Things this cover does not tell you: this game is actually 70% about the Prohibition, 20% birdwatching, and only 10% actual ghost dogs. You might be disappointed to hear this, if you’re really into canine spectral activity. Oh, and there’s buried treasure. There’s always buried treasure.
By the way, this post comes after the announcement that Lani Minella will no longer be voicing Nancy Drew. She made a really interesting post on the HER forums about some of the directing choices made for Nancy’s voice. I have to admit, I always kind of side-eyed how unlike a teenage girl Nancy sounded, so it was particularly interesting to read that that was what HER was actually going for. Anyway, shout-out to Lani Minella and all the wacky bird imitations she does in this game. You da best!
I never noticed it before, but now I’m dying at Nancy’s personalized stationary.
“Dear Ned: Remember Sally McDonald?” No, no we don’t, because Sally’s just been invented for this game. We learn that she’s a friend of Nancy’s dad, Carson, and she’s recently bought a house in Moon Lake, PA, home of the titular ghost dogs. The house used to belong to a Prohibition-era gangster named Mickey Malone (no relation to Bugsy), because if you’re superstitious, the best place to set up shop would be in a house belonging to a guy who was involved in crime and probably a smidgen of murder. Nancy’s not superstitious, but she is a little weirded out — we’re trapped at the house, since a tree fell across the road behind us the second we drove up, and also, Sally’s missing. Oh. Well, that sounds like a problem.
So now we’re sitting around wondering what happened to Sally, and writing to Ned. This is the only way we’re going to contact him, since he’s not a phone friend in this game. The Hardy Boys are, though. Make of that what you will.
Once the intro monologue is done, we get a call from Sally. Nothing bad has happened her, she just snapped and left the house — she’s calling on her cell phone, in her car. Have we done away with the car phones already? That’s sad. Sally says she hates to leave us, but she just couldn’t bear staying in that house another night — it’s too creepy! She tells us to get out, too — we can stay with her aunt in Philadelphia, or get a hotel or something, but we shouldn’t be staying in the house while we investigate. Nancy says, “No way! You’ve got me so curious, I wouldn’t leave even if I could!” Right? Someone’s resorting to crime in order to drive Sally out of the house, so clearly the sensible thing to do is to stay there alone. Perhaps this game has incorporated more of the book canon, where Nancy occasionally develops impressive kung fu skills.
Anyway, we tell Sally about the tree and our car, and she tells us to call a place called “Em’s Emporium,” run by the eponymous Em. (Not me, though. Another Em.) And then we should get in her (Sally’s) motorboat and leave, except it’s pitch black out, so how are we going to navigate the lake, Sally? Then she tells us to lock the windows and doors, but there are no locks on any of them, so we can’t do that, either. Jesus Christ, Sally. For someone so concerned for her own safety, she isn’t doing much in the way of self-preservation.
Sally’s phone starts cutting out while she wails about “the dogs — Malone’s dogs — out of nowhere — they’re howling — horrible — ” and then the line goes dead. Um, okay. There’s a little post-it next to the phone saying to check out some squeaking noises — Sally thinks she might have mice — and then once we back up from the end table, some weird howling noises start. Uh oh, I think that might be the dogs.
Terrifying.
“Something’s out there!” Nancy whispers, and we creep our way to the door as the weird howling intensifies…
And we meet this guy. Well, hey, you’re not a ghost dog. No, no he’s not — but he is Red Knott, and we have interrupted his birdwatching. He’s very upset about this. The howling was him, “calling in birds. And doing a pretty good job of it, till you showed up.” Hey! He’s mad that we interrupted his birdwatching? Yeah…well…he interrupted our CRIME, so there!
Anyway, he’s all surprised that we’re staying at the Malone house, even though he just saw us come out of it? Whatever. He tells us that Sally seemed pretty scared last time he saw her, on account of the dogs — “the dogs of Mickey Malone.” I do think it’s a testament to this game’s atmosphere and even the voice acting that that line is actually pretty creepy, even though it’s about ghost dogs. Red tells us that the dogs come back every time someone tries to move into the Malone house — they howl every night, and sometimes they actually come up to the house, “throwing themselves at the doors and windows.” Uh, if they’re ghost dogs, why are they corporeal?
Nancy asks why the police haven’t been called, which is a nice gesture even though we all know the police are useless. Red laughs at us for, like, daring to think there are police out here — nope, there’s just one park ranger named Jeff Akers, who we’ll meet later. As for Red himself, he doesn’t live around here — he just comes up in the spring to birdwatch. He has an observation platform up the path, which is where we can find him later on.
