dense book of clues. At the start of the game, one mystery is selected at random from the deck and read out to everybody. Players then start at Baker Street on this board and roll dice to travel around the board to other locations, such as the museum, the theatre, Scotland Yard, the docks and the Boar's Head pub. There are 15 locations in all. At each location, there is a unique clue. When a player reaches the location, they open the clue book, secretly read that single clue, take notes, and then put the book back. The objective is to gather enough clues that you think you can solve the mystery... then swiftly return to Baker Street, announce your solution, and check it against the actual solution to see if you win or lose.

In my opinion, this is a really great adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes premise to a new format. The setting and the mysteries are standalone, timeless and accessible in the same way that the original Sherlock Holmes stories are. You get a new story every time and the way to succeed at the game is to invest personally in that story. There's a luck/skill/judgement element — Do you think you have enough information to guess what really happened? Was eight clues enough? Or should you visit one more location, just in case there's something critical you're missing? But what if someone else beats you back to Baker Street? Can you chance a wild guess? Have you checked the facts? Are you sure?

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