Previously on Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island: Nancy was on vacation for about five minutes when somebody vandalized Katie Firestone’s boat. A mystery is afoot! Unfortunately, everyone in town hates Katie, so…not exactly narrowing down our suspect list. Could this vandalism have anything to do with the MYSTERIOUS ORCA that has suddenly appeared in the harbor? (It totally could.) Also, Holt Scotto made us catch a crab with our bare hands just to borrow his GPS. Do people really want this guy to be harbormaster? He’s already mad with power. Finally, whales rule.
Like The Haunted Carousel before it, there isn’t any sort of timekeeping system in this game. Another mystery Nancy solves in a day! She’s on a roll.
Jaunty…Celtic, maybe? music follows us as we cycle aaaaall the way back from the lighthouse to the Hot Kettle. Holt Scotto has somehow beat us back there — admittedly, Nancy is the slowest bicyclist known to man — and we can turn our quiz in to him. I hope we get an A-plus! I worked really hard on it, you know. When we go to give it to Holt, though, our only two conversation options are various ways of apologizing for snooping around the lighthouse. Hey, maybe I’m not sorry for ignoring those no trespassing signs. You don’t know me, game. It was for the greater good (the greater good!). But the game makes me, so whatever. Holt accepts our apology and takes the quiz and the crab from us, then forks over the GPS.
I’m just gonna leave this here.
We can’t ask him what he was doing up at the lighthouse or anything, for some reason. Well, whatever. Let’s talk to Jenna, as she has information about the message in a bottle we found. She told us at that a bunch of these notes have been left by a “Hilda Swanson*”, who used to be mayor of Snake Horse Harbor. After her husband died, she became a recluse and disappeared to an island on the other side of the channel. Jenna delivers groceries to her every week, but Hilda won’t talk to her, and indeed hasn’t spoken to anyone in years. If you guessed that Hilda is the “bonkers” lady Andy mentioned to us earlier, you’re correct. Nancy asks if there’s anything that will help us decode the messages, but Jenna says most of her stuff has been thrown out or given away. We’ll probably have to track some of it down later. Once she’s done expositing stuff for us, the conversation ends. Bye, Jenna!
* Actually, apparently her last name is “Swenson.” But I’m leaving it in there as is, because it amuses me to think of her being married to Ron Swanson.
Let’s see if Bess and George can help us. Kate is George’s friend, after all. There’s something resembling a subplot — or a running gag, maybe — where Bess is trying to learn how to cook. George teases Bess over burning crepes, and Bess says, “I mean, you could still eat parts of them.” That’s how all my cooking usually turns out. Anyway, they ask how Nancy’s vacation is going, and she chirps, “Great! I got here just in time to solve a mystery!” Oh, Nancy. She lays out what’s been going on, and runs down the list of suspects — including Katie. “I know she’s your friend, George…” “Well, it’s not like she’s my best friend.” Man, way to throw her under the bus. Bess is actually even worse — she calls Katie “[George’s] so-called friend”, and compares her to Lizzie Borden. I don’t know what Katie ever did to Bess. Maybe she’s afraid Katie is stealing George away from their weirdly incestuous relationship? I’m sorry for bringing that up.
I decided to call the Hardy Boys, just because. While Nancy is busting criminals, the Hardys are dog-sitting. They’re such losers. Joe is all excited to live vicariously through Nancy, which leads to an actually mildly funny exchange (Frank: “What’s great about this?” Joe: “She’s got a mystery to solve!” Frank: “Uh, she’s supposed to be on vacation?” Joe: “CRIME NEVER TAKES A VACATION, FRANK.”) They don’t offer much in the way of advice, which is fine, because who would take advice from the Hardy Boys, anyway?
Anyway, we haven’t talked to Katie in a while. Tell us why everyone here hates you, Katie! She thinks that Holt is just out to get her because she’s not a fisherman, which is pretty consistent with what we know of him so far. As for Jenna Deblin, she thinks Katie’s a “know-it-all from the big city.” My God, Jenna, it’s not Katie’s fault that no one in this tiny-ass town ever became a marine biologist. I really hope Katie’s not the culprit, because I’m starting to feel weirdly protective of her, not gonna lie. I hope there’s an alternate universe out there where she gets to hang out and bond with Todd Wilkins over whales.