Anything else we want to say is cut off by howling — actual howling, not Red making weird bird noises. Red skedaddles and we go back inside the house. We can’t look at anything, though, because it switches to a cutscene. The walls creak! The door shakes! The knob rattles, because I guess the ghost dogs have opposable thumbs! Nancy runs around like a fool for a while, and then she peeps outside to see a giant dog with glowing green eyes pop up at the window. Scary!
Sirius Black, is that you?
Nancy runs upstairs, and we fade to the next morning.
It’s a little hard to tell from pictures — the tones switch slightly to brighter, less brown-ish colors during the daytime, and of course it’s sunny outside when you go look. The game uses the same system as Stay Tuned for Danger — instead of going day-by-day, or setting an alarm to a specific time, you can click on the stairs and choose between “day” or “night.” Certain suspects and actions are only available during one or the other, but you don’t have to switch as frequently as you have to set the alarm, which is a relief.
Anyway, we can get down to exploring Sally’s house, our doing of which Red Knott and the ghost dogs very rudely interrupted last night. We need to grab the green flashlight in one of Sally’s kitchen cupboards, and also the water bottle on the table. Over in the sink, we can grab a pair of rubber gloves. There’s also a map of the area surrounding the house, which we will find very helpful.
In the living room, there are four little statues of Malone’s dogs in the cupboard. We can see that their names are Vitus, Iggy, Lucy, and Xander. They rotate if you click on them (except Iggy, for some reason), but otherwise don’t do anything. I too have rotating bronze miniatures of my pets in my cupboards! There’s also a poem dedicated to them on the wall near the door. Mickey Malone was weird.
Finally, there are some rotting floorboards near the stairs, which Nancy falls through. You have made a fatal error! Oops, okay, so clearly we’re going to have to fix that.
That’s all there is to see and do inside the house, so let’s explore outdoors, which is now about 70% less creepy in the daytime. This part of the game is mostly just running around grabbing stuff — the well outside Sally’s house doesn’t work, but we can steal the bucket near the pump anyway; we also want a wooden plank hiding under the blue tarp. Sally told us that we can use her boat to get around, particularly to go see Em of Em’s Emporium. But what’s this? The boat’s filled up with water! I don’t know if someone was trying to sink the boat or it just rained really hard a few nights ago or what, but either way, this is quite a predicament. Luckily we’re carrying around a giant wooden bucket, so we can just bail the water out. Oh, and we get a bonus screwdriver for our efforts. Cool beans!
In the shed next to the house is the last of our necessary objects — on the shelf with the gnome is a key, which we can try to use to open the wooden trunk on the floor, but it doesn’t work. Boo 🙁 Well, that’s okay, we can just unscrew the lock and open the trunk anyway. There’s a hammer and some nails, as well as a gas mask, which…we steal…for some reason? Is this World War One? Will we be running from mustard gas in the trenches? So many questions.
Since we also now have a map, we can wander around the forest for a bit. On one of the trails is another wooden board — how it got out here, I have no idea — and farther back, in what has to be the most frustrating sequence of forest scenes that all look the same ever, is a tiny cemetery. You know, even with the map, it’s really hard to navigate the woods. I know part of the challenge is finding your way around — it’s sort of like a maze puzzle, in that sense — but it’s beyond annoying. Less twists and turns or more trail markers might’ve been helpful.
Anyway, the third (and last) wooden plank we need is in the cemetery, along with the gravestones of Malone’s dogs, and a couple of other folks, one of whom is named Waldo. I feel a little disturbed that Malone set up graves for people he probably dropped in the lake. Anyway, if we wander a little further along the path, up to the mausoleum, Nancy will note that there are paw prints on the wall. Uh-oh, Scooby. The strangely corporeal ghost dogs have been here!
We can’t do anything with that information right now, though, and the actual point of all this running around is that we now have a hammer, some nails, and some wood to cover up the rotten floorboards. I feel like Sally should be grateful that we’re not only solving a crime, we’re also fixing up her house for her. Pay us, Sally!
Unfortunately, home improvement is all we’re able to do during the day. Sally’s boat is the unluckiest boat ever, and even after bailing out all the water, we see that it’s missing a spark plug. (If you even go near the boat, Nancy will say, “I gotta have some torque,” like, Nancy, that’s not the issue right now. Clearly we need Bess and the mechanical skills she randomly develops in the Girl Detective series.)
Since both Em’s Emporium and Jeff Akers’ office are elsewhere on the lake, crotchety old birdwatcher Red Knott is our only hope. He’s only at his post at night, though, so we go upstairs and switch over. End of day one!
