portico | nancy drew 9: danger on deception island

alright gear up folks, this one is my favourite nancy drew. i've played it roughly 3 million times.

the reasons this game rules are many: takes place on the san juan islands off the coast of washington state (a place my family visited when i was 13 and which left an indelible impression on me), there's a WHALE and a WHALE MUSEUM, nancy goes kayaking and eats endless bowls of clam chowder, there's a hidden passageway and cairns and a lighthouse and the best of her interactive's old ladies. i love it.

this is a vacation case. nancy is in snake horse harbor on deception island (a thinly veiled friday harbor--they even use photos of the ferry dock there) visiting katie firestone (upper left) a friend of george's. she's planning on staying with katie on her boat, but when they arrive they discover that the boat has been wrecked and it currently unusable. katie gives whalewatching tours, so the boat is her livelihood, but also she's been deputized by the uh. fisheries? service?? to monitor an orphaned orca who has appeared in the harbor recently. that orca is the crux of the dispute that nancy finds herself walking into, as each resident of snake horse harbor has a different opinion about what should be done. continuing clockwise from katie, there's holt scotto, who is only concerned with the needs of the fisherman, who currently have to take the long way around the island to avoid getting close to the orca; jenna deblin, who runs the local cafe, thinks the orca should be returned to her pod; and andy jason, owner and operator of "whale world" museum and whalewatching tours, thinks the orca should be left alone (so he can charge folks to see it).

nancy starts stumbling across messages in bottles, which prove to be left by hilda swenson, former resident (and mayor) of snake horse harbor who (according to everyone) went nuts after her husband died and now lives alone on a small nearby island. this game is fun in part because nancy is hilda's sidekick. she's been watching the town from her island and realized that something fishy is going on, something which she feels in part responsible for. so she's left puzzles and notes in the hope that someone clever would find them and she would have feet on the ground in snake horse again. an overly convoluted solution to the problem, perhaps, but also VERY fun. and you know nancy. loves to be a dog with a job. part of hilda's appeal is that she used to be a screenwriter so the game has given her that wonderful fake mid-atlantic accent. it's like solving a mystery with katharine hepburn.

new changes in this game include the ability to search on your computer (although you still can't receive email). deception island has its own web portal (ah, 2003), so nancy just opens up the internet and searches right from that page. it's handy, since holt gives you a "seamanship quiz" which you have to complete before he'll lend you a gps. it includes identifying knots. translating morse code, and bringing him a male dungeness crab. normal tourist stuff! the game also has you translating nautical flags and the nato phonetic alphabet, going clamming and geocaching, and building sandcastles (if you want). all in all, a lot of very satisfying tasks.

the game has the most active endgame to date (nancy has to sneak aboard a ship and get below), the culprit is satisfying and just a little scary, and the way to outsmart them is fun. 10/10, will replay 3 million more times probably. anyway the moral of the story is never underestimate a bored old lady' ability to foil your evil plots.

edit: i keep forgetting to note that there's usually a subplot or two involved with the people you can call. in this game, it's bess & george and the hardy boys. on b&g's end, bess has become a devotee of a tv chef and is trying to make a roux. george is mocking her. the hardy boys have found a dog and are waiting for their owner to come retrieve her. she's a great dane called goldie and they have shut her up in their garage, which seems mean. she agrees and barks a lot while they're on the phone with nancy. oh, also nancy's dad has taken a day off and decided to build a shelf. hannah, the drews' housekeeper, is hiding and sending nancy desperate emails. i like the color these things add to the games!