Originally developed for Microsoft Windows, the series first began in September 2002 with Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy.

The second game in the series, Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring, followed in October 2004, and introduced the third-person perspective.

In it, Holmes and Watson investigate the murder of a construction tycoon, Sir Melvyn Bromsby; with his daughter, Lavinia, among the suspects.

The game follows an original plotline as Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate a series of strange disappearances related to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Among the more positive reviews for the game, GameSpot gave it a rating of 8.3 out of 10, praising the storyline and stating that it was told "brilliantly", calling it a "Cthulhu-infused Victoriana".

The game's antagonist is Arsène Lupin, a fictional gentleman thief created by French writer Maurice Leblanc.

A sixth installment, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, was released for PC, Xbox 360 PlayStation 3[4][5] in September 2012,[6] and Nintendo Switch in 2023.

The game is set as an origin story with Sherlock Holmes, being aged twenty-one, returning to the island of Cordona, where he spent a part of his childhood.

The main plot revolves around Holmes slowly regaining memories of his mother's death, while also solving different cases on the island.

It is the first game in the series self-published by Frogwares and mechanically takes heavy inspiration from their previous title The Sinking City (for example, being set in an open-world environment).

Throughout several games, Holmes uses his magnifying glass when he inspects things such as crime scenes, mutilated bodies, fingerprints, gashes and scratches—and uses it mostly for finding evidence.

As Holmes, the players spend time searching for important clues, most of which the bumbling police force have missed.

The Awakened was the first Frogwares title to allow gameplay to take place in an entirely real-time 3D landscape and from a first-person perspective, losing the pre-rendered backgrounds of its predecessors.

Like other Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares, it has an open world environment in every location that can have hidden clues and interactions with NPCs.

[16] Early games in the series use pre-rendered backgrounds, using them to hide clues in the scene and provide accessible open world landscapes.

The third-person camera can also be moved around the character independently, which helps both to find an angle that is comfortable for the players and to take in the surroundings while standing still.

The new games in the series differ from this (especially The Testament of Sherlock Holmes); holding no restraint in displaying the grisly murders, the characters depicted are purely fictional.

The game also benefits from a new light and shadow system, various post-treatment image effects, and high quality voice-over and cinematographic direction.

The game was rated poorly and was generally considered a disappointing follow-up to Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper.

GameSpot's review of the game found it "not all that appropriate as a sequel to the other adventures that Sherlock and Watson have been starring in during the past few years".

Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, released in 2011 for PC and 2012 for iOS devices and loosely based on the novel of the same name, is a hidden object game that features heavy supernatural themes.