Nancy Drew PC Games

by Jessica

Video games are for kids. Video games are too violent. Video games don’t teach you anything. Have you ever been told or heard someone say one of these things about video games? I bet you have. Well, as always there are exceptions to the rules, and today I’m going to tell you about a video game series that is an exception to all of these.

Most of us have probably heard of Nancy Drew, right? She’s appeared in many forms over the years, in books, movies, and now, video games. Maybe your mom read the Nancy Drew book series written by Carolyn Keene (who isn’t a real person; it’s a pseudonym for the “ghost” authors who wrote them). Or maybe you’ve seen the Nancy Drew movie Emma Roberts starred in from 2007. But something you may not know about Nancy is that she has her own line of mystery video games, which are for many gaming platforms. The most commonly used one for this series is the PC (this is the one I use to play them too).

Nancy Drew, if you don’t know, is an eighteen-year-old detective/sleuth that grew up in River Heights, USA. She’s always described as having “titian” hair (meaning it’s golden brown with a tint of red in it), which I always thought was an interesting way to describe it. The book series was written from 1930 to 2003, and Nancy grew up in the early 1900’s. She is the daughter of a lawyer, Carson Drew, and her mother died when she was very young. She and her father have a housekeeper/cook, Hannah Gruen, and a dog named Togo. Nancy is also known for her boyfriend, Ned, and her two best friends, Bess and George (both girls). Most of these are characters in the games, whether you see them or just talk to them on the phone.

 

The actual PC games were first made in 1998 by the company, Her Interactive, and are still made today. They tell the stories of Nancy’s best detective cases. Because her father is a lawyer and therefore busy all the time, and because Nancy is an only child, and a responsible one at that, she has a lot of free reign and can therefore go to places all across the United States (Hawaii in The Creature of Kapu Cave or Georgia in The Ghost of Thornton Hall) and even the world (Italy in The Phantom of Venice or Germany in The Captive Curse) to solve cases. She has a knack for it, which may originate from her mother, who may or may not have been a spy (find out in Her Interactive’s latest, The Silent Spy).

 

Through the games, you, as the player, are Nancy; therefore, you never actually see her because you play from her first-person perspective. As Nancy, you meet characters, some of whom are the suspects, who usually remain suspects until the end (Nancy never rules anyone out). She/you talk to them and befriend them along the way. Some friendships turn out to not be so genuine, I might add. If Nancy/you gets stuck mid-game, you can usually call Bess and George (who are always together), Carson, or Ned for helpful hints. In some games, you can even call the Hardy Boys, with whom Nancy has worked before, like in Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, one of my favorite games. Other times, Nancy will have someone she needs to report to, like in The Secret of Shadow Ranch, who will help her out as well. And trust me, you’ll need hints for some tricky puzzles Nancy has to solve.

At the beginning of the game, you can choose to play as either a junior (amateur) sleuth or a senior (pro) sleuth, and even though I’ve been playing these for at least five years I still always choose junior sleuth. Senior sleuth has harder puzzles with less time to do them (if they’re timed) or more to the puzzle and fewer clues throughout the game. I figure more adults play senior level. There’s one of my first points; every age group can play these games. Maybe little little kids can’t, but everyone 10+ I think would enjoy them. I know when I was about eleven and started playing them, my dad would play them with me and help me out on puzzles or clues I couldn’t figure out on my own, and sometimes even he would get stuck! So these games take some serious skill. When I need more help than the game will give me (and I’ve only completed I think two games without hints) I go to uhs-hints.com (Universal Hint System), which I think is a lifesaver because it’s not a straight walk-through in that you can find exactly the part of the puzzle you need help with without giving away the final answer to it or spoilers in the game. Be careful not to click on the wrong thing, though, or you might read a spoiler on accident!

