nancy drew 4: treasure in a royal tower
Dec. 29th, 2023 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porticoat the rate i'm playing these i may get through all of them before the new sound card arrives to let me play games 1-2. ah, well.
treasure in the royal tower (2001) falls into the other category of nancy drew story/game: Nancy is Just Trying to Take a Vacation. like jessica fletcher, however, it is never to be. which is all to the good, i think, because like a herding dog nancy drew needs to be employed at all times. i think if she actually tried to relax while snowed in at this hotel she would have lost it. fortunately for all of us, she observes (after writing her usual letter--this time to george--on personalized stationery catching us all up on the state of things) that her radiator is clanking and goes down to reception to see about getting it fixed. the hotel manager, dexter, is so swamped with things that he immediately starts assigning nancy tasks to do in return for him fixing her radiator maybe, someday. nancy, Dog with a Job, leaps at the opportunity. (i somehow missed the opportunity to give the letter to dexter to be sent during this conversation and subsequently carried it through the rest of the game. sorry george.)
nancy is in wisconsin staying in a hotel in a castle that a rich guy built in the 1920s. personally and problematically, i love wild houses built by rich guys in the 1920s so already i am in. unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the plot of the game the mystery resolves less around the 1920s than an actual 18th century french tower the rich guy imported and incorporated into the castle on account of marie antoinette used to hang out there. there's also an 18th century library, owned by a french revolutionary who definitely hated marie antoinette also in the house. sure! the revolutionary's name was LE BŒUF (the beef), which isn't relevant it's just funny. anyway someone vandalized the library the night before nancy arrived and naturally she's determined to get in and see why, so we're off to the races.
this game is less lush than some NDs, but still very pretty. the castle is large, so you spend a lot of time walking down hallways, up and down stairs, and taking the (antique!) elevator. all the room doors look the same, but the game has thoughtfully placed a different piece of art across from each door, so if you remember to look for those, it's really not confusing. one of the characters observes that you'd never know the castle was built in the 1920s, it's all "soooooo 18th C," which is extremely incorrect but also she wrote a whole book about marie antoinette and has to ask you the date of the storming of the bastille, so.
characters! there's dexter (seen above), who's a lovely old curmudgeon. he starts off mean as hell but as soon as you do one chore for him he is calling you "kiddo" and drafting adoption papers in your names. his history with the house is the game's b plot, and honestly i love it. i'll let dexter adopt me if nancy won't.
there's jacques, a former olympian with the silliest little goatee who disgraced himself at the previous games and is devoted to redeeming himself and also to france. the man loooooves france. when you accuse him of having vandalized the library he blankly asks you why would he do that? the books are in french. he has come to wisconsin because his petit chou is american and goes to school in madison. and that's definitely the only reason he's here, nothing to do with the french national treasure reportedly forgotten in an attic.
next, there's lisa, a photojournalist who immediately lies to you for no reason. you accidentally (genuinely!) open her ski locker and discover her camera bag (with probably very expensive camera inside--surely not the safest place for it) at which point naturally nancy snoops and finds a letter written to lisa entirely in spanish, a language she had moments ago assured you pointedly and for no reason that she couldn't speak. why? who can say. lisa sucks.
finally, the goat: beatrice hotchkiss, a woman so determined to clear marie antoinette's name she hasn't bothered to learn anything about her aside from her star sign (scorpio, apparently). beatrice rules. she won't speak to you during the daytime except through her door, holds "office hours" in the lobby from 3-6 am everyday, has evidently had something (she won't say what) stolen from her room but still just gives her room key to you, a stranger, to look through her research (""research""), and one night orders 50 chicken drumsticks from room service for dinner. fantastic.