Unlike Jenna and Holt, Katie actually has some useful information. She backstories about Benjamin Hawkins, the guy who made that ship in a bottle at Whale World. Apparently he used to live where the lighthouse is standing now. Katie tells us he used to have a “hiding place” he retreated to whenever pirates sailed into the harbor. Gosh, do you think we might find…A SECRET PASSAGE? :O
We also ask her about the chunk of wood we found floating by the rocks. Katie says that it must have broken off a ship recently, as the edges are still sharp. She’s pretty observant! She should totally become our sidekick. Katie gives us the number of a guy who might be able to help us — his name is Casey Porterfield, and he lives up in Port Townsend. I used to go to school with a girl from Port Townsend. That’s all I can tell you about Port Townsend.
So we call Casey accordingly. His hearing is not that great and he repeats everything Nancy says back to us. I guess it’s funny. He asks how old the piece of wood is, and Nancy says, “Idk, old?” Oh, Nancy. Casey tells us to call him back when we know how old the wood is and what kind it is. We get to do research on different types of wood! This game is thrilling. Luckily, Katie has a book about wood types, and the author “offers free consultations of wood identification.” Say “wood” again.
Anyway, we can call the wood ID lady (“Dr. Irina Predoviciu”), but in order for her to ID the wood, we’ll have to examine it under a microscope. There are a lot of jokes here, but I’ll refrain.
Anyway, we take a look at the wood sample under the microscope, and praise Jesus that this game doesn’t make you solve a puzzle for to do so. I think I’ve mentioned before that it’s nice how little padding the earlier games have, although I’ve noticed they make up for it by making the navigation unnecessarily monotonous (that is, it’s impossible to kill two birds with one stone — you have to find the bird, then slooowly walk or bike to another location to find the other bird, then go somewhere else to find the stone, then go back and walk through the entire location to kill the first bird, then lose the stone probably, and — everything takes a while in these games, is all I’m saying). ANYWAY. We call Dr. Predoviciu back with a description of the wood, and she identifies it as “luan” for us. It’s apparently used for shipping, so the wood came from a cargo crate rather than an actual ship. We can then call Casey with this information, which is apparently useful because the federal government like…keeps track of all the cargo containers? I don’t know. The point is, Casey can figure out which ship was carrying the crate that the wood came from. Exciting stuff!
God, I hate this game.
MOVING ON. Let’s go kayaking! Which is just as boring as everything else, because the navigation of the bay requires you to click through several nearly-identical screens and somehow remember which direction leads to which screens. This is really difficult for me, as I can’t even go down the right hallway of my apartment building half the time.
WHERE AM I GOING???
The point of all this kayaking is to find the rest of Hilda Swanson Swenson’s bottles. Maybe it’ll lead us to the gold bars Ron has buried in Pawnee! Sorry. We find a nifty cave-grotto-thing, which is pretty nicely designed, with shafts of light coming through the rock and stuff.
Pretty! Also, I’m showing you this because we’ll have to come back here later.
There are four bottles in total, which combine to create the coordinates N48 42.517 and W123 08.615. We can input them into the GPS and a little waypoint flag will pop up. I get hopelessly lost trying to find the waypoint, and then the kayak drifts out to sea and I die. Oops. Second chance button, away! The GPS leads us to another beach (an island, I think?) and Nancy will derp, “I’ve never been to this beach before.” Like…yeah, Nancy, you’ve never even been to this state before.
There are some slippery rocks that we can climb on, but doing so kills you. I only found this out after I died for the second time in five minutes. These games are made for 12-year-olds! Why am I so bad at them? Anyway, past the rocks, there’s a box thingy buried under some seaweed. It has maritime flags on the front, which can be used to spell out words. When you spell out “rosebud”, the box opens. What could be inside? Treasure? A map? Money, so Nancy can stop having to exchange her labor for goods like she’s in a barter economy?
Oh. It’s puzzles. Nevermind.
