dare to play

secrets can kill

the one that started it all (for HERinteractive anyway). it came on two discs and you had to switch them out depending on the area you wanted to be in.

stay tuned for danger

i played this as a kid but i have no solid memories of it.

message in a haunted mansion

played, but no solid memories.

treasure in the royal tower

here at least i remember the delight that is prof. hotchkiss, but that's about it.

the final scene

this was an unexpected delight! i'm pretty sure it bored me when i played as a kid, but on a fresh replay it actually holds up surprisingly well.

fun links:

• Jett's review
• blogthrough by fullofsalt
• playthrough by Vote 4 Holt

my thoughts:

i didn't have the highest hopes for this one considering i'm playing backwards from Scarlet Hand, but to my surprise, i liked it much more! i'm curious why the UI and general vibe took a little bit of a nosedive between these two...

in this installment, we find Nancy and her friend Maya at the Royal Palladium Theater in St. Louis. the theater is about to show a premiere of Vanishing Destiny featuring Hollywood heartthrob Brady Armstrong - its last hurrah before being demolished in just three days. Maya is there to interview Brady, but when she disappears from his dressing room with a scream for help, Nancy has to pull out her sleuthing hat and find her before it's too late.

to be blunt, this is a short game with only one location to explore, which should've made me dislike it, but it works so well with the plotline that i really didn't care. after all, Maya is somewhere in the theater and there's only three days to find her. it felt realistic and added some tension.

it also helps that the sole location is riddled with secret passageways and hidden rooms - and of course it is, it's a historical theater with ties to Harry Houdini himself! it's crazy what a grounded storyline will do for immersion.

Nancy's got a personal stake in this mystery, so she is uncharacteristically spicy and i LOVE it. girl is practically hissing and spitting at anyone who gets in the way of finding her friend. i'm living for it. Simone deserves every Scoville - i can't remember a more hate-able suspect in Nancy's entire tenure. Brady inspires more contempt than hatred, but he was still my favorite to talk to. at one point he proudly tell us about his "first original thought" which made me want to bonk him affectionately over the head with an empty paper towel tube just to hear it echo.

we get to go through everybody's stuff in this one - always a highlight - and the contents are juicy. much of this stuff is missable and not necessary to continue the plot, but it's packed with passive storytelling and character details which added so much to the experience and made it feel like real snooping. plus it was funny as hell. i wish i could read the weird-ass movie posters scattered around the theater, because i'm sure they're hilarious, but they're just too pixelated. oh, and a quick little call forward: at one point Simone suggests some better stage names for Nancy - 'Fancy Jackson' is much decried, but 'Samantha Quick' is a name we'll hear again...

the reveal was very fun, if a bit abrupt. i want to say it was kinda predictable, but i did have the benefit of foggy childhood memories, so that might have just been a me problem.

all told, this one is highly playable despite its age! solid B-tier.

secret of the scarlet hand

the nostalgia factor is real for this one - definitely a favorite as a kid - but with the benefit of a fully-developed brain, it's okay at best.

fun links:

• a particularly scathing Jett's review
• blogthrough by fullofsalt
• walkthrough on MysteryManor
• playthrough by Vote 4 Holt

my thoughts:

i don't think this one's bad so much as it's just silly, and sometimes i like silly.

Nancy is taking a break from mysteries to have a little internship at the Beech Hill Museum in Washington DC. but of course there's going to be a mystery, which presents itself when the museum's most precious artifact goes missing, a scarlet handprint left in its place. i like that the game launches into the opening cutscene as soon as you choose a difficulty. i don't remember that happening in many of these games.

despite not making much logical sense, the Beech Hill Museum makes me happy. it's a tiny space - more of an exhibit than a museum - but it's lovingly put together and pleasant to explore even with the rather elderly graphics.

there's a garden out back with some outdoor exhibits and it is the most fabulously liminal space i have ever seen. as a kid i didn't really notice the solid hedge walls not-quite-obscured in the background, or the way it's always dark and moody out there regardless of the time of day, suggesting a roof that doesn't make sense. it's a cozy kind of creepy. definitely the vibiest environment in the game.

at the back of the exhibit hall lies the temple. there's little computer games and quizzes in here, and they're... okay. the sound effects are horrid, i fear. my middle-school self was absolutely charmed by this, though, so it gets some nostalgia points.

fun little detail - some of the names on the donor plaques outside of Joanna's office:

