Singapore teambuilding specialist Hidden snags the exclusive licence, and will be treated as a preferred partner even as the format expands globally.
A murder has taken place in Bugis Town – and Singapore has become the first city in the world where public and corporate groups can step into a real-world murder-mystery experience with the Sherlock Holmes.
Homegrown teambuilding games company Hidden has launched A Study in Red: The Official Sherlock Experience, the world premiere of an officially licensed Sherlock Holmes team experience played across a real city district.
Running across Bugis Junction, Bugis+ and Bugis Street, the 90-minute investigation turns familiar malls, streets and heritage spaces into a playable crime scene.
Teams of up to five follow Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson through a purpose-built mobile web app, hunting for clues, examining staged crime scenes, uncovering evidence through augmented reality and entering immersive 360-degree virtual environments.
Along the way, players may receive calls from characters in the Sherlock Holmes universe, use CCTV-style intel, interact with physical touchpoints and piece together a mystery woven into the lesser-known history of Bugis.
Singapore cracks the case
Hidden had secured an exclusive licence from the Conan Doyle Estate after a competitive process, making A Study in Red the first Sherlock Holmes experience the Estate has licensed to unfold in the real world – even ahead of London – shared Richard Pooley, director, The Conan Doyle Estate.
“A Study in Red is the first Sherlock Holmes experience we have licensed to be played out in the real world – a live investigation inspired by our great ancestor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original characters and stories, localised, and woven into a real neighbourhood and its real history We regard Hidden as our preferred partner as this format expands globally, and we look forward to Holmes taking on new cases in new cities,” said Pooley.
The plot thickens for corporates
Following the debut of the game for groups of up to 15 players on 21 August as part of the Singapore Night Festival 2026, Hidden today completed the development of a corporate-friendly platform that can accommodate up to 100 players ahead of schedule.
Starting 8 September, the company began taking larger group corporate bookings playable from 1 October onwards.
The Conan Doyle Estate-licensed experience has also prompted Hidden, whose team games were hitherto powered by messaging mobile application WhatsApp, to roll-out its first dedicated web application to support augmented reality and richer multimedia clues.
This foray into richer, more immersive experiences augurs a new chapter for Hidden, which expands beyond its volume- and velocity-driven model, into a new positioning as a “studio”.
Since 2022, the Singapore studio has converted corporate bookings for more than 1,200 companies, with roughly one in four clients returning. It previously delivered games for groups as large as 15,000 players.
A Study in Red asks colleagues to move through a live precinct, communicate under time pressure, test observational skills and solve layered puzzles together. Adding the bells and whistles to cohesion formats, the format blends collaborative solving with a compelling narrative, the best-known household name in detective fiction, as well as local placemaking.
Hidden CEO Lim Yee Hung, commented: “Inspired by A Study in Scarlet, the story that first introduced the world to the great detective, we have woven its essence together with the fascinating and often forgotten history of Bugis to create something entirely new, yet still faithful to the original. Now, instead of reading it, you can step into a real-world Sherlock adventure as the main character of a thrilling murder mystery.”