Previously on Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake: We arrived in Pennsylvania on the request of Nancy’s friend Sally McDonald, who was just invented for this game. A bunch of dogs attacked the house, and nearly opened the door with…their paws, I guess? And then we met Red Knott, who yelled at us for interrupting his birdwatching, because…we made so much noise by sitting inside while the dogs attacked the house? I don’t know. This game is weird.
It is now nighttime, and we’re off to accomplish various tasks that are sort of boring, but necessary for the game to progress. You will recall that we need sandpaper from Red Knott, who also wants us to take some pictures of birds for him, and Em of Em’s Emporium wants us to collect a dozen “little critters” for her, which is really just code for “bugs and worms,” in exchange for camo gear that Nancy can’t pay for. You know, if Nancy had just thought to take her wallet with her while traveling to a completely different state, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
…actually, you know what? All my night screencaps are really boring. Let me just tell you: all the critters are found under various rocks/inside various logs around the house and in the forest. Red hands over the sandpaper without a fuss, and somehow we get on the topic of dogs. Red tells us that most people around Moon Lake don’t own them. Then we deliver the dozen icky worms to Em, who gives us the camo gear, which will help us get all the bird pictures we need. (You can get about five of the eight birds without the camo, but that’s just prolonging the inevitable.)
Once you have the camo and have listened to the bird calls, all you have to do is wander around the forest looking for them/trying to lure them out. (“Tweet tweet?” Nancy says, like she’s somehow going to trick the birds into thinking she’s one of them. Man, Nancy.) Unfortunately, we just cannot get a picture of a Red-Tailed Hawk, no matter how many bird noises Nancy makes. After paying Red Knott a visit in the night, though, he tells us to check out the tree near the dock, and oh good! Finally, finally, we can stop doing errands for people, and actually solve the mystery — wait, what’s that thing the hawk is sitting on?
And Nancy gets knocked out. Don’t ask me how the culprit knew to arrive just as we noticed their cunningly concealed speaker.
Nancy comes to in the outdoor shed. She’s tied up! Locked in! On fire! This is a little overkill, Mystery Culprit. But Nancy will point out that she can still kick, so we kick accordingly to set off a chain reaction, so that the scythe at the end of the row will fall over and cut through the rope tying Nancy’s hands together. I mean, it could also just chop her hands clean off, but Nancy Drew doesn’t worry about such things. Anyway, once we’re out of the ropes, we can escape to freedom, sweet freedom!
Aaaand then we burn the park down.
Nobody asked u, Ranger Stinque.
We also get an unnecessarily sassy message from Ranger Stinque. Second chance button, away! Luckily, we remembered to leave a full bucket of water behind at the pump, which is just around the corner. We grab it and run back, and Nancy shrieks, “FIRE!!” all surprised, like…did you forget it was there, Nancy? If you didn’t leave the bucket, or didn’t fill it up, then you can still put out the fire before it spreads, but you have to click really, really fast.
Anyway, once we put the fire out, who should come running up but Red Knott? “What in blazes happened?” he asks. Heh. “Blazes.” Oh, Red, you slay me. You’ll recall that he ominously warned us about fire back when we first met him. Has he tried to frame us for setting forest fires? A dastardly plot, to be sure. We tell him that we were birdwatching when we noticed “something” on the house (Nancy, you don’t know what a speaker looks like? It’s 2002, come on), and then someone knocked us out, and when we woke up, we were locked in the shed and it was on fire. “Whoa, you’re not making much sense,” Red says. What? Red, that was perfectly coherent. Keep up, will you? Instead of checking we’re okay or anything, though, he tells us to come find him later, as he has something to tell us. Then he disappears. Gotta make up for that birdwatching time our near-death cut into!
Sally is shocked that someone has tried to kill Nancy, as she is apparently unfamiliar with the previous six games. Nancy’s like, “I mean, I can’t be sure they were trying to kill me,” because after all, there are many other reasons one might tie someone up and lock them in a burning building. Sally correctly says, “Wake up and smell the hostile vibes, Nancy.” Heh. Also, Nancy tells Sally that Jeff Akers showed up right after Red left, to give her a ticket for “burning refuse in a manner that endangered park property.” He needs a life so badly. And then Em came over to bring Nancy some tea. I’m glad someone cares that Nancy almost got burned to death.
