The Speckled Band (3D)
🕵️ A Sherlock Holmes game — The consulting detective himself
Stoke Moran, April 1883. Julia Stoner died in a locked room crying "It was the band! The speckled band!" — and now her sister sleeps in the same bed and has heard the same low whistle in the night. Walk the two bedrooms of the old Surrey house in first-person 3D as the April dusk comes through the windows: the bed that is clamped to the floor, the bell-rope that rings no bell, the ventilator that opens into Dr Grimesby Roylott's room, the iron safe with a saucer of milk on top. Reason it out with Holmes — then put out the lamp and keep the vigil in the dark, until the gleam at the ventilator, the smell of hot metal, and the hiss. Strike a match, take up the cane, and drive back what comes down the rope. Free, in your browser, nothing to install.
- ✅ Free
- 🔓 No sign-up
- 🌐 Runs in your browser
- 📱 Desktop & mobile
What it does
Stoke Moran in real 3D
Two furnished bedrooms and the corridor between them, built in three.js: worm-eaten oak panelling, the gaping fireplace, barred oak shutters, low dusk sunlight and moonlight that cast real shadows — every texture drawn procedurally in your browser.
Seven canon clues
The dummy bell-rope, the ventilator, the clamped bed, the shutters, the safe and the saucer of milk, the looped dog-lash, the scuffed wooden chair — each examined with Holmes and Watson, each going into the case journal.
The vigil
Darkness, the church clock, the cheetah at the window. Stay awake, wait for the hiss, strike a match — and strike at the swamp adder's head with Holmes's cane as it comes down the rope. Solve time is kept as your best.
How to play
-
1
Click to look around; walk with WASD (or the left stick on a phone) and press E to examine. Search Miss Stoner's room and Dr Roylott's next door.
-
2
With all seven clues in the journal, answer Holmes's three deductions about how the crime was done.
-
3
Keep the vigil: Space keeps you awake. At the hiss, click to strike a match, then click to lash at the snake's head until it is driven back through the ventilator.
The story in brief (spoilers)
Spoiler warning: this section gives away the solution of The Adventure of the Speckled Band.
Helen Stoner comes to Baker Street at dawn, shivering with fear. Two years earlier her twin sister Julia died at Stoke Moran, their stepfather's decaying house in Surrey, a fortnight before her wedding. Julia's door was locked and her shutters barred; she had heard a low whistle at three in the morning on several nights, and she died crying out about "the speckled band". Now Helen is engaged, building work has moved her into her sister's room — and she has heard the whistle.
Holmes and Watson inspect the room by day, then keep watch there in the dark. The "band" is a swamp adder that Dr Grimesby Roylott, who would lose most of his income if his stepdaughters married, sent through a ventilator and down a dummy bell-rope to the bed, and called back with a whistle. Holmes drives the snake back with his cane; it turns on Roylott in the next room, and he dies of its bite.
Stoke Moran and the clues
Every clue in the game comes straight from the story. In Helen's room: a thick bell-rope that is not attached to any bell but to a hook above the ventilator; a ventilator that opens not to the outside air but into Dr Roylott's room; a narrow bed clamped to the floor so it can never be moved from under the rope; and heavy shutters with an iron bar that no one could force from outside.
In Dr Roylott's plainer room next door: a large iron safe with a small saucer of milk on top (and no cat in the house — only a cheetah and a baboon loose in the grounds), a dog-lash whose cord has been tied into a loop, and a plain wooden chair beneath the ventilator whose seat shows it has been stood upon. Put them together and the locked-room mystery explains itself.
Why it was Conan Doyle's own favourite
When Arthur Conan Doyle ranked his best Sherlock Holmes stories for The Strand Magazine in 1927, he put The Speckled Band first. It has everything that made the stories famous: a frightened client at dawn, a gothic country house, a locked room, a brutish villain who bends a steel poker in Holmes's sitting-room, a night vigil in the dark, and a solution that is both horrifying and perfectly fair.
Conan Doyle also turned it into a successful stage play in 1910, and readers still vote it among the very best of the sixty Holmes adventures. This 3D game lets you stand in the room yourself and see the clues before Holmes explains them.
"Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent." A faithful 3D retelling of Conan Doyle's own favourite Holmes story — separate from our illustrated story game of The Speckled Band. Built in three.js; entirely in your browser.
Frequently asked questions
What is the speckled band?
In Conan Doyle's story "the speckled band" — Julia Stoner's dying words — turns out to be a venomous snake, a "swamp adder" from India with a yellowish body and brownish speckles. When it coiled around Dr Roylott's head it looked like a speckled headband.
Who killed Julia Stoner?
Her stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott. To keep the income from their late mother's will, he sent a trained snake through the ventilator and down the dummy bell-rope to Julia's bed, and recalled it with a whistle and a saucer of milk. (Spoiler, obviously.)
Is the swamp adder a real snake?
No species is called a swamp adder; Conan Doyle invented it, and some of its habits (drinking milk, climbing a rope, answering a whistle) are not how real snakes behave. Readers have suggested the Indian saw-scaled viper or Russell's viper as inspirations, but the story's snake is fictional.
Is The Speckled Band 3D game free?
Yes. It is completely free, runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile, and needs no download, account or plug-in. Your fastest solve time is saved on your own device.
How do I beat the vigil?
Keep pressing Space (or 👁) so you do not doze off, and do not strike a light before you hear the hiss — Holmes will stop you. When the hissing starts, click once to strike a match, then aim the crosshair at the snake's head as it sways on the rope and click to strike. Three blows to the head drive it back through the ventilator.