• Hugh Honeyham
• Marquis de Falcone
• Bubba Phatsis
• Ayu N. D. Bayou (a reference to game artist Ayu Othman?)
• Astrid Starflex
• the Ester Beezwack and Snookie McGee foundation
• NDfan123
• Punchy LaRue (whom we'll hear from again in a much later game)

this game is also the genesis of perpetual off-screen favorite, Sonny Joon! here, he's a former intern with an Ancient Aliens bent and a penchant for doodling.

at the time of this writing i don't know if this is standard for the older ND games, but this one goes HARD on the 'walking simulator' thing. you gotta move Nancy almost one leg at a time, it feels like, and the cursor cues and movement options aren't as polished as they will be in later games. i don't hate it, but i do be spam-clicking down hallways. the click targets are persnickety - god forbid you try open a door without clicking specifically on the handle, back away without closing a drawer, or walk away from your computer without closing a program.

the UI is a blast from the fucking past. you can't name your saved games! the books in the iconic save/load bookshelf can only say "nothing saved here" or "something saved here" - the latter of which is delightfully ominous.

ultimately, the mystery is solved by walking around a bunch and making so many phone calls. (brush up on long-distance dialing ettiquette!) it can be a bit of a slog, but Bess and George's performances steal the show. a later character, Penelope, is a total babe and i loved our brief conversation.

not a lot of this game makes sense, to be honest. the police have a whole-ass handprint and can't find the culprit? Nancy is encouraged to go gallivanting around with crime scene evidence? Alejandro at the consulate allows her to badger him with condescending questions? Nancy gets promoted to acting director of a museum embroiled in legal trouble and mysterious accidents??

the reveal at the end features a bit of action and tension, but it's followed by the most anticlimactic ending where the non-guilty characters stand shoulder-to-shoulder and bestow some weird, seemingly rehearsed one-liners upon you. bizarre.

all that said however, my rosy glasses and i had fun! D-tier.

ghost dogs of moon lake

i will always have a soft spot for this one - it was the first ND game i ever played at age 8 or so, and my mom and i spent hours clicking around together. we discovered the herinteractive forums when we got stuck, but it took us a long time to figure out that we could read the spoiler-tagged text by selecting it. simpler times...

fun links:

• Jett's review
• blogthrough by fullofsalt
• playthrough by Vote 4 Holt

my thoughts:

the premise here is that Nancy has been invited out to her friend's newly purchased fixer-upper lake house on the shores of Moon Lake in Pennsylvania. when Nancy arrives though, she finds herself alone, blocked in by a fallen tree, and subjected to a pack of wild (or supernatural?) dogs attacking the house when the sun goes down. getting to the bottom of this leads down a rabbithole of puzzle doors, birdwatching, and Prohibition history.

there are only three major locations in this game, which is a little bit of a bummer, but the lake house makes up for it. you can explore the house itself, the yard, the outbuildings, and the forest trails out back. i love the trails - they're pretty, even with '02 graphics. it's a far cry from an open world but it feels like you have a lot more freedom.

unlike the previous installment, Ghost Dogs needs only a little suspension of disbelief. the tasks and clues that Nancy finds feel way more organic and believable, even if they lack a little substance. for instance, you find a map to the forest trails tucked away in the lake house, left by a long-ago fisherman for his buddy. it's fairly sensible! the puzzles are also way more befitting of our lovely girl detective - i love when i actually need to get out a piece of paper and take some notes. the only plot hole that stuck out to me was a safe you find partway through, upon which is lying a piece of paper that lists... the current and previous codes. because someone would do that.

a couple fun details: there's a cemetery with gravestones for a Mr. Asa Royal Stench and a Mr. Cedric Kozmo "Cranky" Piffenpaff. my favorite line in the game is "a birdwatcher i ran into said they were ghosts!" the birdwatcher in question is a man named Red Knott, my favorite suspect. he's a great storyteller, but a terrible bird impersonator.

we've had some interface improvements - you can name your saves this go around, and the Second Chance system debuts. Nancy can make fatal errors that give you... well, what i've come to consider a collectible death scene. but you can pick right up before you did the dumb thing so the frustration is minimal. it showed up big time for me when the first thing i did - literally IMMEDIATELY upon gaining control of Nancy - is fall through the floorboards to my death.

the big reveal is alright. it makes logical sense and it's satisfying in that way, but it's not a showstopper of an ending.

overall, i just wish the game continued for a couple more plot twists. an extra hour of content, or an additional character to spice things up, would cement it in the A-tier. but alas, B-tier it is.

the haunted carousel

a D-tier installment elevated by C-tier shenanigans.

