nancy drew 10: the secret of shadow ranch
Jan. 21st, 2024 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porticodeception island may be my fave nancy, but this next stretch are all close seconds. i've replayed them all a LOT and they're all good.
the secret of shadow ranch is another vacation mystery, and it all starts before nancy even arrives. she has been invited to stay with bess and george's aunt and uncle (periodic reminded that bess and george are cousins), the rawlings, who live on a small ranch in arizona. they bought it 3 months earlier, after selling their successful dress shop. nancy was supposed to arrive at the same time as bess and george, albeit on different flights, but their plane was diverted due to a mechanical issue so nancy arrives alone AND to the news that Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet are in the hospital because Ed was bitten by a rattlesnake that found its way into their bedroom the night before. at the same time, a glowing phantom horse showed up! lots happening to occupy nancy, who is all alone on the ranch belonging to these people she's never met with only their hired hands for company. totally normal vacation stuff.
the hands are, clockwise from upper left, bashful dave gregory (foreman), reticent tex britten (wrangler), and gregarious shorty thurmond (cook). there's also mary yazzi, an artist who has a little gift shop on the edge of the ranch property. nancy quickly begins to suspect that the person behind the snake (and other "accidents" which occur around the farm) is trying to chase the rawlings off the property. naturally, she's determined to figure out why.
nancy gets to do a lot of fun stuff in this game. she rides, she lassos, explores cliff dwellings and a ghost town. she also gets to do CHORES. i don't know what it is about it, but the fact that the ranch hands immediately deputize nancy and give her a share of the chores to do is so fun to me. everyday, she gathers the ripe vegetables from the garden (nancy dutifully searches--on her phone now!--what ripe vegetables look like) and collects the eggs from the hen house. one of the hens is mean as hell, so sometimes she has to make a few attempts to get all the eggs. each day there's also an extra chore--one day, nancy has to build a fire (which involves chopping wood and gathering kindling, of course), the next she is asked to bake a cake for tex's birthday (tragically the rawlings' kitchen only has a 1 pint and a 1/3 cup measuring cups, and a 1 teaspoon, so nancy has to do a lot of math to make the recipe work. i love how simple a way to introduce puzzles into the game this is, without feeling tedious.
the crux of this game is finding a treasure that an outlaw hid for his lady love well over a century before. the outlaw, dirk valentine, set up all his puzzles and hints, and then was arrested and hanged. his lady, frances humber, daughter of the sheriff who hanged dirk and resident of shadow ranch, was so distressed by his death than she went east and never came back. this game has a great deal of faith in the permanence of objects (and paper!), so naturally nancy is able to follow the hints without too much difficulty. she does end up calling in one assistant--a romance novelist.
the first time i played this game i was thrilled at the acknowledgement of historical romance novelists as skilled researchers. charleena purcell is so thorough that nancy is able to call on her for information like, say, what brand of crackers would have been popular in the ghost town. in return, all charleena wants to know is everything nancy finds out about dirk valentine's treasure--she's determined to write a book about him and frances (and does, you find out, when she appears as a suspect in a later game. she's a real jerk irl. but very helpful over the phone). there's also a modern-day monague-and-capulets romance between mary and one of the hands, which is very sweet.
this is a great game! according to HI's website, it's the second most popular nancy drew game, and i believe that. just a really great combination of elements and pacing for a good time. there is one potentially tedious bit--there's a thing you need to do using a very old game machine in the ghost town which requires a specific scrip, or token. fortunately for nancy (100+ years late to the party), mary has a little game machine in her shop which gives those tokens as prizes. i've played this game so many times now that i'm in the habit of earning one or two of those tokens every time i stop into mary's during the game, so by the time i get to the machine in the ghost town (which operates almost entirely on luck), i have a good stockpile. in past replays, i've run through that stockpile and have had to get more. this time, i won on my first try, so the time spent gaining tokens was a waste. definitely irritating when the game goes against you.
