This isn’t my favorite Nancy Drew game — actually, after playing it through again, it really, really isn’t my favorite Nancy Drew game — but I think it benefits from being stuck between Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake and Danger on Deception Island, both of which are so boring that I ended up watching Netflix on my phone while playing them, just to keep myself entertained. The setting in this game is a little more exciting, (most of) the characters are more interesting, and the tasks are a lot less tedious than in the previous game. On the other hand…Joy. Frickin’ Joy.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Dear Ned” — hey, Ned’s in this game! Hi, Ned! Does this mean we get to call Ned in this game? I’m so excited. I love Ned, you guys.
Nancy lays out the plot of the game for us (and Ned): we’ve been called to Captain’s Cove Amusement Park, which is somewhere in New Jersey. I get excited because my dad is from Jersey. This game was MADE for me. Anyway, Paula Santos, a friend of Nancy’s dad (who ISN’T a friend of Nancy’s dad, honestly), is perturbed by all the “weird things” that have been happening recently. The park’s carousel just lit up and started turning one night, “as if it was haunted or something.” Or as if someone snuck in and turned it on. Has Nancy entertained that theory? And someone managed to somehow steal one of the horses right off the carousel. Nancy actually says that the horse “disappeared”, because the way this is going, she’s probably going to suggest it galloped off by itself in the middle of the night.
“P.S. There’s a rumor going around that the park is cursed. Creepy, huh?” Yeah, you know, just btw!
Our base in this episode is a room in the Captain’s Cove Hotel. We can check out Nancy’s laptop, the TV on the dresser, an iron in the closet, and a pamphlet in her suitcase. The pamphlet helpfully provides some backstory for us (in Comic Sans!): the titular haunted carousel was built in 1914 by some dude named Rolfe Kessler. We know he will be important because Nancy says, “Rolfe Kessler…”, like that name means anything to her at this point in time.
(The other side of the pamphlet says, “Nothing in New Jersey Beats Captain’s Cove Amusement Park”. This is, sadly, probably true.)
Also, you guys. You guys! Nancy Drew has finally entered the 21st century, with this super-nifty cell phone. I’m sorry to say that that purple camo pattern was indeed cool in 2003. I distinctly remember Hilary Duff rocking a pink variant in Cadet Kelly:
My love for this movie need not be spoken of.
So the first thing we have to do is call Paula Santos. Her number is already programmed into the phone, because in the future, we won’t need address books. Paula tells us that the police aren’t interested in investigating, which sounds pretty in character for them. She then tells us to visit with Harlan Bishop when we arrive at the park. Then she hangs up on us. That was a useless conversation.
This is Captain’s Cove! It is much less depressing than the New Jersey amusement park my grandparents used to take me to. Harlan’s office is past the door in the whale’s mouth, and he calls us in over the loudspeaker pretty much the second we step in.
Say hi to Harlan Bishop! His accent is incredible. It sounds like he has a really bad head cold. He immediately starts snarking on Nancy for ignoring all the “We’re Closed” signs, which endears him to me immensely. I love characters who call Nancy on her shit. Harlan bitters that Paula seems to have a lot of faith in us — “more than she does in some people.” Aw! Don’t feel bad, Harlan, Nancy Drew’s been upstaging literally everyone at their jobs since 1930. It’s nothing personal. He doesn’t think the horse theft is that big a deal, and the carousel’s probably just malfunctioning — “Ingrid” swears that she can’t find anything wrong with the wiring. Ingrid is the park’s chief engineer, who’s kind of New Age-y and weird. “She thinks if you, like, eat food served by a waiter who’s in a bad mood, you’ll get scurvy or something.” Heh.
He also tells us that there are two other people in the park — Elliott Chen, the art director, who is super busy, and Joy Trent, the park bookkeeper. We have to see Joy to get an access card. But before we do, Harlan gives us a Captain’s Cove Fun Card, so we can go on the rides and fool around in the arcade. Do we really want to go on rides that don’t have any operators? Is Harlan trying to get us killed? I’m onto you, dude!