fun links:

• Jett's review
• blogthrough by fullofsalt
• playthrough by Vote 4 Holt

my thoughts:

in this seventh installment, we meet up with Nancy at the Candle Captain's Cove Amusement Park in New Jersey. the recent theft of a vintage carousel horse seems to have brought a curse down upon the park. we've been called in to investigate the accidents, malfunctions, and tension between the crew.

we'll get into the plot in a minute, but first, some things i really liked:

at long last, we have a cell phone! and it has an address book and autodial!! the phone conversations are a beloved part of the experience for me, and they're so much more fun to take in when you don't have to manually dial every time (and god forbid you forget the 1 for long distance). since i didn't have to run back to my hotel room every time i wanted to call someone, i checked in with Bess and George a LOT. bonus points: there's a very cute message on the answering machine if you call home.

quick aside: Haunted Carousel graces us with the most batshit line ever uttered by Bess Marvin. "Ugly people have chips on their shoulders and are more likely to commit crimes, George. I read that somewhere. Either read it, or saw it on Oprah." girl WHAT!?

in other news, Nancy can eat for the first time. you can order stuff from room service at the hotel for her to nom on, just for fun. she'll have even better (and far worse) meals as we continue through the series...

second chances return and are much improved. if you make a fatal error, you get a quick little phone conversation in which you are summarily fired - and boy did they get creative. ways i got kicked off the case:

• burned down the hotel by accident
• fell off the carousel and concussed myself
• fried the electrical system of the entire park
• got electrocuted, whoops
• hit in the head by falling park equipment

also, i just have to say it somewhere: Ingrid is hot. that is all.

and now i'm going to talk about the plot. whoo boy.

the A plot is the mystery, which is ultimately fine but underwhelming. the B plot, meanwhile, starts with the mousiest of suspects, Joy Trent, and rapidly veers off into a fever dream as Nancy helps her heal from the grief of losing her parents (!) by solving highly personal riddles (!!) bestowed by an intelligent robot made from an easy-bake oven and a few tobacco pipes (!!!). it's surreal, it's bizarre, and i honestly kind of loved it.

the shenanigans distracted from some of the game's lowlights. the suspects are pretty flat, the clues are contrived, the exploration is lame... but there's a talking robot and he calls himself Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine. fair trade for me, but your mileage may vary.

playable? very. replayable? probably not. C-tier.

danger on deception island

welcome to herinteractive's golden age!

fun links:

• Jett's review
• blogthrough by fullofsalt
• playthrough by Vote 4 Holt

my thoughts:

instead of being assigned a case, this time Nancy stumbles into one on her own. we're in the San Juans up in Washington state, ready to go whale-watching with boat captain Katie Firestone. there's a lone orca hanging around the bay that everyone wants to get a look at. but when Nancy arrives, Katie's boat has been trashed. who did it and why? also what's with the messages in bottles?

the setting is one of my absolute favorites. you can navigate the four locations on the island by bike, but you also get to take the kayak out to visit new locations as the plot progresses. we get to go crabbing and clamming, we learn about sailor's knots and morse code, and you can even relax and build sandcastles just for the immersion. and then there's the secret doors and passageways, the creepy old lighthouse... even the endgame takes place in its own unique environment.

and what an endgame! it's surprising, cinematic, tense. for the first time, you get to truly catch the culprit, and it was really exciting.

top tier puzzles here - simple to understand and still challenging to solve. many of them end up being given to you by my all-time favorite offscreen character, the wise and strange Hilda Swenson. i love her storyline. her last conversation with Nancy makes me a little misty.

and the music? oh my god. give me that sweet fiddle with seagulls in the background. i'm living.

we've also got plenty of my favorite kind of content: fun little bullshit. Nancy gets to eat again! you can make sandwiches in the boat kitchen, with the opportunity to poison her if you so choose. baking soda and jelly perhaps? you can also eat bowl after bowl of free clam chowder, generously provided by Jenna at the Hot Kettle Cafe. also there are some references to earlier games - Nancy has a brochure in her luggage advertising a new Chaco pottery exhibit at Beech Hill, and Katie's calendar features some of the gorgeous dog portraits from Moon Lake.

only a couple things kept this from being an S-tier game. the environments were great but navigating between them could be a bit of a slog. i didn't feel like i really got to talk to the characters much at all, especially Katie. and unfortunately, some of the endgame details are just... total bullshit.

spoilers here

they made a HARNESS.... for an ORCA. it's specifically a JUVENILE ORCA HARNESS. who makes this?? we've got an orca in a harness and it was trained BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY? to recover contraband from shipwrecks? HOW?

edit: upon further research apparently the Russians do be out here training and harnessing cetaceans so i guess the truth is stranger than fiction.

but what contraband, you may ask? what contraband was the harnessed Russian orca liberating from this shipwreck?? you know, the UNDERWATER shipwreck???

furs. not gold, not jewels, not bottles of vintage liquor... animal furs.

there is a RUSSIAN HARNESS ORCA SMUGGLING SOGGY ROTTING PELTS FROM THE DEEP.

