This game sucks. I’m sorry, but it does. The location is boring, the tasks are tedious, the navigation makes you run around a lot, and the characters are blah. I started playing it in the summer of 2011, before I left for college, and I didn’t bother to finish it until February 2014, 3/4ths of the way through my degree. That is how boring it is.
“Dear Ned,” Nancy starts. You know what? This is like, the fourth Ned-less game in a row. I’m writing to complain. You can’t promise me Ned in the beginning of a game and then cruelly yank him away like this. Anyway, Nancy exposits that she’s taking a vacation on Deception Island, off the coast of Washington. This is hilarious, because as we all know, Nancy Drew doesn’t do vacations. The vacation is provided courtesy of George’s friend, Katie Firestone, who’s a marine biologist doing research on the island, and also gives whale-watching tours. It’s so weird how none of these people are ever Nancy’s friends. I’d feel pretty weird about having a friend-of-a-friend stay with me alone. But I guess Katie is more chill than I am. Nancy says that she feels perturbed, but chalks it up to the weird weather. “It’s not rainy, but it’s not sunny, either. It’s just kind of gray.” Yeah…that’s called fog, Nancy. It’s not that weird. Do they not have fog in the Midwest?
This game doesn’t waste any time — we meet Katie and head to her boat, and we immediately see that it’s been vandalized. Sabotage!, as George would say. The engine’s been completely torn apart, but Katie doesn’t want our help. She tells us to get on with our vacation. Oh, Katie, how little you know Nancy Drew. She gives Nancy some vacation advice that also doubles as exposition: we can take Katie’s bicycle and travel around the town of Snake Horse Harbor, or we can go kayaking. If we don’t wear a bike helmet while we’re bicycling, or don’t take a GPS with us when we go kayaking, we will die. Good to know.
Katie leaves us to get unpacked, which takes about five seconds, as Nancy has only brought a laptop and a change of mom jeans with her.
Also, Nancy has ditched her purple camouflage phone cover for a much less stylin’ blue one. We can call Bess and George and the Hardy Boys. The frickin’ Hardy Boys again? Am I being punished for something?
There are a couple of cute references to previous games — Nancy has a pamphlet for an exhibit at Beech Hill Museum, and there’s a calendar of dog art from the “Mickey Malone Speakeasy“, which is a kind of cool bit of information, since we never found out what they did with the speakeasy in the original game. Anyway, she sets up her handy laptop, which we will use to find clues on the Internet (the Internet!), and also to receive useless emails from Nancy’s housekeeper.
Let’s connect via dial-up and see what’s new in the town, shall we? Although it’s 2003, so maybe Katie has DSL. God, it was the most exciting day for me when my family switched to DSL and I could load Neopets.com in like, 5 minutes instead of 20. Anyway. There have been a bunch of burglaries around the town, but none of the places have any signs of forced entry. And there’s an orca currently swimming around in the harbor, which is causing conflict within the town over what to do with it. Finally, some dude named Holt Scotto is running for harbormaster. We’ll meet him later.
Before we go talk to Katie, we have to do a couple of puzzles first. One is putting all of her books back into a drawer in the correct order, and the other is rearranging the pipes under the sink, as our mysterious vandal tried to destroy her plumbing. That’s just mean. When we’re done fixing the pipes, though, we find a business card for a place called “Whale World”, owned by someone named Andy Jason. Our first suspect! This game moves fast.
Katie tells us that there was a town meeting about the orca last night, and she, uh, might’ve gotten a little opinionated. She says that she was the one to call the National Marine Fisheries Service, who imposed a no-boat zone around the harbor. This displeases a lot of people, like the fishermen who have to waste time and fuel taking the long way around the island, and Andy Jason, who runs whale watching tours as part of his Whale World business and can’t do so anymore. Andy looks more suspicious by the minute! Interestingly, we’ll learn later that Katie’s sightseeing business isn’t affected by the no-boat zone — I’m not sure if it’s because she has a smaller boat or because she’s already docked within sight of the orca and doesn’t have to go out.
