The suspects are simply monotonous and most of them aren’t even contactable for half the game. Leading on from this, the puzzles are just way too easy, barring one puzzle in the sewers which you’ll most likely need a walkthrough to complete. It’s just hard to be really immersed when suspects are blurting out vital clues, or Nancy’s ‘high-tech’ equipment to spy on a suspect turns out to be a pair of binoculars. But, it’s all very silly at the same time – even for a Nancy Drew game.
The ‘spy’ elements are definitely the highlight of this game: Nancy gets to pick locks with her hairpins, feed pigeons tracking devices and steal a diamond wearing a cat suit from a seedy dance club. I’ve always loved a good mystery in Italy, especially one which has Nancy teaming up with the Italian-equivalent of the CIA to track down a jewellery thief, so I wasn’t expecting this game to be as dull as it is. For that, this game is certainly worth a play. It’s not Her Interactive’s best attempt but there were various moments throughout this game where I couldn’t help smiling I can only imagine how revolutionary this game would have seemed for players after Secrets Can Kill and Stay Tuned for Danger. Still, Secret in a Haunted Mansion is really the proper beginning of the Nancy Drew series: it’s the first game with actual puzzles (rather than having lots of random messages or clues lying around for Nancy to find) and to really utilise its location by giving it a history that Nancy has to uncover in order to solve the mystery. Nevertheless, the hauntings are probably the highlight in a game where the characters are awfully bland and the puzzles can be solved with mere guesswork. Whilst startling the first time, they lose their appeal after the hundredth-odd incident, especially when the game makes no mystery of the fact that all these hauntings are being staged. Most of them are almost laughable, with random lights flickering and low-pitched voices saying ‘I can see you’. There are unquestionably ‘hauntings’ in this game yet, don’t expect any of them to be terrifying. The mystery, whether an old Victorian mansion pending renovation is haunted, reminded me a bit of Shadow at Water’s Edge so I was expecting a tense, frightening and exciting game with some terrifying hauntings. I suspect I would have appreciated this game a little more when I was a little younger. Nevertheless, I hope this list proves useful. Subsequently, this list definitely shows my personal biases more than in my previous post.
The only means I’ve had to distinguish between them is their number of outstanding elements/moments and the likelihood that I’d play them again/recommend them to a friend. Most of them are fair Nancy Drew games that are worthy of a playthrough. The games in this post have been, by far, the most difficult to rank.
Nancy drew game list series#
For those who haven’t read my previous post, I’m currently trying to rank all the Nancy Drew games in the series that I have a played this is the second of three parts.
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