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porticoif white wolf is the nancy game that i keep replaying in spite of myself, then crystal skull is one that i almost never replay for no good reason.
curse of blackmoor manor may be the gothic nancy drew game, but this is for sure the GOTH nancy drew game. set in new orleans and taking place entirely in one stormy evening, crystal skull has it all: creepy cemetery, a robert smith lookalike, a white lady practicing hoodoo, an impressively crooked house, like 30 glass eyes...great time.
nancy has traveled to new orleans with bess (yes, bess is here! no, you don't get to see her) for a little vacation. her bf ned asked her to check in on a friend of his from college, henry bolet, who had recently lost his only living relative. nancy, responsible lass that she is, goes immediately to his house and leaves bess on her own to shop. when nancy arrives at the bolet house, she encounters a person dressed as a skeleton who knocks her out (with a powder of some kind--nancy escapes this game without a concussion), and when she comes to she tells henry bolet and his late great-uncle's housekeeper that she'd like to stick around and figure out who that skeleton guy was. foolishly, they say it's fine and then they've got hyperfixated detective drew in their house for the rest of the night.
the cast of the game is (clockwise from upper left): Renee Amande, the late Bruno Bolet's live-in housekeeper and devoted hoodoo practitioner; henry bolet, extremely 2007 goth; lamont warrick, owner of zekes, the curio shop across from nancy and bess's hotel; and gilbert buford, late bruno's doctor and best friend. i'll say this for this game: who ever named the characters did a bang-up job. those are extremely american deep south/louisiana names right there. also going in knowing that henry is a friend of ned's and then actually meeting henry is so funny. nancy calls ned like "is he REALLY your friend" and ned confesses that they're just in a class together, which is cowardly imo. ned being henry's friend would be the first truly interesting thing about ned! let ned be an affable guy who befriends weirdos!
speaking of weirdos: bruno bolet. bruno is a yet another of her interactive's eccentric puzzle-makers, except it's abundantly clear that he did it all first and foremost for his own enjoyment. his house is full of things which other people find off-putting: glass eyes (he wore one and apparently liked having the ability to mix it up with creepy and inhuman options), teeth (he was a dentist), models (he built a scale model of the graveyard he was caretaker of for many years), and, of course, the graveyard itself (he incorporated fake graves into the puzzles--people who like making up punny names for cardboard tombstones at halloween will LOVE this game). at the last minute (literally) he seems to have decided that the puzzles should be for henry to solve in order to find the skull, but the half-assedness of that versus the rest of his puzzles reveals it for the afterthought it was. henry is comforted by the thought that bruno maybe cared about him after all, which is nice for him.
anyway i'm truly burying the lede here because the really important aspect of this game is (wrestling announcer voice): THE R-R-RETURN OF B-B-B-BEATRICE HOTCHKISSSSSSSS
(sorry to the youtuber i stole this image from. it's just so good)
that's right pals, we finally get to catch up with our lady of midnight scholarship, who has achieved the airport pop history book author career she richly deserves. she's the author of a book on the crystal skulls (before the indiana jones movie, even--we stan a prescient queen), so naturally nancy gives her a call about the skull bruno supposedly owned. bruno didn't seem to have particularly believed the legends about the skulls (immortality wisdom etc), like many things he just thought they were cool. i missed u professor hotchkiss.
the one thing i did remember about this game, aside from iggy the iguana and his little outfits, was that bess is in it, which was SUPER exciting at the time. you never see her, but the game does for her what they did for the hardy boys in kapu cave--gives her half the suspects to interview and a few puzzles of her own. like kapu, you switch between nancy and bess by calling them on the phone, only instead of nancy being trapped elsewhere by circumstances, she is just refusing to leave henry bolet's house out of sheer stubbornness. so, an extremely reluctant bess is pulled in to cause targeted chaos for poor lamont and gilbert. she can also eat as much gumbo as she wants from "granny punkin's" food truck. i had a lot more fun with this game's version of the detective hand-off, because bess isn't just boy nancy drew--she's a very different character, and the game uses that to good effect.
anyways! a fun game that i played on a stormy night. the next time i think about replaying the white wolf of icicle creek, i'll replay this one instead. the moral, of course, is never invite nancy drew into your home.