Anyway. Before we go, we can interrogate him a little more — he’s only worked here for a few weeks, and he asked Paula to keep him on while the park is closed, so he can figure out the equipment, “‘n such.” Fair enough. Where did he work before here?
“Oh, I worked…in a store. Department store. In Flemington. Not around here.”
I find those pauses suspicious! Harlan totally just made our suspect list.
He also plays us a recording of one of the carousel “hauntings”, which is really just a couple of seconds of the carousel lighting up and spinning around. He tells us there’s no sound on the tape, because it’s 1926 and The Jazz Singer hasn’t come out yet, I guess. Nancy notes that there was a burst of static right before the tape started, but Harlan thinks that it’s just a “glitch in the tape.” I recall wearing out my VHS of The Lion King when I was five, so I’m inclined to believe him there.
We can’t really explore much in the security booth — Harlan will get a little annoyed if we try to open his locker, to which Nancy says, “Sorry. Bad habit.” Hee! Anyway, that’s it for Harlan, so onto the rest of the park. The two unmarked buildings at the top right are where Ingrid and Elliott hang out, but we can’t meet them yet. Let’s go see Joy.
So Harlan told us, prior to our leaving, that Joy was “a little joy-less.” That is like saying the Pacific Ocean is a little wet. Joy is like, the most aggressively pessimistic person ever. Case in point: we tell her that it’s cool if she’s busy, we don’t need our access card right away, and she says, “It’s okay. I’d just as soon get this little farce over.”
Well…that’s not very nice of you, Joy. She snips on that Paula only hired us to make it look like she (Paula) wasn’t sabotaging the park for publicity, because…closing the park makes so much money? Nancy asks if Joy’s ever confronted Paula, and Joy amazingly is like, “No, I don’t wanna get fired.” Because…telling us is such a good move? It’s not like we’re in Paula’s pocket, or anything.
But Joy admits that no one’s been hurt, except for some guy called Lance Huffington. We’ll have to call him later, but right now he is just a random dude. And she says she’s not entirely ungrateful to Paula — apparently Joy’s dad and Paula used to be co-owners, but then Mr. Trent went bankrupt and had to sell his shares to Paula, and now he’s dead, too. Jesus Christ. Paula could’ve saved Mr. Trent from bankruptcy — BUT SHE DIDN’T! Joy bitters that she’s pretty sure Paula only hired her out of guilt.
That’s…a lot of information in the first five minutes of meeting someone, but alright. Nancy’s like, “Yeah…I just came here for the access card.” Heh. Joy hands it over, and tells us that if there are any problems, we should see Ingrid, because Joy doesn’t want to be bothered with us. She is sending a lot of mixed messages here. Like, do you want us to be your bosom friend and listen to your sad life story, or do you want us to get out? Make up your mind, Joy.
Also, she tells us not to bother Elliott, as he’s behind on his work and doesn’t need any distractions. Fair enough. I mean, we’re going to bother him regardless, but you know.
We can poke a bit around her office — there’s an object on her shelf that’s covered by a cloth, which will be important later, and a bunch of newspaper clippings about the amusement park. Interestingly, one of them is about how there’s hidden treasure inside one of the carousel horses. Of course there is. Gosh, do you think that’s why our culprit stole that horse?
There’s also a note in one of the drawers about a horse being sold. Unfortunately, it’s written all in stenography, and the translation on the bottom is missing the horse’s name. Of course it is. File that away for later, and we can go meet Ingrid.
Ingrid is holed up in the engineering workshop, which is massive and gray and pretty much empty. Also, she has a very soothing voice. We introduce ourselves, and she tells us we have “B3 issues.” Um, okay. That aside, we find out that she’s worked for Captain’s Cove for about two years. She believes that the park’s bad juju is coming around on account of the fact that Rolfe Kessler said that if the horses were separated, bad luck would follow. “And it has.”
Um…okay. We can also ask about the other employees, and we find out something RATHER INTERESTING: according to Ingrid, Harlan used to work as a bouncer in Trenton, not in a department store in Flemington. He lied to us! Harlan! *shakes fist*
We can’t follow that thread of conversation any further, so we ask if we can see the roller coaster blueprints, as one of the ~suspicious accidents~ is that it broke down in the middle of a ride. Ingrid says she hasn’t been able to find them, but maybe one of the other engineers knows where it is.