There are three pieces of paper in the box. The first is just the words “port” and “starboard” written over and over, but Nancy thinks we should keep it, and who am I to argue with Nancy Drew? The second is a ~secret code~ that we crack in about two minutes. It tells us to ask Holt, Andy, and Jenna for “Hilda’s gifts.” Really? Holt and Jenna I can believe are friends with her, but Andy “Hilda is bonkers” Jason? Okay, whatever.
The last is a letter, where she tells us to contact her in Morse code once we’ve found all of her gifts. She adds that “something is fishy in Snake Horse Harbor”, and we shouldn’t try anything funny, because she’s watching us. My God, Hilda, if you know crime is going down and you’re spying on everyone, why don’t you solve the mystery?
I will spare you all my screencaps of slooooowly kayaking back to Katie’s boat and sloooooowly rolling over to the Hot Kettle. A million years later, we arrive, and promptly ask everyone what Hilda left them. Are they just going to hand their gifts over to us? Of course not. Holt makes us beat a chess game for him, Andy wants us to put together a puzzle of Cadborosaurus, and Jenna wants us to go clamming for her. The chess and the puzzle are all right, but the clamming? The clamming part of this game is the reason I didn’t finish it for three years.
I chose to do the chess thing for Holt first. He tells us that we can look at a book about chess in his bag if we need help. I don’t, because I’m cheating my way through this whole game, but we should look at it anyway, as the combo for the lighthouse lock is inside the book. It really is convenient that our suspects always write down their passwords. Once you figure out the chess puzzle (which varies if you’re playing on junior or senior detective), Holt will give you a “scrimshaw.” According to Wikipedia, a scrimshaw is “scrollwork, engravings, or carvings done on a piece of bone or ivory.” The engravings are often elaborate and beautiful. And what is more elaborate and beautiful than the word “one bum”? No, I’m serious:
I mean, if I had a rare piece of whale bone, I too would carve “one bum” on it.
Jenna tells us that Hilda made her a necklace. She’ll show it to us if we go clamming for her. Since the clamming takes actually forever, I’ll come back to that. We need to go to Whale World anyway, since you can’t go clam hunting without a permit, and…Andy Jason, of all people, is in charge of clam permits? I don’t know.
And…oh, wait, I got it wrong. Andy’s “gift” from Hilda is the design on the Whale World keychain, which you only get if you win a whale watching tour, and which Andy refuses to just hand out. We have to earn our crappy keychain. Fine. This involves playing all the games in the museum until you win them. The Cadborosaurous puzzle is in order to get the clamming permit. You have to put all the bones inside an outline of its body in the right order, which is easy, so whatever. When you’re done, Andy hands over the permit and also a tube? That you suck the clams into from the ground? I don’t know. I buy my seafood at the store instead of digging it out of the ground, because I’m from the big city, as Jenna would say.
We might as well beat all the museum games, since we’re here anyway. There’s four of them, and they’re mostly based on remembering information about whales that’s scattered around the museum. We learn some super nifty whale facts. Did you know that dolphins and killer whales have been trained by the military because they’re super smart and can carry out missions? I wonder if maybe that’s foreshadowing.
When we’ve beaten all the games, we can go spin the wheel to win a random prize. It lands on a free whale watching tour! And then we can get our keychain! Wait, I thought Andy wasn’t allowed to take his boat out anymore? Well, whatever. He does it anyway. He’s a rebel.
There’s a cutscene with the whale and stuff, and Nancy can borrow Andy’s digital camera to take some pictures of birds and whatever. That happened. When we get back to Whale World though, Andy tries to weasel out of giving us our whale keychain! Oh my God Andy, I did not memorize five different whale calls for you to punk out on me now. Nancy sasses him into forking the keychain over, and our business at Whale World is done. “Whales rule!” I know, I know.
NOW FOR THE CLAMMING.
There is nothing to be said about the clamming. You have to find fifteen clams, which are scattered around both the lighthouse beach and the mystery beach. Some of the holes don’t have any clams in them at all. Once you’ve exhausted both of the beaches, you’ll still only have eight or ten clams, so you just have to wander around and then go back all over them again. It sucks. Clams are stupid.