We ask if she wants us to call the sheriff, and she says no, as the insurance company will raise her rates, and she can’t afford that. Is that true? OR IS SHE HIDING SOMETHING?
“Besides,” she adds, “I’ve got my very own private detective now. You.” Which…I mean…yeah, Nancy lives for nosing around and solving mysteries, but you could’ve asked first, Katie! I mean, just to be polite!
Anyway, up at the steering wheel, or whatever that part of the boat is called, we see that Katie’s GPS is busted. No kayaking for us 🙁 Also, someone has left a note to tell Katie to stop meddling. “Or else!” Ha! Oh, mystery villain, if you think Katie is meddlesome, you really have not met Nancy Drew.
Speaking of meeting people, let’s go get acquainted with the rest of our suspects. Katie tells us that we can borrow a GPS from Holt Scotto, who’s at the Hot Kettle Cafe. Please note the bicycle helmet in our inventory. Nancy Drew can do a lot of dangerous shit in this game, like going kayaking alone, and sneaking onto a ship full of smugglers, and playing with a killer whale, but the only thing that will actually get you killed is biking without a helmet.
The Hot Kettle Cafe is pretty cute — it’s got lots of warm colors and some jaunty music playing in the background. Holt Scotto is seated at the bar, and immediately calls us out on being new in town. We introduce ourselves as staying with Katie Firestone, and he’s like, “Oh, are you one of those SAVE THE WHALES and TO HECK WITH EVERYONE ELSE types? ARE YOU?” and Nancy’s like, “…I’m just here on vacation.” Holt, as it turns out, is one of the fishermen who is not pleased with the no-boat zone. We tell him about Katie’s boat being ransacked, and he says that’s what she gets for being so “meddlesome.” Wow, Holt, you talk kind of like our mysterious culprit.
Then he adds, “Welcome to Snake Horse Harbor,” like he didn’t just spend the past five minutes insulting us and Katie. Friendly! Holt exposits a little about the history of the town — the nominal Snake Horse is technically called “Cadborosaurus,” “Caddy” to its friends. Apparently it has the body of a snake, which strikes me as weird, since it swims in the bay? Whatever. “Is it a friendly sea monster?” Nancy dorks. This is a segue into Holt telling us about the shanghaiing that went on in the 1800s, for everyone who didn’t grow up on the west coast and didn’t have to hear about the Barbary Coast and the shanghai tunnels for the entirety of fourth grade. Nancy perks up: could this mean that there are SECRET PASSAGEWAYS somewhere around here? That would make this the best vacation ever.
Anyway, we can ask Holt about himself under the guise of being friendly, but we’re really trying to collect evidence. Nancy is super sly. He says he’s been fishing his whole life, and has been living in Snake Horse Harbor for about ten years now. He’d be out there fishing right now, were it not for A) Katie’s meddling and B) his pressing political campaign responsibilities. We’ve already found out from the Internet that he’s running for harbormaster, but let’s ask him about that anyway. He doesn’t look much like a politician, after all. He says that he just thinks that there needs to be someone around town who talks sense, instead of “doing what’s ‘politically correct’ all the time.” Oh…dear. I guess they can always recall him when the economy of Snake Horse Harbor collapses due to overfishing.
Finally, we tell him that Katie’s GPS was broken. “Aww, that’s a shame,” he snarks. Damn, Holt, she’s just trying to protect an endangered species! He says he’ll lend Nancy and only Nancy the GPS, like there’s something stopping us from just handing it over to Katie. Whatever. Anyway, he says he has his spare GPS right in his duffle bag. “You know what else I got in my duffle…”
This makes me uncomfortable.
Thankfully(?), what Holt ends up whipping out is a “seamanship quiz” that we need to pass if we want the GPS. Holt is annoyed by all the pesky non-fishermen stepping on his turf, and says that “when” he becomes harbormaster, everyone will have to pass the test before they can rent a boat. I don’t know why he’s bothering to campaign if he doesn’t have any competition. Anyway, he needs a guinea pig to see how well the test works, and that’s us. I don’t know why we don’t just go to the store and buy a new GPS. (Well, actually, I do: because Nancy Drew never brings money with her, even when she knows she’ll be traveling thousands of miles away from her home.)