And…where are these other engineers, exactly?
Moving on, she suspects that the carousel horse was stolen for money — regular money, not necessarily because it has a bunch of jewels stuffed inside it. And she doesn’t mind working during the closure, as she “adores” her job. Okay, then. We can’t poke around with her still in the room, so let’s leave and meet our final suspect, Elliott Chen.
Aaand he promptly kicks us out for knocking over one of his paint cans. Okay 🙁
We can go look at the carousel, and examine the hole in the ground where the stolen horse used to be, as well as check out some of the horses’ names. Unfortunately, when we try to use our access card to go into the operating room, it doesn’t work. Joy! *shakes fist*
So we hop on over to Joy’s office to a) ask her about our nonworking access card, and b) tell her that Elliott’s being a jerky jerkface who refuses to talk to us. She’s not here, though. What is here is this weird, light-up machine that starts talking to us. It introduces itself as “Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine,” and tells us that it “receive[s] and process[es] video and audio input and make[s] appropriate preprogrammed verbal responses.” Which…okay. Yeah. The whole subplot with Miles is just weird, you guys. Like, the height of AI technology in 2003 was SmarterChild. I’m not saying I ever expect Nancy Drew to be realistic, but I’m not over the fact that half the plot of this game hinges on having coherent conversations with a robot.
Anyway, we tell him — I’m going to start referring to Miles as “him”, for the sake of simplicity — that we need to leave a note for Joy. He tells us where to find paper and a pencil. See? Why is that one of his preprogrammed responses? I am suspicious of this whole operation! And then he stops the conversation, because “responding to the non-Joy entity is an unnecessary drain on my power units.”
Everyone in this game is so goddamn rude to Nancy Drew, what the fuck.
So Joy has a weird futuristic robot in her office. That’s not strange at all. Anyway, we leave the note asking her to call Elliott, and that’s all for now. Note that Joy chews her pencils. We also stop by the engineering workshop, and Ingrid tells us that she shut off the card readers because of the park closure, but she’ll get them working again. So that solves the mystery of our access cards.
Then Paula calls us and tells us about the possible hidden treasure inside of the horse. Way ahead of you, Paula! She tells us that the treasure might be jewels from a heist way back in the day, and she has the number of the detective who solved that case (although he never found the jewels. That’s a job for Nancy Drew, 18-year-old amateur sleuth). She says she’ll have him call us.
I’m going to skip right ahead to that conversation, because my screencaps basically just have me wandering around the park while I wait. Detective K.J. Perris calls us on our new, nifty cell phone, and we lay out our suspicions for him. He says that the thief, “Chas Dunning”, died a while ago, but K.J. will put in some calls and see if Dunning confided in someone before he died. Because that’s what happens in jail, right? You get really close to the other inmates and tell them where to find the treasure you buried twenty years ago.
So Detective K.J. will call us back once he has some new information, because in the future, people will be able to call us wherever we are! We won’t have to go back to Nancy’s hotel room and check the answering machine. Technology is amazing.
While we wait, we can go look at the roller coaster, but the access card reader still isn’t working, and also has a red tag on it. Ingrid! *shakes fist* Well, we still have a couple of other locations to check out, so let’s do that first:
The haunted house is kind of neatly creepy, with ~spooky~ lighting. The music also changes from vaguely offbeat carnival music to this weird, windy-sounding…thing. I don’t know. Anyway, when you walk in, Nancy will note that there are weird sawing noises coming from downstairs. She also trips over one of the haunted house robots, which has a portable keyboard underneath it. We need that for…a task that we don’t get until later. Oops. Well, I am an efficient super sleuth, so we’ll just grab it now.
Unfortunately, the back room doesn’t have a staircase — it’s just a room with a radiator, which Nancy helpfully points out, like it’s not sitting right in the center of the room. We’ll have to investigate the sawing noises later. Off to see Ingrid!