This isn’t so hard! I already found like four clams by the lighthouse. I am on a roll. I should quit my job and go live by the seaside.
Only ten to go! Wait, ten? I’ve already looked over this entire beach. Where am I going to find ten more clams?
Wait! Here’s another clam hideout! OH, WAIT, IT’S A DEAD FISH. >:(
But…but…I’m trying so hard 🙁
Seven clams! I can go take a break for lunch now.
Update: I have finished my lunch.
I wonder if I can do my history homework and play this game at the same time? I probably can.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her narrator’s declining mental health to illustrate the confinement of white, middle-class women in a domestic, submissive role, and the efforts made to keep them there. The narrator’s mental illness is explored in its own right, and Gilman uses it to explore the concept of female nervousness and treatment of women by male doctors. Gilman also uses mental illness as a metaphor demonstrating the effects of confinement and control on women in the nineteenth century.
This is a lot of clams, right? Like, this has to be fifteen, right? No, it’s thirteen. “I just need to find two more.” Nancy, there is no “just” about this.
HOW HARD CAN FINDING TWO MORE CLAMS BE? This history paper is coming along, though.
The constant deference to authority figures—represented in the story by John and the doctors—who minimize women’s agency and disapprove of their desire to do things outside of the domestic sphere, creates a pressure that makes women feel trapped, and causes them to “creep” through their routines and duties without being able to express or metabolize — oh, I’ve found fifteen clams. FINALLY.
Literally three years later, we go back to the Hot Kettle and hand over the clams to Jenna. “Clam” doesn’t even look like a word anymore. Anyway, she tells us that while we were gone, someone broke into the cafe and stole food and boat tools. Hmm. This is actually a little weird, because once you find out who the culprit is, it doesn’t seem like they actually need any of these things? Well, whatever. Maybe they just burglarized the cafe for the hell of it. And naturally, the doors were locked and there was no sign of forced entry. How did the burglar get in? HOW? Nancy suggests that the sheriff missed something, because the police in these games are incapable of actually looking around the crime scene for more than five seconds. Jenna tells us that we’re free to “play detective” if we want. Little does Jenna know that I’ve already been playing detective for three whole years (sob).
Anyway. Nancy will note that a salt shaker was knocked over, and say, “That’s strange.” Right? Only our mysterious culprit could have knocked over the salt shaker! Although given that there are only two people in the Hot Kettle at any given time, maybe Nancy is right to suspect that the salt shaker destroyer is also the burglar. Nancy will also check out the supply closet and note that Jenna SUSPICIOUSLY buys all her tools from “SaveKing.”
Jenna’s necklace is locked inside a toy box, which you have to open by playing a match-the-pictures puzzle. It’s pretty easy, so whatever. Now that we have all of Hilda’s gifts, we can figure out what they mean. Jenna’s necklace says “Eleph,” Andy’s keychain says “Tren,” and of course Holt has the “one bum” scrimshaw. Nancy suggests using her “handy-dandy anagram buster” to figure out what the message is. What a nerd.
I wrote “telephone numebr” and then stared at the screen for five minutes trying to figure out why it wouldn’t let me progress.
I don’t believe Nancy Drew would need a computer to help her solve an anagram. Another reason why this game is terrible. But the whole point of it is that Hilda Swenson wants our telephone number. We have to get into the lighthouse to get it to her, so we’ll put that on hold for now.
So we can call Casey back, and we’ll have information about our mysterious shipwreck. He tells us that the wood came from a ship called the “Whitechapel Dawn”, which sunk in Snake Horse Harbor about five years ago. This is strange, as you will recall that the wood is still sharp, which means that it probably hasn’t been soaking in the harbor for five years. Casey also says that it’s “impossible” for the wreck to have washed up onto shore. And yet it has! He also mentions that the Whitechapel Dawn was rumored to be involved in smuggling operations. HMMM.
Casey has also emailed us something interesting that he found during his “travels in cyberspace.” The early 2000s were an amazing time. When we check our email, we find out that the Hot Kettle was originally a saloon, and several men were shanghaied from it in the 1800s. So…definitely secret passages, then.
Up next: Hilda is the worst. Everybody hates Katie.
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