One little tidbit I want to include is how fun/funny it is to watch the technology in the game change, especially the kind Nancy uses to get in contact with her friends and hint-givers. Back in the very first few, Nancy would only be able to use an old pay phone and put in a nickel she has in her change purse that she carries (Secret of the Old Clock) or a rotary dial phone in her hotel room (Curse of Blackmoor Manor). Later on, Nancy gets her own mobile phone that only allows calls, and now in the games Nancy has a smartphone that has Internet and texting on it to make it easier for her/you to look up information and talk to people on the go. It also makes it easier for the bad guy to contact Nancy, even anonymously, like in The Silent Spy.

Besides being a game for (almost) all ages, Nancy Drew is not graphically violent at all. There isn’t blood or gore or fighting. Sometimes a ghost will jump out at you and practically scare your pants off (Curse you, Shadow at the Water’s Edge), or creepy noises/sounds will make it difficult to play at nighttime (*cough* *cough* The corridor in Curse of Blackmoor Manor), but besides that, it’s a really good series without being too violent, which is especially good if you’re as jumpy as I am.

And my third point from the beginning is that Nancy Drew teaches you so much. If you didn’t know how to play Sudoku, Shadow at the Water’s Edge will teach you how. If you don’t know your Roman numerals very well, Danger on Deception Island will change that. If you don’t know about different types of farm vegetables (which I sure didn’t) or cliff dwellings, The Secret of Shadow Ranch will enlighten you. So as you can see, as you’re playing these games, secret little tidbits of information will stick with you, and you’ll develop puzzle skills you’ll use in later games. One of the most common ones I’ve seen is the slider puzzle, which goes all the way back to the first game, The Secret of the Old Clock (which is also the name of the first book), and is used in the newest game, The Silent Spy.

 

Now I have mention graphics for a second because I am super picky about whether game graphics are good enough for me to play it or not. The older games, like Secrets Can Kill (first released in 1999 and remastered in 2010), are obviously not going to have as good of graphics as say, the newest game coming out in spring 2014, The Shattered Medallion (so if you’re extremely picky about that, I wouldn’t start playing until about maybe the tenth one, The Secret of Shadow Ranch).

 

The Shattered Medallion is the 30th Nancy Drew PC game, and I’ve completely played through 17 of them. I started The Legend of the Crystal Skull but didn’t finish it because it scared me (it was a while ago, alright?), as well as The Haunting of Castle Malloy (it glitched, and I had no choice but to not finish it). I also have The White Wolf of Icicle Creek for the Wii, but the final puzzle was so hard (and so randomized!) that I could never complete it. That still haunts me to this day.

After I started really getting into these games, I started a list of all the ones I’d played and ratings for a few different categories that I decided were important in a Nancy Drew game that’d help me remember how much I did or didn’t like it the next time I wanted to replay a game. So here are my top ranked games for each category, from a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest in the category:

 

Most fun - this one definitely goes to Tomb of the Lost Queen. From its incredible graphics to cool characters to awesome puzzles, this one from Her Interactive (May 8, 2012) is my favorite. I loved translating the hieroglyphics with Nancy in Egypt! Warnings at Waverly Academy is a close second for me though.

Scariest - though this may be tainted by my age of when I played it, Shadow at the Water’s Edge got a 9 because I saw the creepy dripping ghost that’s on the cover of the game in the game...oh man.

Hardest - out of the ones I’ve finished, I didn’t give any a 9 or an 8, but I gave quite a few 7’s. I think the highest 7 would be either The Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon or Tomb of the Lost Queen.

Most played - this one is a three-way tie because I’ve played The Secret of Shadow Ranch, Curse of Blackmoor Manor, and Secret of the Old Clock three times each.

So there are my “winners” and my knowledge that I had to share for you about the Nancy Drew PC games. I hope you found it interesting and now want to go pick up a game for yourself! They are great fun and take up to three days if you make them last (meaning only playing for about 2 hours a day). I tend to love playing and only take a day or two. Some are longer, some are shorter, but they’re all great fun. I can’t wait to see what The Shattered Medallion will be about, so maybe pick that up in the spring if you so desire. Always remember: *whispers* It’s up to you as Nancy Drew!