Sally tries to convince Nancy to leave again, Nancy refuses to do so again. While we’re at the phone, let’s call Bess and George, shall we? Bess knows it’s Nancy the second she picks up, because “she just got Caller ID.” (Capitals included.) Hee! Remember when being able to see who was calling you was a huge leap forward in technology? Good times, man. Anyway, we get Bess and George up to speed re: the ghost dogs, and they are appropriately disbelieving. We basically catch them up on the evidence — Em is possibly up to something illegal, and it would be easier for her to get away with dragging the lake if Sally didn’t live there; Red doesn’t want anyone living at Moon Lake at all; Jeff Akers wants to expand the park, which he can’t do as long as someone owns the Malone property. Of course, all Bess wants to know is if Jeff is cute, “and speaking of cute guys”, Frank and Joe Hardy are “dying” to hear from Nancy.
Maybe I don’t want to hear from them, Bess. Do you ever think of that?
Really, do the Hardy Boys even solve mysteries, or do they spend all their time stalking Nancy? Well, we don’t have anything more to tell Bess and George, so we might as well call them. “I know Frank’s cute, but don’t forget to keep us updated!” Bess chirps.
Joe picks up and says that he has to take the phone outside, as Frank will “kill [him]” if Joe lets him miss a call from Nancy.
GO HANG OUT WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND, FRANK. I KNOW YOU HAVE ONE.
I realize I am part of maybe 5% of Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys readers who aren’t into Frank/Nancy, so I’m not exactly backed up by a legion here, but man, I ain’t into this.
Anyway, the Hardy Boys decide to live vicariously through Nancy by helping her with the case. Yeah…I’m not sure she needs their help. It’s about the same conversation as we have with Bess and George, although Frank and Joe bring up the (I admit, grudgingly) interesting point that Malone didn’t have any living family (that anyone knows of) — so who inscribed all the tombstones in his cemetery? Hmmm.
That’s it for Frank and Joe, who manage to hang up without Frank blurting out his undying love for Nancy. Meanwhile, in more interesting news, we now have everything we need to actually progress with the game! (What do you mean, nearly getting toasted in the shed wasn’t progress?)
You may remember that, when we last looked at these little dog statues, Nancy said that they were stuck. (Oh, man, let’s pour one out for Lani Minella’s “IT’S STUCK”/”IT’S LOCKED” voice. I’ll miss it!) But now we have sandpaper, which should hopefully smooth them down enough to be turnable. Let’s try it, shall we?
Aw, yes. Once you have them in position (like so), a clock will go off, and a secret passageway under the staircase will be revealed. I want to mock the existence of yet another secret passageway, but they were actually quite common in the Prohibition era, for ease of evading the Feds — which, actually, when you consider that Nancy Drew was first published in 1930 (and the Hardy Boys even earlier, in 1927), suddenly makes their ubiquitousness…kind of plausible. Whoa.
Anyway, the first thing we see in the secret passageway is this photo. Gosh, they look like they might be someone’s ancestors. This could be an important piece of someone’s personal history. Let’s steal it!
Further ahead, there’s the ominous squeaking of mice in the wall. So we’re running the risk of getting hantavirus, but Nancy Drew doesn’t worry about such things. There’s a portion of the wall that’s cut out, and we can see a safe inside — but we don’t know the combination, and also, mice. That’s about it for the secret passageway for now, so let’s see where the exit leads.
Wait, what’s this on the stairs? It’s a newspaper! From 1927! Is it advertising a new book series about a pair of brothers who are also detectives, and who are constantly bumming rides off of their friend with a yellow jalopy because neither of them can drive? Just asking. Actually, the paper is an interview given by a “William Akers,” who is Mickey Malone’s BFF, and here to set the record straight: all this talk about Mickey Malone being a bootlegger is “just plain hogwash.” He got all his money from legitimate business — it’s not his fault people just can’t stop washing their clothes at his laundromats! And now William politely suggests that the reporter get off Malone’s property before he sics Malone’s dogs on him. “I wonder if William Akers is related to Jeff Akers,” Nancy says. Me too, Nancy. Me too.
