The Transformations of Dr. Watson

This game is a brief, mostly-linear story (with occasional parallel branches) about being Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories and having your mind shunted into different animals, each of which gets attacked in turn.

I love Sherlock Holmes stories, and have often considered Arthur Conan Doyle's writing as the most gripping and interesting to me (but only in Sherlock Holmes; his other stories aren't as interesting to me). Unfortunately, this has almost none of the interesting elements of Sherlock Holmes stories. Dr Watson is here a coroner, for some reason, and does the investigating himself. He discovers the criminal immediately (who for some reason has left the murder weapon in plain view while inviting a doctor to investigate the death and is shocked to get called out). The murderer also has no problem believing animals have sentience or malice and violently murders them and attacks children while a detective is in the house. Sherlock himself doesn't do any kind of fancy deducing of any kind. This is exactly the kind of story AI tends to generate; this story itself might not be AI, but if it is human-made, it doesn't rise above the level of what AI is capable of.

Each page has multiple ai-illustrated images, which, like the story, serve to show exactly what is described without anything greater. The text says parrot, so we see a parrot. The text says cat, so we see a cat. There isn't any deeper theme or connection or symbolism, and the details of the pictures have no relevance to the story text.

In this tale, you play as Dr. Watson, working together with our Detective Holmes to solve a mystery. While this is a choice based IF, it is more of a linear story than a mystery game. You get to make a few choices here and there, but the game largely guides you towards solving the mystery.

Watson is brought in to investigate a murder, but is quietly incapacitated during the investigation. However, during this time, his consciousness is transferred into various animals and people, allowing him to carefully puppet them and use them to nudge Holmes towards solving the mystery. It is not quite explained how Watson stumbles upon this unusual power, and while you get a few choices here, the game largely puts you on the straight path to exposing the murderer.

This is a better read if you want to read a mystery rather than actively try to solve one. Not saying it's a bad thing, of course. That said, there is one other thing I'll address.

Most of the art in the game appears to be AI. Strangely placed doorknobs, unusual buttons on clothes, strange shadows and so on. The game's description clearly declared the use of AI, and IFcomp doesn't prohibit it, so I can't really penalize it here. Another thing I'll also say is that the technology has been improving, and it has been harder and harder for me to pick out the little AI tell-tale signs these days. Still, while pictures generally could be used to add flavor to a game, I don't think it's absolutely necessary, and it can be immersion breaking when my eyes spot some out of place art because the machines haven't quite gotten it right.

Anyway, these are my thoughts as a whole.