Before we leave the Hot Kettle, though, there’s one more person hanging around. Jenna Deblin is the owner of the Hot Kettle, which she inherited from her aunt. She cheerfully admits to eavesdropping on our conversation, which you’d think would make her and Nancy kindred spirits. (Also, the only thing I ever think of when I see her name is evil Suzanne Devlin from Sweet Valley High.) Anyway, she offers us her “condolences” on staying with Katie Firestone. Jesus, the people in this town are rude as hell. Why do they think Nancy is hanging with someone she doesn’t like? Well, whatever. Jenna also disagrees with Katie’s position on the orca (that it should be moved to a science facility), but she doesn’t appear to be on Holt’s train either (whatever that train is; he never says exactly what he thinks should be done about the orca). She says that the orca should be rejoined with its pod. Fair enough. Jenna bitters that Katie’s probably secretly feeding the orca (which is illegal), and she probably trashed her own boat, too. I feel like Jenna’s a little over the top here. As far as we find out, Katie’s never actually done anything to her. Maybe she’s just an angry person.
Once she’s done ranting, we can ask her about a couple of things. Let’s start with Andy Jason. Jenna remarks that he’s too cheap to hire another person to help him out at Whale World, which is why it’s weird that he’s trying to buy Katie out. She also claims the shanghaiing is a local tale and never happened. Wrong, Jenna! Certain events surrounding shanghaiing have been made up (the “shanghai tunnels” in Portland, for example, were actually used to avoid street traffic when transporting goods to stores), but the actual practice was real, similar to impressment. I did a project on the Barbary Coast in the fourth grade; I know this shit!
We can also eat some clam chowder, and there’s an option to try a muffin, but neither of those are important now. That’s it for Jenna; we can look around the Hot Kettle for some information that will help us solve Holt’s quiz, and we can notice a puzzle that’s embedded on a couple of the wall panels.
“What is this card thing?” I don’t know, probably a puzzle that will open up a secret passageway once we solve it. Duh, Nancy.
Off to Whale World! Andy Jason has stupid hair. I mean, that’s the first thing I noticed here. We slyly mention that we saw his business card on Katie’s boat, but he doesn’t take the hint and merely says that any friend of Katie’s is a friend of his. Not that he and Katie are friends. But they could be, if she would just sell her business to him like a reasonable person! Nancy points out that Katie and her tiny boat can’t really be stealing that many customers from Andy, but he disagrees: Katie has convinced the Fisheries Service to allow her to monitor the orca, so she’s the only one allowed to get near it, and she takes customers with her when she does her checkups. Oh, Katie. Still, everyone seems weirdly down on her about it — she’s a marine biologist, right? I can’t blame her for trying to get a research opportunity out of this whole thing. Academia is competitive! Andy, however, thinks people should just leave the orca alone. “I mean, why do we humans think we always know best?” Yeah! We should just take our advanced technology and study of other animals and leave that orca to fend for itself, separated from its pod. Survival of the fittest!
Nancy also mentions that someone vandalized Katie’s boat, and Andy suggests that it’s related to “those burglaries.” Way ahead of you, Andy! We already read about those burglaries on the Internet. The Information Age is now! He repeats that there’s been no sign of forced entry. Whoa, what if instead of being used for shanghaiing, the secret passageways around town are actually connected to the shops? What if? Nancy instead remarks that Katie’s boat is in no condition to go anywhere anymore — and that’s a good thing for Andy, isn’t it? He doesn’t deny it, and flat-out admits he’ll get all her customers. But I’m still suspicious. Admitting they benefit from the crime is like, #41 on Things Villains Say When They Want to Throw You Off Their Trail!
Anyway, we have a couple of things to accomplish at Whale World. We can explore the museum a bit, and note that there are a bunch of games. Andy will give us a play card, which we can use multiple times to play all the games until we beat them. We don’t need to do that yet, though. Instead, we can talk to him a bit about a ship in a bottle that’s displayed in the lobby. He tells us that it was made by a dude named Benjamin Hawkins, and he bought it from “some lady who went bonkers after her husband died.” We’ll meet the bonkers lady later. That’s all we can do for now at Whale World. Bye, Andy!