curse of blackmoor manor may be the gothic nancy drew game, but this is for sure the GOTH nancy drew game. set in new orleans and taking place entirely in one stormy evening, crystal skull has it all: creepy cemetery, a robert smith lookalike, a white lady practicing hoodoo, an impressively crooked house, like 30 glass eyes...great time.
nancy has traveled to new orleans with bess (yes, bess is here! no, you don't get to see her) for a little vacation. her bf ned asked her to check in on a friend of his from college, henry bolet, who had recently lost his only living relative. nancy, responsible lass that she is, goes immediately to his house and leaves bess on her own to shop. when nancy arrives at the bolet house, she encounters a person dressed as a skeleton who knocks her out (with a powder of some kind--nancy escapes this game without a concussion), and when she comes to she tells henry bolet and his late great-uncle's housekeeper that she'd like to stick around and figure out who that skeleton guy was. foolishly, they say it's fine and then they've got hyperfixated detective drew in their house for the rest of the night.
the cast of the game is (clockwise from upper left): Renee Amande, the late Bruno Bolet's live-in housekeeper and devoted hoodoo practitioner; henry bolet, extremely 2007 goth; lamont warrick, owner of zekes, the curio shop across from nancy and bess's hotel; and gilbert buford, late bruno's doctor and best friend. i'll say this for this game: who ever named the characters did a bang-up job. those are extremely american deep south/louisiana names right there. also going in knowing that henry is a friend of ned's and then actually meeting henry is so funny. nancy calls ned like "is he REALLY your friend" and ned confesses that they're just in a class together, which is cowardly imo. ned being henry's friend would be the first truly interesting thing about ned! let ned be an affable guy who befriends weirdos!
speaking of weirdos: bruno bolet. bruno is a yet another of her interactive's eccentric puzzle-makers, except it's abundantly clear that he did it all first and foremost for his own enjoyment. his house is full of things which other people find off-putting: glass eyes (he wore one and apparently liked having the ability to mix it up with creepy and inhuman options), teeth (he was a dentist), models (he built a scale model of the graveyard he was caretaker of for many years), and, of course, the graveyard itself (he incorporated fake graves into the puzzles--people who like making up punny names for cardboard tombstones at halloween will LOVE this game). at the last minute (literally) he seems to have decided that the puzzles should be for henry to solve in order to find the skull, but the half-assedness of that versus the rest of his puzzles reveals it for the afterthought it was. henry is comforted by the thought that bruno maybe cared about him after all, which is nice for him.
anyway i'm truly burying the lede here because the really important aspect of this game is (wrestling announcer voice): THE R-R-RETURN OF B-B-B-BEATRICE HOTCHKISSSSSSSS
(sorry to the youtuber i stole this image from. it's just so good)
that's right pals, we finally get to catch up with our lady of midnight scholarship, who has achieved the airport pop history book author career she richly deserves. she's the author of a book on the crystal skulls (before the indiana jones movie, even--we stan a prescient queen), so naturally nancy gives her a call about the skull bruno supposedly owned. bruno didn't seem to have particularly believed the legends about the skulls (immortality wisdom etc), like many things he just thought they were cool. i missed u professor hotchkiss.
the one thing i did remember about this game, aside from iggy the iguana and his little outfits, was that bess is in it, which was SUPER exciting at the time. you never see her, but the game does for her what they did for the hardy boys in kapu cave--gives her half the suspects to interview and a few puzzles of her own. like kapu, you switch between nancy and bess by calling them on the phone, only instead of nancy being trapped elsewhere by circumstances, she is just refusing to leave henry bolet's house out of sheer stubbornness. so, an extremely reluctant bess is pulled in to cause targeted chaos for poor lamont and gilbert. she can also eat as much gumbo as she wants from "granny punkin's" food truck. i had a lot more fun with this game's version of the detective hand-off, because bess isn't just boy nancy drew--she's a very different character, and the game uses that to good effect.
anyways! a fun game that i played on a stormy night. the next time i think about replaying the white wolf of icicle creek, i'll replay this one instead. the moral, of course, is never invite nancy drew into your home.
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Date: 2024-02-16 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-19 09:57 pm (UTC)