PM. Red is Not Pleased to see us — Nancy “IT’S LOCKED” Drew’s indoor voice is scaring off all the birds, apparently. That’s not a very promising lead into asking him for a favor, but we barrel on anyway, because tact is for squares. We ask if he’s out here all alone, and he says that he came to see birds, not people. Red is not a fan of other human beings, as it turns out, and this area is perfect (or used to be) since it’s totally isolated. “Not a decent grocery store, restaurant, or motel for miles.” Creepy. But how are we going to get Sally’s boat fixed, then? Red tells us that he might be able to help us out — “After all, I was a Boy Scout. ‘Be prepared’, (heh, heh, heh).”
I…I’m not comfortable here.
So Red Knott is indeed prepared (“heh, heh, heh”), and is actually carrying around two extra spark plugs right now. But is he going to just give one of them to us? Of course not, because that would be helpful. No, in exchange, we have to take a bunch of bird pictures for him. “Know how to use a digital camera?” Hee. He gives us a tape(!) of bird calls, but we have to get the cassette player(!!) from Em. Alright alright alright.
“One more thing. You smoke?”
“Uh, only when I’m on fire.” (Hee!)
“The woods may not look it, but they’re tinder dry. One lit match and the best bird habitat on the East Coast’ll go up in smoke. So watch what you do, ’cause if anything like that happens, I won’t be looking for birds anymore, I’ll be looking for you.” Okay, creepy. Also: mm, smells like foreshadowing.
AM. We have the extra spark plug, so we go put that in Sally’s boat and get the aforementioned torque, and off we go! Oh, but we also need a life jacket, because otherwise we’ll die. Nancy Drew is very safety conscious, you know. I mean, sometimes she hangs out in buildings while a wrecking ball is swinging at them, and ziplines from a hotel window fourteen stories up, but ride a boat without a life jacket? Never. So now we can putter across the lake to see Em of Em’s Emporium. Hi, Em! She…she sounds like Sarah Palin. Oh dear.
Em is supposed to help us with our tree/car situation, but apparently what that really meant is that she knows a guy who knows a guy, and “Tucker Davis” isn’t the speediest tree-remover ever. So we’re stuck up here, I guess. That’s convenient. Em asks why Sally hasn’t come down to the shop with us, and we tell her that the ghost dogs scared her off. Em is smug about this (“I told her!”), and says that she knew the dogs would come back. Well, have you ever seen them, Em? Nope, and she don’t want to, neither! Moon Lake is in Pennsylvania, right? Why does Em sound like a Republican vice presidential candidate from Alaska?
We ask about the last time she saw the dogs, and Em tells us that it seems like they pop up every time someone buys the Malone house. Coincidence? I think not!
You know it, Buffy.
We can then ask about Red Knott, and Em tells us that he comes up to the lake every now and then, but he’s a total weirdo. She calls him a “tree-hugger” and says that if he keeps wandering around people’s backyards making bird noises, he’s going to wind up with “a dose of buckshot in his behind.”
I’m just saying.
Anyway, we tell her about the cassette player, and she hands it over. The rest of the conversation is a bit of an infodump. Let’s see what Em knows, shall we?
- We can ask about one of the names in the graveyard, Waldo Mathias, but Em doesn’t know who that is.
- She gets her antiques through totally legal, unobjectionable channels. Totally. I mean, Mickey Malone did dump a bunch of valuables into the lake every now and then, but according to “Squeaky Wheel Akers”, dragging the lakebed for artifacts is illegal, and Em would never. All this stuff just washed up on shore. Totally.
- “Squeaky Wheel Akers” is Jeff Akers, the Lone Park Ranger of Moon Lake. He’s totally harshing Em’s vibe with all of his, like, nature preservation efforts. She suspects that he wants to make Moon Lake a more popular park so he can boost his ego and give out littering tickets all day every day. Em is not pleased by this. She likes Moon Lake the way it is — quiet and obscure. If Jeff Akers has his way, Moon Lake will become mainstream, gross.
- When we ask about the strangely corporeal ghost dogs’ paw prints in the graveyards, she says that she hasn’t seen them, but, like a normal person, she also doesn’t spend a lot of time hanging around in graveyards. I feel like Nancy Drew forgets this a lot.
(By the way, I originally typed Nancy Drew’s name as “Nancy Dre.” A thought:
Well, I’d read it.)