WHY.

despite the logical leaps, i think this is the first truly great entry in the series. well worth a play for the ambiance and the showstopper of an ending. A-tier.

the secret of shadow ranch

an absolute masterclass, i think my favorite of all time.

fun links:

• Jett's review

my thoughts:

off to Arizona! Bess and George's aunt and uncle have invited us out to their farmstead, the eponymous Shadow Ranch. things get off to a bad start immediately - Bess and George's flight has been delayed, and Uncle Ed was bitten by a rattlesnake in the middle of the night! Nancy finds herself alone on the ranch with the three hired hands, all of whom seem to be hiding something. while she investigates the misfortunes around the ranch, a hundred-year-old mystery falls into her lap and begins to unravel as well.

let's start with the setting. y'all, the ranch house is SO CUTE. it's so lovingly detailed, full of trinkets to look at and environmental storytelling to find. from there, you can explore a Southwest gift shop, red rock canyons, and a ghost town, plus an extra end-game location that i really love. i wanted more - not because it was lacking, but because i enjoyed it so much.

but it's the location's history that really shines. between her ranch chores and horseback riding, Nancy stumbles across the story of Dirk Valentine, a 19th century bandit who roamed the lands around Shadow Ranch. though notes and letters, we learn about him, his sweetheart, and her father - the sheriff. these missives are brought to life by some absolutely fabulous voice acting. the way the present and past mysteries interlink and unravel is a huge part of why this game is my favorite.

the game has a three-day structure that progresses once you've finished certain tasks, much like in The Final Scene. i liked this setup better than the day-night cycles of some of the other games - much more immersive and satisfying.

and the music - so cozy, so quaint. maybe not as much of a banger as Deception Island's soundtrack but it's in the top three for sure.

i'm having trouble expressing how much this game makes me happy. just play it, i highly recommend it. S-tier!

curse of blackmoor manor

this was one of the first spooky installment and it definitely gave me the creeps as a kid.

secret of the old clock

very solid. i loved driving around in the little top-down minigame, delivering errands. this one is based on the first four OG books so the story is actually quite fleshed out.

last train to blue moon canyon

a favorite. excellent setting and characters, plus very good puzzles.

danger by design

it's been a while, but this one doesn't stand out in the lineup. it's solid though, and i'll replay it soon.

the creature of kapu cave

boo, tomato tomato. this one is so short, and half the length it does offer is just a bunch of clicking down static paths on your way to and from like, four locations. as a kid i loved shell-hunting on the beach to make necklaces but as an adult the gameplay was pretty bleak.

the white wolf of icicle creek

solid, but not standout.

legend of the crystal skull

a formative experience! delightfully creepy, with Dutch angles and moody lighting and New Orleans gothic. absolutely love the puzzles in this one.

the phantom of venice

not the best in the lineup, but it gets points for sheer shenanigans.

the haunting of castle malloy

been a long time since i played this, though i do remember the basic story arc because it's, uh... a doozy.

ransom of the seven ships

the one with questionable brownface! i can't remember how this one hit on the whole, though i remember it definitely had some fun parts.

warnings at waverly academy

the dark academia installment! it's been a long time so i'll need to replay it.

trail of the twister

worth playing but not a favorite. it's perfectly fine but it's just fine.

secrets can kill remastered

need to play!

shadow at the water's edge

scared the shit out of me and introduced me to nonograms for the first time! i remember the minigames being pretty good.

the captive curse

on the list.

alibi in ashes

on the list.

tomb of the lost queen

on the list.

the deadly device

meh. short, uninspiring, but a little better than Kapu Cave.

ghost of thornton hall

on the list.

the silent spy

on the list.

the shattered medallion

on the list.

labyrinth of lies

on the list.

sea of darkness

i played this over the pandemic, i think, and it was okay. on the short side and not extremely memorable.

midnight in salem

on the list.

mystery of the seven keys

on the list.