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porticoi have been meaning to replay some of the nancy drew games for a while now, but robyn borrowed my disc drive for school and then hid it from both of us, so i've been stymied. happily, they unearthed it last week, just in time for me to decide to make a fun new year's resolution to replay all of the nancy drew games in order. you have probably noticed that it's both not the new year yet and also that this isn't the first game. to the first: i am grieving, and my time-honored grief tradition is computer games. to the second: the first two games are so old that i had to order an external sound card in order to make them work. there's nothing wrong with my current sound card, the games just don't like it. i feel the same way about lexus drivers, so i don't hold it against them. anyway, here we are with game number 3: message in a haunted mansion.
i have played this game many, many times. it's been out since 2000, and i played it first then or soon after. there was also a gameboy advance release in 2001, which my brother gave me at some point, so i played it on that, too. it's been a long time now, but i found i still had most of the game memorized, accidentally taking some actions before the game could point me to them. it took me around 3 hours to play the whole game this time, but, again, i didn't spend any of that putzing about trying to find the next hint. i played it so fast that the game didn't even deliver the titular message to me until i was about to confront the culprit. that said, i still had a blast revisiting it.
one of the things i love best about these games is the way the interiors look. there's something so lush and inviting about them. and this game in particular introduced me to two artists who i still love today: Alfons Mucha and Edmund Dulac. Mucha's Zodiac and Dulac's Firebird both appear in the game, and they captured me. this is far from my favourite nancy drew game, but it's definitely one i hold close.
on to the game. nancy is an amateur detective, so she gets all of her cases through family and friends. this one begins with hannah gruen, the drews' housekeeper and nancy's surrogate mother/grandmother (newer adaptations have changed hannah into carson drew's sister or erased her entirely, but as someone who grew up on the books i do appreciate that hannah is present in these games in her original form) sending nancy off to San Francisco to help a friend of hers who is restoring a grand victorian mansion in the hopes of converting it into a B&B. the story opens and ends with nancy writing a letter to her dear friend bess about what has brought her to SF, and how the case is resolved. the letter is overlaid with ticket stubs and postcards to illustrate the journey. these are all details i love very much. it's also very funny to me that nancy has hared off to california without a word to her closest friends bess & george, who famously live down the street from her.
the mansion has been beset with mysterious accidents, which naturally nancy is going to investigate. hannah's friend rose seems to genuinely believe nancy is only there to knock down walls, but she also doesn't follow up with her. this is convenient, because nancy does three chores over the course of the game, which are to fix some inlay on the dining room floor, scrape a little bit of paint off of a hallway ceiling, and fix a dumbwaiter (nancy ties an iron to the frayed end of the dumbwaiter's rope--not much of a fix).
the cast is a small one. along with rose, there's abby (a friend who added her life savings to rose's in order for them to afford the house), charlie (a young inexperienced handyman with a mysterious living situation), and louis (an antique dealer who showed up one day to offer his services in exchange for an opportunity to browse the house's library). louis has taken to treating the library like an office, which rose is cool with because he got her some deals on furniture? he has a very punchable face.
abby believes the house is haunted but not in a way that is based in reality but just in a ooOoooO there are SHADOWS and WHISPERS way. and there are so many primary source documents just lying around this place, it's WILD. the source material is there! abby spends 21 hours of every single day in her bedroom and for WHAT. anyway she's exactly the sort of new age woo-woo lesbian that teen door went nuts over. adult door is less swayed (go to a city archives, girl!!), but you gotta give her credit for reviving the spiritualist profession.
charlie is a dumb baby who is bad at lying. you don't need to see him it's fine. the voice acting in this game is. rough. nancy's voice actress went on to voice her very capably in some 30 additional games, but some of her line reads here are wild. i'm pretty sure that charlie's vo will later play (has already played? will report back) ned. several people do seem to just be people the programmers knew maybe. however, if you're in it for the nostalgia, this all might just make you fond.
the culprit reveal is good, and the trick to getting away from them is also genuinely clever, even when you're panicking (as i always did at the end of these games). the moral of the story is to hire a professional researcher.
i have played this game many, many times. it's been out since 2000, and i played it first then or soon after. there was also a gameboy advance release in 2001, which my brother gave me at some point, so i played it on that, too. it's been a long time now, but i found i still had most of the game memorized, accidentally taking some actions before the game could point me to them. it took me around 3 hours to play the whole game this time, but, again, i didn't spend any of that putzing about trying to find the next hint. i played it so fast that the game didn't even deliver the titular message to me until i was about to confront the culprit. that said, i still had a blast revisiting it.
one of the things i love best about these games is the way the interiors look. there's something so lush and inviting about them. and this game in particular introduced me to two artists who i still love today: Alfons Mucha and Edmund Dulac. Mucha's Zodiac and Dulac's Firebird both appear in the game, and they captured me. this is far from my favourite nancy drew game, but it's definitely one i hold close.
on to the game. nancy is an amateur detective, so she gets all of her cases through family and friends. this one begins with hannah gruen, the drews' housekeeper and nancy's surrogate mother/grandmother (newer adaptations have changed hannah into carson drew's sister or erased her entirely, but as someone who grew up on the books i do appreciate that hannah is present in these games in her original form) sending nancy off to San Francisco to help a friend of hers who is restoring a grand victorian mansion in the hopes of converting it into a B&B. the story opens and ends with nancy writing a letter to her dear friend bess about what has brought her to SF, and how the case is resolved. the letter is overlaid with ticket stubs and postcards to illustrate the journey. these are all details i love very much. it's also very funny to me that nancy has hared off to california without a word to her closest friends bess & george, who famously live down the street from her.
the mansion has been beset with mysterious accidents, which naturally nancy is going to investigate. hannah's friend rose seems to genuinely believe nancy is only there to knock down walls, but she also doesn't follow up with her. this is convenient, because nancy does three chores over the course of the game, which are to fix some inlay on the dining room floor, scrape a little bit of paint off of a hallway ceiling, and fix a dumbwaiter (nancy ties an iron to the frayed end of the dumbwaiter's rope--not much of a fix).
the cast is a small one. along with rose, there's abby (a friend who added her life savings to rose's in order for them to afford the house), charlie (a young inexperienced handyman with a mysterious living situation), and louis (an antique dealer who showed up one day to offer his services in exchange for an opportunity to browse the house's library). louis has taken to treating the library like an office, which rose is cool with because he got her some deals on furniture? he has a very punchable face.
abby believes the house is haunted but not in a way that is based in reality but just in a ooOoooO there are SHADOWS and WHISPERS way. and there are so many primary source documents just lying around this place, it's WILD. the source material is there! abby spends 21 hours of every single day in her bedroom and for WHAT. anyway she's exactly the sort of new age woo-woo lesbian that teen door went nuts over. adult door is less swayed (go to a city archives, girl!!), but you gotta give her credit for reviving the spiritualist profession.
charlie is a dumb baby who is bad at lying. you don't need to see him it's fine. the voice acting in this game is. rough. nancy's voice actress went on to voice her very capably in some 30 additional games, but some of her line reads here are wild. i'm pretty sure that charlie's vo will later play (has already played? will report back) ned. several people do seem to just be people the programmers knew maybe. however, if you're in it for the nostalgia, this all might just make you fond.
the culprit reveal is good, and the trick to getting away from them is also genuinely clever, even when you're panicking (as i always did at the end of these games). the moral of the story is to hire a professional researcher.