Anyway, we also need to get camouflage gear, since Nancy’s titian hair will presumably alert the birds to her presence and scare them off. Em will gladly sell it to us in exchange for money, as one does in a non-barter economy. Does Nancy have money? Of course not. Luckily, since we’re friends with Sally, Em is willing to let us work off our debt. We have to collect twelve “little critters” for her, for no reason that she gives us. Is she going to eat them? I’m scared. Nancy worries that picking worms off the ground is illegal (oh, Nancy), and Em snarks that Jeff Akers hasn’t gotten there yet. “His daddy, on the other hand…” Apparently Jeff Akers is following in his family’s long and proud tradition of being a rule-obsessed park ranger in the middle of nowhere, like his dad before him, Joe Akers.
“JOE AKERS IS JEFF’S FATHER?” Nancy gasps. Uh, Nancy? We aren’t there in the game yet. Jeff Akers’ family tree means nothing to us right now. But alright.
Anyway, we also need sandpaper, because…wait, why do we need sandpaper? I’m forgetting. But it doesn’t matter, since “Mr. Birdbrain” bought Em’s entire supply, because the wood in his observation platform was giving him splinters in his “hinter regions”. Um, okay. So we’ll have to do that next time we talk to Red. Anyway, that’s all we need Em for. See you later, Em!
“You betcha!”
The next (and last) destination we can check out is Jeff Aker’s ranger station. There are a bunch of posters and boards with information about the wildlife of Moon Lake on them, and also one dedicated to FDR, for some reason. He also has a dog bed and a chew toy lying on the floor. Jeff Akers owns a dog! He’s totally a suspect. Let’s interrogate him, shall we?
We tell Jeff that we’re staying with Sally, except she’s booked it out of town on account of the ghost dogs. Jeff scoffs at her gullibility. “Whatever’s out there, I’m sure they’re no more and no less exactly what they look like…Living, breathing, very noisy dogs.” But…but the glowing eyes! Jeff chalks that up to “an oddball vitamin or protein.” And their weirdly specific vendetta against whoever’s living in the Malone house! “Dogs can be trained to do almost anything.” Well, damn, Jeff, do you even care that something shady’s going down in your park? “Do you always ask this many questions?” Hmmmmm. He tells us that he is a very busy man, thank you very much. “But,” he says with a sigh, “I am here to serve the public.” Heh.
So clearly he isn’t much help on the ghost dog front, but he does have a water testing kit, so we can use the pump up at Sally’s house. After all, we can’t solve this mystery if we die of dehydration/dysentery. Like in Oregon Trail!
Apart from that, we can also ask Jeff about Moon Lake, since he’s apparently lived here all his life. The ranger station also happens to be the Moon Lake Post Office (we can mail the letter Nancy wrote to Ned at the start of the game), and the “Moon Lake Museum of Factual and Natural History.” Which means that in addition to knowing a lot about nature, Jeff can also provide us with exposition about Mickey Malone! He’s not too enthused by our interest in Malone, as Jeff considers him a “glorified thug” — why can’t we be interested in nice things, such as the diverse flora and fauna of Moon Lake? Oh, Jeff. Still, he can admit the Malone house’s potential as a tourist attraction, which bodes well if he wants to, in the words of Eric Saade, take the park to the number one. He’ll get there! Popular!
…anyway.
We can also ask if he has any idea who might want to scare Sally away. Jeff suggests Em — he thinks she’s been dragging the lake for artifacts, although he doesn’t have any proof (yet!). Obviously, this would be easier to do if the Malone house was empty. We also bring up Red, and Jeff says that Red is a “fanatic” (a…bird fanatic?), who would love for Moon Lake Park to be shut down so he could birdwatch without any people around. But Jeff, there’s one other person we can interact with in this game! Could it be you who is trying to scare Sally away from the Malone house? I’m watching you, sir.
That’s all Jeff Akers is currently good for, so we say goodbye. But before we leave, he warns us about the deer mouse population, so we should be careful when we clean. “They carry some pretty nasty diseases.” Wait, is the main plot of this game Nancy developing hantavirus pulmonary syndrome?
Before we leave, we have to read through the “Moon Lake Database of Fascinating Factoids.” Right now, we just have to know how to work a water pump (under “Health & Safety Tips”), but we might as well just read everything else so we don’t have to come back to this.
All that there really is to do at the cabin is fill up the water testing kit, and in the interest of not dying later in the game, we should also put back the bucket. Then we head back and fork the water sample over to Jeff Akers. Our next task is to get sandpaper from Red, which we have to switch to nighttime to do, so this is as good a place as any to end part one.
Up next: Family Matters with Jeff Akers. Em makes us hunt for bugs. We try to convince Red Knott that helping us is more important than his hinter regions.
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