There is a variety of logic puzzles in any given episode, so in addition to piecing together the clues of your investigation, you'll also find yourself picking locks by aligning tumblers, connecting electrical wiring, assembling interconnecting cogs, solving anagrams, and breaking codes for safecracking, to name but a few. Although nothing new to experienced adventure gamers, these puzzles can be quite challenging, so don't expect to breeze through without breaking a mental sweat.

Ultimately, of course, the goal is to identify the culprit from a range of suspects, and proving your case is no easy task. There are all kinds of red herring clues to throw you off track, and in order to successfully solve the case, you'll need to formulate your theory, and correctly present the relevant clues in order of importance. I suspect some players will find this requirement to be a little too rigid, as there's no feedback at all to what you may have wrong. If you fail, there is no way to restore, forcing you to replay the entire scenario from the beginning. Fortunately, the developers have promised to implement a manual save feature in the near future (rather than the existing auto-save upon exit), so that addition may bypass the current endgame frustration. Still, a properly implemented feedback system would be something I'd prefer to see the developers offer in upcoming cases. Failure is not an ending that motivates many gamers.

The other potentially objectionable issue is the timed nature of the cases. Each case has a fixed time limit, and an onscreen clock displays how much (or little) time is remaining. The clock does not count down in real time, as it's based on the number of times you change locations, but the sense of urgency still undermines the relaxed nature of the gameplay. In a game of thorough investigation and exploration, such an arbitrary challenge feels more like a punishment than a benefit. If you get stuck—and you will—you're locked into revisiting every location room by room, and the clock becomes an unavoidable nemesis working against you. Again, the addition of a save system may help to eliminate this frustration, but I wouldn't be surprised if fan feedback caused the developers to eliminate the clock altogether—or at least make it optional.

When playing the game, you'll definitely want to set your screen resolution to 1024 x 768, as otherwise parts of the menu (including the cursed clock) will be partially hidden from view (although for the clock, maybe that's a good thing). The other imperative issue is the need to disable any pop-up blocker you may use, as that will prevent the notepad window from displaying. At this early stage of the game's existence, you may yet encounter some technical issues, as well. Using Internet Explorer, the movement of my character was perpetually choppy, which had nothing to do with my (DSL) connection speed, as I experienced no such difficulty using Firefox. I also found some of the loading times to be inordinately long, including simple dialogue texts the first time I encountered NPC's. None of these issues are showstoppers, and the developers seem committed to addressing any issues that arise, but be forewarned that such difficulties might exist. Fortunately, the free tutorial will let you test for browser compatibility, and give you a feel for the gameplay, though on a much simpler level than the real cases.

In addition to these larger issues related to the overall Gumshoe Online experience, the individual cases currently available also have a few relevant flaws that mar the experience somewhat. Pixel hunting rears its ugly head on occasion, and there are a few fairly significant consistency errors (such as the notebook registering a murder long before I had any reason to believe one occurred). The basic case plots are decent, but the writing is weak, as dialogue options feel unnatural, and I never felt absorbed in the stories. Making matters worse, despite the numerous locations you'll open up in the course of your investigations, gameplay can come to a screechingly linear halt if you don't find the exact triggers needed to move on, even if they have no immediate relevance to the story.

Despite these weaknesses, there are several hours of adventuring entertainment offered by the first cases of Gumshoe. At £2.99 per episode, the playtime certainly offers decent value for your money, and the episodes may just fill a diversionary gaming need between more substantial offerings.

It wouldn't be fair to grade the game based only on impressions of the first few cases. Not only might future episodes vary drastically in quality, but the developers are continuing to improve the basic framework in commendable ways. What I can do at this stage is simply point the way, and recommend you try the tutorial for yourself, at the very least. Gumshoe Online is still very much a work in progress, but its potential is certainly evident. The market is out there, and I hope to see Hiding Buffalo continue to develop and refine both the presentation and the implementation of future cases. With the experience gained from these humble beginnings, this could very well be a series to keep an eye on in future.