No, wait, that’s a lie. I’m not wondering, because I already know he is. But, you know, if I didn’t.
Jeff tells us that William Akers was Mickey Malone’s right-hand man, and despite the last name, they are most definitely not related. The park ranger doth protest too much, methinks! He does identify the people in the photo, though: Mickey Malone and his girlfriend, Vivian Burnett, and guesses it was taken in about 1928. Damn, that would make Vivian, like, 95 years old at the youngest at the time this game came out. It occurs to me that it would be impossible for the plot of this game to function if it were released today, since half the people you need to call would be dead. Anyway, we ask Jeff if there’s any way we can find out more about her, and he says he’ll go through his files. Thanks, Jeff! We can ask more questions about Malone, but Jeff cuts us off with, “I’m a very busy man, Miss Drew. If you have more questions, why don’t you peruse the Moon Lake Database of Fascinating Factoids I’ve put together?” Hee. Well, what about our water sample? Oops, he’s been too busy to call the Department of Health. What, he has the time to track down a 95-year-old woman but he can’t answer some questions or pick up a phone? Hilariously, if you start asking questions about him, he’ll answer them. I see you, Jeff.
So, hey, Jeff, how long have you been working at Moon Lake? “Six long, very frustrating years.” He could really use another park ranger around here, but unfortunately the park isn’t big enough to warrant more help. If only the park were just ten acres bigger! Gosh, it would’ve been nice if the parks department had bought the Malone house — then Jeff would have his ten acres. But as it turns out, Sally outbid them. So really, these ghost dogs are a good thing — Sally will get scared and clear out, no one else will want to buy the house, and the parks department can snatch it up! Someone call Leslie Knope so we can start planning this thing!
Jeff is not pleased: “You’re insinuating things again, Miss Drew.”
Am I, though, Jeff? AM I?
Anyway, Nancy apologizes for implying that he might be moonlighting as a criminal. Jeff takes it way too seriously, and says that if we really want to “make amends”, we can file some envelopes in the back. He’s magnanimous enough to forgive us if we do unpaid labor for him! Luckily, this is mutually beneficial unpaid labor, as the stuff Jeff has us file is conveniently related to our case. We find out that the person who arrested Mickey Malone was Waldo Mathias, whose…grave is in Malone’s cemetery. Wait, what? Did Malone have him killed? That’s pretty dark.
As we head back to talk to Jeff again, you know who we meet? JEFF’S DOG. That’s right. Jeff is one of the few people hanging around Moon Lake who has a dog. Clearly this is suspicious! I mean, he only has the one and there are like five of them attacking Sally’s house, but nevertheless: SUSPICIOUS.
Also, in exchange for our hard work, Jeff gives us an Honorary Junior Park Ranger pin. Oh, Jeffrey.
PM. Red Knott is pleased to hear that his camera escaped the burning shed unscathed. Oh, and it’s cool Nancy’s still alive too, I guess. I’ll give him a pass on his skewed priorities, as digital cameras were a big deal in 2002. Nancy notices that Red suddenly has some gas cans lying around. I’m mildly amused at the thought that, after emptying the cans (for crime or otherwise), he hauled them back up into his treehouse with him instead of like…disposing of them. Or leaving them in his car. I too like to climb trees with gas cans dangling from my arms!
Since it’s the middle of the night, we also may as well explore the cellar some more, since we all know there’s nothing better Nancy Drew likes to do at 3 AM than go into dark, abandoned places by herself. We can open up the safe now, as our Honorary Junior Park Ranger pin will open up a compartment with all of Malone’s lock combinations on it, because even before computers, nobody could keep track of their passwords. Also, man, Nancy, what would Jeff say if he knew we were using our good citizenship pin for lockpicking?
As it turns out, we need the rubber gloves and gas mask to root around in the safe without running the risk of hantavirus. We find the journal of William “No Relation to Jeff” Akers, and apparently a grown man in the 1920s had the handwriting of a 1990s teenager. But hey, luckily his inability to write in cursive means that it’s super easy for us to read his diary, the main entry of which goes like, “Dear Diary, today Mickey was arrested 🙁 I’m pretty sure he wants me to have the gold he hid on his property. That’s just like, what best friends do for each other.” So as it turns out, Malone has a secret speakeasy. And inside his secret speakeasy is a secret map that will lead to his secret gold. Unfortunately, the only clue Malone’s left to figuring out the map is “The dogs will lead the way.” The rest of the diary is actually just a really sad account of how William dropped everything to try and find the gold. He even missed the birth of his son, Joe. Wait, Joe Akers? Jeff, you lied to us! Does this Honorary Junior Park Ranger pin even mean anything to you?