“Whales rule!” How very Todd Wilkins of him.
(Sidebar: I wonder what the overlap is between Nancy Drew game and Sweet Valley High fans is? I feel like most people who like SVH are also into the Nancy Drew books, but the games started coming out later, way after the SVH demographic grew up. For that matter, most of the people I know who are into the ND games aren’t actually into the books very much. Hm. Well, anyway.)
Anyway, let’s take a look at Holt’s bullshit quiz. The answers to the first nine questions are all found around the Hot Kettle Cafe and Whale World, and are fairly reasonable, being about certain types of boats, nautical safety, and the Snake Horse Harbor laws. Then we get to #10, which is “Bring me a male Dungeness crab.” What the fuck, Holt? Why do I have to pick up a crab with my bare hands just to rent a boat? I hope he gets voted in as harbormaster and makes everyone take this test, and then tourism dries up since no one can go sailing, and the crab population is destroyed, and the town has to watch as their economy and ecosystem crumble.
Anyway. The last location on our map is the Lighthouse. Let’s go check it out. You can use this point in the game to go get a drink or something, because you have to wait for Nancy to slooooowly roll from Whale World to the Hot Kettle Cafe, and then from the Hot Kettle Cafe to Katie’s boat, and from Katie’s boat to OH MY GOD NANCY, CYCLE FASTER.
We finally make it to the beach. The lighthouse area of the game is appropriately creepy, it’s very foggy and there’s a constant clinking noise coming from the (abandoned) lighthouse that we’ll have to check out later. Right now, we just have to wander around the beach, looking for a crab. We notice two fish lying on the beach and Nancy’s like, “It seems odd that two fish would wash up together like that.” Is it? Maybe they made a suicide pact, Nancy. We don’t know. We can also pick up a bunch of rocks, and Nancy will chirp, “These would be great for rock-skipping!”, like that’s somehow the first thing that comes to mind.
There isn’t a specific rock the crab is hiding under, you just have to wander around and click on them. Female dungeness crabs are either particularly dangerous or particularly endangered, I don’t remember which, so you have to be careful not to pick one of them up. Not that the crab will do anything to you, but Holt Scotto will yell at us and I don’t want that 🙁
Female crab.
Male crab.
There are some more mysterious happenings to check out after getting the crab — there’s no time limit or anything to get it back to Holt, it just chills in the basket while Nancy investigates. This crab has the patience of a saint, I guess. Further down the beach, we trip over a piece of wood that says “SS” on it. Weird! What could wood from a ship be doing in the ocean? Only something suspicious, that’s what. Further down from that, we see a message in a bottle floating near the rocks. This is where the rock-skipping comes in — you have to choose the right size rock and the right angle to skip it at, and it’ll dislodge the bottle and float it towards us. What secrets could it contain?!
“Rosebud”? So…the sled did it? Cool, case closed, let’s go home.
Nancy pretends like she has no idea what this note could mean, but it’s quite obviously coordinates to something. Unfortunately, we’ll need a GPS to figure out where 42.517 is. I hate that I need you, Holt!
Let’s check out the lighthouse. This isn’t creepy at all, right? I feel super comfortable going in there by myself, without anyone knowing where we are. But I guess that’s why I do these things vicariously through Nancy Drew.
The first thing we notice about the lighthouse is that it’s locked! With a rather modern combination lock, no less. What could be going on up here? Unfortunately, our sleuthing is interrupted by Holt. “Those signs over there say ‘No Trespassing’!” he yells at us. Did he think that was going to stop Nancy Drew? What a n00b. He kicks us off the lighthouse property. Rude! But now we’re suspicious: what were YOU doing here, Holt? I know you weren’t fighting crime, because that’s Nancy’s job. I’m onto you! WE’LL BE BACK!
Up next: We pass Holt’s seamanship quiz and go kayaking. Nancy goes on the hunt for wood and clams.
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