the biggest changes in this game are the cell phone upgrade and the screen layout. no longer confined to roughly half of the game screen, now nancy's view nearly fills the whole thing. the objects now pop up and have to be Xed out of, which was more irritating than i remembered, but mostly was something i quickly became accustomed to. also her charming little analog watch has left the building. nancy drew, in the 21st century at long last. anyway: moral. uh. following the plucky girl detective to treasure and hoping she does all the hard work for you only works if you don't reveal yourself at the last minute to gloat about it. smdh
the secret of shadow ranch is another vacation mystery, and it all starts before nancy even arrives. she has been invited to stay with bess and george's aunt and uncle (periodic reminded that bess and george are cousins), the rawlings, who live on a small ranch in arizona. they bought it 3 months earlier, after selling their successful dress shop. nancy was supposed to arrive at the same time as bess and george, albeit on different flights, but their plane was diverted due to a mechanical issue so nancy arrives alone AND to the news that Uncle Ed and Aunt Bet are in the hospital because Ed was bitten by a rattlesnake that found its way into their bedroom the night before. at the same time, a glowing phantom horse showed up! lots happening to occupy nancy, who is all alone on the ranch belonging to these people she's never met with only their hired hands for company. totally normal vacation stuff.
the hands are, clockwise from upper left, bashful dave gregory (foreman), reticent tex britten (wrangler), and gregarious shorty thurmond (cook). there's also mary yazzi, an artist who has a little gift shop on the edge of the ranch property. nancy quickly begins to suspect that the person behind the snake (and other "accidents" which occur around the farm) is trying to chase the rawlings off the property. naturally, she's determined to figure out why.
nancy gets to do a lot of fun stuff in this game. she rides, she lassos, explores cliff dwellings and a ghost town. she also gets to do CHORES. i don't know what it is about it, but the fact that the ranch hands immediately deputize nancy and give her a share of the chores to do is so fun to me. everyday, she gathers the ripe vegetables from the garden (nancy dutifully searches--on her phone now!--what ripe vegetables look like) and collects the eggs from the hen house. one of the hens is mean as hell, so sometimes she has to make a few attempts to get all the eggs. each day there's also an extra chore--one day, nancy has to build a fire (which involves chopping wood and gathering kindling, of course), the next she is asked to bake a cake for tex's birthday (tragically the rawlings' kitchen only has a 1 pint and a 1/3 cup measuring cups, and a 1 teaspoon, so nancy has to do a lot of math to make the recipe work. i love how simple a way to introduce puzzles into the game this is, without feeling tedious.
the crux of this game is finding a treasure that an outlaw hid for his lady love well over a century before. the outlaw, dirk valentine, set up all his puzzles and hints, and then was arrested and hanged. his lady, frances humber, daughter of the sheriff who hanged dirk and resident of shadow ranch, was so distressed by his death than she went east and never came back. this game has a great deal of faith in the permanence of objects (and paper!), so naturally nancy is able to follow the hints without too much difficulty. she does end up calling in one assistant--a romance novelist.
the first time i played this game i was thrilled at the acknowledgement of historical romance novelists as skilled researchers. charleena purcell is so thorough that nancy is able to call on her for information like, say, what brand of crackers would have been popular in the ghost town. in return, all charleena wants to know is everything nancy finds out about dirk valentine's treasure--she's determined to write a book about him and frances (and does, you find out, when she appears as a suspect in a later game. she's a real jerk irl. but very helpful over the phone). there's also a modern-day monague-and-capulets romance between mary and one of the hands, which is very sweet.
this is a great game! according to HI's website, it's the second most popular nancy drew game, and i believe that. just a really great combination of elements and pacing for a good time. there is one potentially tedious bit--there's a thing you need to do using a very old game machine in the ghost town which requires a specific scrip, or token. fortunately for nancy (100+ years late to the party), mary has a little game machine in her shop which gives those tokens as prizes. i've played this game so many times now that i'm in the habit of earning one or two of those tokens every time i stop into mary's during the game, so by the time i get to the machine in the ghost town (which operates almost entirely on luck), i have a good stockpile. in past replays, i've run through that stockpile and have had to get more. this time, i won on my first try, so the time spent gaining tokens was a waste. definitely irritating when the game goes against you.
the biggest changes in this game are the cell phone upgrade and the screen layout. no longer confined to roughly half of the game screen, now nancy's view nearly fills the whole thing. the objects now pop up and have to be Xed out of, which was more irritating than i remembered, but mostly was something i quickly became accustomed to. also her charming little analog watch has left the building. nancy drew, in the 21st century at long last. anyway: moral. uh. following the plucky girl detective to treasure and hoping she does all the hard work for you only works if you don't reveal yourself at the last minute to gloat about it. smdh