(Somewhat sweetly, the diary ends with William being like, “F this noise, Malone’s in jail and my family deserves better than this,” and he moves to Harrisburg. Aw.)
The secret map is tucked into the back of the journal. Cool! Finding hidden gold is way cooler than solving the actual mystery we were called up here for.
Also, I opened Nancy’s PDA just to check her notes and…I’m just gonna leave this here.
AM. Jeff has tracked down Vivian Barnett for us (Nancy “Tactful” Drew, is like, “She’s still alive?!”), so we can go call her. But first: How could you lie to us, Jeffrey? Aren’t we Honorary Junior Park Rangers? We’re like, your Robin! He caves and admits that William Akers was his grandfather, and then tells us he’s far too busy being passive-aggressive standing at that desk to tell us anything else. Oops, and we didn’t even get to ask about the secret speakeasy and the secret gold. I’m not a very good girl detective.
While we wait for him to stop giving us the cold shoulder, we can go over to Em’s and see what she thinks of the gold. She opines that if nobody’s found it by now, nobody ever will. Cool. That took like five minutes, so let’s go see if Jeff’s over being mad at us for prying into his personal life and digging up his family’s seedy past. It’s for the greater good, Jeffrey! (The greater good!)
Jeff apologizes: he let the emotions get the better of him, and in doing so, he let us down, he let himself down, and most importantly, he let the parks department down. Hee! Anyway, he doesn’t think the gold exists — and if it did, his grandfather never touched it, since he died without much money. Hmm. Also, he has the results from our water sample, and it’s been contaminated with arsenic. Huh. I’m pretty sure that, between this and the setting-us-on-fire-thing, someone is trying to kill us for real. Jeff’s like, “Don’t be melodramatic.” You know, with his commitment to public safety and all, he could be a little more concerned about all these attempts on our life.
Let’s update Sally again, shall we? She tells us that, come to think of it, the dogs seemed to do the same thing every time they attacked — which means someone is training them to scare Sally. Sally says she has no idea who would do that — she only talked to about 3 people the entire time she was at Moon Lake. That’s funny, so have we. She’s not a huge fan of Jeff or Red, but chirps that Em is the friendliest. OR IS SHE? Sally also has no idea about the gold that is supposedly buried on her property, and she never goes out to the cemetery. I wonder if it would be possible for Sally to sell some of the land herself? I mean, she’s pretty much only interested in the house and the immediate surrounding area; a nice solution would be to sell the rest to the parks department, and then Sally will still have her house and Jeff can have his 10 acres. I mean, just wondering.
We also have to call Vivian Whitmore, who is a grouchy old lady in the vein of Eustacia Andropov, who is also her best friend. God bless. Vivian says she “dated” Malone for 5 years. She totally didn’t approve of his criminal ways, but it was super sweet of him to always keep the beer she liked on tap at his speakeasy, and that counts for something, right?
Vivian tells us that if we send her the picture of her and Malone, she’ll send us her key to get into the speakeasy — the entrance is under the tomb of Waldo Mathias. She tells us that Malone had the headstone made “as a joke.” I breathe a sigh of relief, because somehow in the last 10 minutes of writing this recap, I became really invested in Waldo Mathias being alive.
I also called Bess and George, which is an interesting conversation if only because Bess mentions that she’s heard of Mickey Malone’s gang. I like how Bess tends to be somewhat well-read in whatever topic the current game is about. I guess there’s nothing else to do in River Heights besides research obscure 1920s bootleggers.
Blah blah mailing the photo to Vivian, blah blah receiving the key. Off to the graveyard! Unfortunately, although we manage to open the secret passageway (by changing Waldo Mathias’s name to “Baldo Mathias”, because Mickey Malone’s sense of humor was obviously very intimidating), our flashlight craps out the second we try to go inside. Of course it does.
