Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion

This time around Nancy Drew is staying at a Victorian-style mansion in San Francisco, helping the owners restore it so that it can be turned into a Bed and Breakfast. Rose, one of the owners, tells Nancy that there are a lot of mysterious accidents occurring, impeding their progress. Is it a ghost, as her New Age enthusiast partner Abby claims? Or is Charlie, their handyman, just a screw-up? As usual, Nancy does some snooping to get to the bottom of it all.

This adventure game is structured much like that last one (Stay Tuned for Danger), though this time we stay inside a single building instead of moving about town. There are four different characters (read: suspects) inside the mansion to talk to and question, and more characters can be called up via telephone. There is also a lot of item collection, and creative application of those items in the traditional adventure game fashion--what possible use could an old iron be in a restored Victorian mansion?

Encouragingly, a new timing element has been added. A game clock pushes the time along (it moves faster than real time). Certain characters appear in locations during set times. Often, a location cannot be fully explored with that person present, so Nancy must appear and reappear at odd times of the day in order to get all the info she needs. Nancy carries a watch she can consult, and there is an alarm clock in Nancy's bedroom that can be used to advance to particular times. This system is not nearly as sophisticated as the real time elements of The Last Express or the more recent Gabriel Knight 3, but it does add more depth to the gameplay. Now instead of just talking and applying items to hotspots, the game has dilemmas based on getting to the right place at the right time.

As before, there are "fatal" moves, though not many. That is, the player can make a move that will cause Nancy to mess up her case and end the game. Fortunately, there is a "Second Chance" option in the menu that will take you to a spot just before you made your mistake. I like this because I don't mind dying or "losing" in adventure games, as long as I don't do so constantly or have to retrace 20 minutes of gameplay. I think this Second Chance system is a good way to instill a sense of danger, zap the player for doing something foolish, and yet not make the game frustrating.

I have only three complaints about the game: it does have a few too many twiddleware puzzles in place of logical, believable problems. Yep, that means a sliding tile puzzle. There's also laptop that can be broken into by completing a maze game installed on the machine. I don't know about you, but that's not how I log on. There's a stretch right at the end of the game where you're hit with four puzzles in a row, and one, possibly two, can be considered twiddleware. It rather slows the pace down, just when things should be speeding up.

Secondly, you often must re-perform actions if you want to revisit something. For example, there are several keys to unlock things in the game. Unlocking is not permanent. Every time you want to open Nancy's suitcase, for example, you've got to go into your inventory to use her key. There are other instances of this kind of problem. I think it would have been better to just skip the formalities of unlocking once the player has done it once.

Finally, the cursor should have completely separate states for moving and examining things. The cursor is usually a magnifying glass, which turns red if something can be talked to, examined, zoomed in on, picked up, or if you can go in that direction. Many were the times I would click on something, and then travel in a direction rather than zoom in or examine an object.

However, we should talk about improvements, as this game is definitely progress. The addition of timing as a gameplay element, for example. Atmosphere has been turned up a notch too. As you wander around the mansion, you'll see little animated bits (such as a shadow move off in the distance) that are designed to make you think that the mansion is haunted, or that Nancy is being watched. Maybe both.

They've also made more use of the phone system too. Before, you just consulted your friends by phone as a means of getting clues. While you can still do this, there is another character reachable only by phone, and she is almost as important as the four suspects, and needs to be utilized to help solve some puzzles. There's also a tutorial now, which is good for young kids or people who've never tried adventure gaming before.

On the whole there's a lot more game here. The package says about 20 hours of gameplay, which feels about right. I thought the previous two adventures (especially Secrets Can Kill) were a little too light on things to do. The story resolution also works better than the last two, with Nancy taking more direct action to unravel the mysteries of the mansion, and trapping the villain. The resolution isn't pulled out of the air, either. In fact, you'll see it's present right from the beginning of the game, if you're sharp enough to notice.

Her Interactive games get better and more sophisticated as they go along. Although aimed at younger audiences and families, if they keep refining their work it is conceivable that they could produce a more adult game. And by that I don't mean tons of nudity or buckets of gore, but a game with more mature themes and gameplay styles that a more hardcore gamer might enjoy. They probably don't want to stray from their original audience too much, but that's a shame. A few more kicks at the can and we might be referring to them in the same revered tones we used to use for Sierra.

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