But first, Detective K.J. calls us back! He tells us that he has information about the jewel thief — “You know, Chas Dunning?” Dude, K.J., we had this conversation like five minutes ago. I promise I still remember everything. K.J. tells us that Chas Dunning did make a bosom friend in prison — and his friend was paroled “less than two months ago.” K.J. doesn’t remember the guy’s name, but his description is as follows: “Dark hair, medium build, clean shaven, heavy Jersey accent.” Gosh, does that sound like any of our suspects to you? There are, after all, so few men with Jersey accents in New Jersey.
We then proceed to have a really weird conversation with Ingrid. As is usual for these games, she realizes that there’s a problem that requires her specialized knowledge to fix, and so she promptly lobs the task off onto Nancy. Ingrid was planning on upgrading the circuit boards for the card readers with the red tags on them — but you know, if we really need to use them right now, we can just do it for her, right? I mean, Nancy knows nothing about circuitry or engineering, but Ingrid has total faith in her. All we have to do is solder the macro resistors in the right place, and we can look in Ingrid’s engineering handbook if we need help. Super easy! Why do people even bother going to engineer school?
And then Ingrid’s cell phone starts ringing, and she just like…stares at us until it stops. O…kay. Anyway, now we have to get a soldering gun from Elliott, fix the card readers, and give the red tags to Harlan when we’re done. Also, Ingrid tells us to keep an eye out for her pliers, because apparently “amateur detective” is just code for “personal assistant” to these people.
Over in the art studio, Joy has calmed Elliott down, so now he’ll talk to us. We hint that the park closure is a good thing for Elliott, since now he can get his work done, and he agrees: “Meeting deadlines has never been my forte.” But he certainly hopes that we’re not suggesting that he deliberately got the park shut down so he could get his work done, because that would be ridiculous.
Would it, Elliott? WOULD IT?
We can ask him a bit about the other employees — he doesn’t have much of an opinion on Joy or Ingrid, but he calls Harlan a “rent-a-cop” and bitters that Harlan is constantly getting up in his business. Fair enough. Elliott doesn’t believe that there’s a curse, and doesn’t believe the thief will get a lot of money for the horse, as it’s a replica, not the original. (You’ll recall the note in Joy’s office about one of the carousel horses being sold — so Elliott’s saying that the stolen horse was the replacement for that one, instead of an original.) Interesting stuff! That’s all for Elliott. Let’s go fix some circuit boards.
This can’t be too hard, right?
“According to Ingrid, you not only fried that particular card reader, but you short circuited the entire system. She says it’ll take days to repair the damage, maybe even weeks.”
Oh…whoops. Nancy tries to joke about it, and Paula’s like, “I’m not in the mood for LAME JOKES, Nancy. Nor am I in the mood for PAYING FOR ANY MORE OF YOUR MISTAKES.”
I mean, is it our fault your shitty employees can’t be bothered to do their own work? Man, Nancy Drew gets no respect in this game.
Okay, well, that’s what the second chance button is for. Although, you know, I don’t really feel like solving this mystery for Paula anymore. She’s kind of mean.
Anyway, I forgot to mention that the instructions for the voltage are inside the card reader. I didn’t bother reading them on account of the fact that I cheat my way through these games anyway. So we fix the circuit board for real this time, and now we can go have another chat with Harlan.
First, let’s gossip about Elliott behind his back. That’s the mature thing to do. Harlan says that Elliott is super behind on his work on account of being a major procrastinator: “Doesn’t really like to work, so he does whatever he can to avoid it.” Elliott and I have that in common. According to Harlan, if Elliott “doesn’t get caught up like fast, he’s going to be waving bye-bye like soon.”
I love Harlan. Have I mentioned this?
He agrees to turn the power back on to the new circuit boards, and so the only conversation option left is to hit him with THE TRUTH! The truth of his shady backstory, that is. We bring up that he told Ingrid he was a bouncer in Trenton, and he awkwardly says that he’s worked a lot of different places. HMMM. Don’t try to lie to us, Harlan. Nancy Drew always finds out the truth.
Up next: We do indeed find out the truth! Shouldn’t have tried to fool Nancy Drew, guys. And someone tries to kill us, as usual.
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