Em will give us batteries if we agree to support her bid to be vice president in 2008, right?
Anyway, we get batteries from Em by setting up a can display in her shop. That took all of 5 minutes. Back to the graveyard!
We’ve finally made it to the speakeasy! I can’t believe we’ve uncovered a perfectly preserved 80-year-old piece of history. This is monumental. “Wow,” Nancy deadpans.
Now, this is the start of the end of the game — which makes it one of the shortest Nancy Drew games ever — but it is also actually the boringest part. I’m going to do my best to make it interesting, but there’s only so much I can do, man.
So Malone’s note said, “The dogs will lead the way,” and accordingly, we spend the rest of this game running around looking at pictures of Malone’s dogs. There are four gigantic pictures of them on the walls of the speakeasy, because why not, I guess. I suppose it’s a better way to spend your bootlegging money than throwing massive parties every night in an effort to capture the attention of a woman who you’re futilely pining for as part of a metaphor for the American Dream.
…anyway. The pictures contain information about where the dogs are usually found (Iggy on the porch, Vitus under the tree, etc.) Nancy will mark them on William Akers’ map. You should also note the colors of their collars, because those are used to solve a puzzle on the spigots, which will open up the secret passageway to where the gold is hidden.
Unfortunately, the door at the end of the secret passageway is locked. But there’s another door off to the side, through which we find…
The ghost dogs, looking rather corporeal. I think we’ve found the villain’s lair, you guys! Over to the side, there’s a table, with a journal on it. Their villainous to-do list includes finding the gold, getting their hair done, and returning Titanic to Val’s Video. Heh. Also, they’ve been keeping a log of artifacts that they’ve discovered by dragging the lake. Gosh, I wonder who this could be.
We can also find a tube of glow-in-the-dark toothpaste, which explains how our villain has been making the dogs look creepy. Glow-in-the-dark toothpaste seems like a weirdly specific product, but Google tells me that it is in fact real, should you ever wish to pull off this plot in real life.
Anyway, the whole point of this is that the culprit managed to find the key to the gold stash, but hasn’t figured out where to use it yet. So we can take that, and head down to the door at the end of the passageway. Success!
Oh. Well, this doesn’t look like a stash of gold. Nope, there are a few more puzzles we have to get through before we can find the gold. This is like the first Harry Potter book. The first puzzle involves sticking the proper-size wheel onto the well mechanism (and holding it there with the screwdriver). Then you have to use Roman numerals corresponding to the dogs’ names to…oh, my God, I just fell asleep a little, this is so boring.
Anyway, once you get through all the puzzles, we discover Malone’s secret gold stash. “Six hundred pounds of gold bullion. Wow!” Nancy says, like she doesn’t trip over incredible amounts of money every day. I wonder if this is more or less exciting than that time she found a gigantic diamond that had been lost for 200 years, or the time she found a one-thousand year old relic from a lost civilization.
Unfortunately, even Nancy Drew’s everending pockets aren’t enough for six hundred bricks of gold. Let’s go trigger the villain’s entrance tell someone about this.
And of course, the villain pops up. It’s Em! Of course it is. Would we expect anything less from Sarah Palin? She chases us around for a bit — what you’re supposed to do is slither through the grate in the gold room, then climb up another grate, then close the door on Em when you come out on the other side of the water pumps. She tries to get us to share the gold with her — we could be like partners! We could run for executive office of the United States together!
And that’s the end of the game! Red Knott is not pleased about all the publicity this has brought to Moon Lake; meanwhile, Jeff is rolling in glee that he gets to hand out parking tickets all day every day. Oh, Jeffrey. Sally decides to adopt the ghost dogs. And that’s it.
Man, this game was short. I went back and checked through a walkthrough to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but nope, this is about it. If you call Vivian again, you can have a conversation with Eustacia Andropov, and I guess you can chat up the Hardy Boys if you really want, but other than that, there’s not much else to do in this game. So…yeah.
Weirdly, it’s mentioned that Jeffrey and his “deputies” are the ones to arrest Em. Where the hell were these deputies for the entire game, huh? I thought we were your sidekick, Jeffrey! I feel so betrayed. Like Gatsby when Daisy wouldn’t leave Tom for him.
THE END.
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