some fun puzzles in this one, only one of which was a slider (hiss). the emotional stuff really works for me, and the characters are fun. the climax is less scary than some, and although the way to outwit the culprit seems very obvious now, i doubt it did when i first played it (especially as i was 16 at the time). my biggest takeaway from this one is that there is apparently a robust enough community of teen girl detectives to support a print magazine. the mind trembles
treasure in the royal tower (2001) falls into the other category of nancy drew story/game: Nancy is Just Trying to Take a Vacation. like jessica fletcher, however, it is never to be. which is all to the good, i think, because like a herding dog nancy drew needs to be employed at all times. i think if she actually tried to relax while snowed in at this hotel she would have lost it. fortunately for all of us, she observes (after writing her usual letter--this time to george--on personalized stationery catching us all up on the state of things) that her radiator is clanking and goes down to reception to see about getting it fixed. the hotel manager, dexter, is so swamped with things that he immediately starts assigning nancy tasks to do in return for him fixing her radiator maybe, someday. nancy, Dog with a Job, leaps at the opportunity. (i somehow missed the opportunity to give the letter to dexter to be sent during this conversation and subsequently carried it through the rest of the game. sorry george.)
nancy is in wisconsin staying in a hotel in a castle that a rich guy built in the 1920s. personally and problematically, i love wild houses built by rich guys in the 1920s so already i am in. unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the plot of the game the mystery resolves less around the 1920s than an actual 18th century french tower the rich guy imported and incorporated into the castle on account of marie antoinette used to hang out there. there's also an 18th century library, owned by a french revolutionary who definitely hated marie antoinette also in the house. sure! the revolutionary's name was LE BŒUF (the beef), which isn't relevant it's just funny. anyway someone vandalized the library the night before nancy arrived and naturally she's determined to get in and see why, so we're off to the races.
this game is less lush than some NDs, but still very pretty. the castle is large, so you spend a lot of time walking down hallways, up and down stairs, and taking the (antique!) elevator. all the room doors look the same, but the game has thoughtfully placed a different piece of art across from each door, so if you remember to look for those, it's really not confusing. one of the characters observes that you'd never know the castle was built in the 1920s, it's all "soooooo 18th C," which is extremely incorrect but also she wrote a whole book about marie antoinette and has to ask you the date of the storming of the bastille, so.
characters! there's dexter (seen above), who's a lovely old curmudgeon. he starts off mean as hell but as soon as you do one chore for him he is calling you "kiddo" and drafting adoption papers in your names. his history with the house is the game's b plot, and honestly i love it. i'll let dexter adopt me if nancy won't.
there's jacques, a former olympian with the silliest little goatee who disgraced himself at the previous games and is devoted to redeeming himself and also to france. the man loooooves france. when you accuse him of having vandalized the library he blankly asks you why would he do that? the books are in french. he has come to wisconsin because his petit chou is american and goes to school in madison. and that's definitely the only reason he's here, nothing to do with the french national treasure reportedly forgotten in an attic.
next, there's lisa, a photojournalist who immediately lies to you for no reason. you accidentally (genuinely!) open her ski locker and discover her camera bag (with probably very expensive camera inside--surely not the safest place for it) at which point naturally nancy snoops and finds a letter written to lisa entirely in spanish, a language she had moments ago assured you pointedly and for no reason that she couldn't speak. why? who can say. lisa sucks.
finally, the goat: beatrice hotchkiss, a woman so determined to clear marie antoinette's name she hasn't bothered to learn anything about her aside from her star sign (scorpio, apparently). beatrice rules. she won't speak to you during the daytime except through her door, holds "office hours" in the lobby from 3-6 am everyday, has evidently had something (she won't say what) stolen from her room but still just gives her room key to you, a stranger, to look through her research (""research""), and one night orders 50 chicken drumsticks from room service for dinner. fantastic.
some fun puzzles in this one, only one of which was a slider (hiss). the emotional stuff really works for me, and the characters are fun. the climax is less scary than some, and although the way to outwit the culprit seems very obvious now, i doubt it did when i first played it (especially as i was 16 at the time). my biggest takeaway from this one is that there is apparently a robust enough community of teen girl detectives to support a print magazine. the mind trembles
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Date: 2023-12-30 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-02 03:14 pm (UTC)