Previously on Nancy Drew: Danger by Design: We learned about another mystery, and immediately decided to go investigate that. Amy Grunhild can deal with it! This included asking invasive questions until we completely broke Dieter. Then we enabled JJ’s stalker in exchange for information about the catacombs, and went down there for clues and expensive booze.
I think I mentioned before that the game kicked me into day three halfway through part two, but it didn’t make much sense, story-wise, so let’s just pretend it happened now. Actually — hold up, I went through my screencaps and I’ve got a day 4 and 5 in here. Presumably it just keeps adding days however long it takes you to play the game, but I didn’t do much either day, so I’ll pretend we’re on day three instead of five.
The story in the newspaper that concerns us is some news about some former Stasi guys, Gunther and Ernst Schmeck, who are suspected of smuggling. Gasp! David Hasselhoff didn’t inspire them to turn their lives around? Having updated ourselves on world news (Nancy is a concerned citizen!), let’s get our butts to Minette’s.
What’s this?
Someone’s put a bomb on Minette’s door! Man, Heather just let this happen? She must really not give a shit about her job. Anyway, it’s set to explode when Minette opens the door, so you have to disarm it before she decides to come out and see what Nancy’s doing. The piece of paper on the inside door shows how it’s meant to be set up (same shape or same color is okay to connect, different shape + different color will cause it to blow). I’m glad our villains left the instructions in the case!
Anyway, bomb disarmed, and that’s all for Minette. In fact, that’s all for everyone, as we’re now going to decode Noisette’s stuff and begin the end of the game. Heather’s disappeared, and Minette weirdly won’t be in her studio, even though she was yelling at you from inside. You can go get lunch with Jean Mi, but he won’t have anything to say, and neither will Dieter. I’m lonely 🙁 Let’s call Bess and George before we finish the game.
We tell them about Heather sending the notes to Minette, and how we went diving in the catacombs. We tell them how Zu told us about the hazelnut symbols, and Bess is like, “So you went skin diving underground in Paris on account of a criminal named Zu.” Well, it sounds bad when you say it like that, Bess. It was for the greater good (the greater good!). And Zu only seems mentally unhinged when it comes to JJ, so we were totally fine.
We also tell them about that bizarro, rude-ass phone caller with a suspiciously German accent, and how Minette got the box of cockroaches not long after. Bess and George don’t have much to contribute about that; they merely opine that it sounds like things are getting personal. And that’s pretty much all we can talk to them about. Alright, time to finish up this mystery!
So in order to type in Noisette’s code, the dials have to be set like the gears in Minette’s studio were, before she got paint all over them. That would be, left to right, IX, V, III. We then type in the code from Noisette’s decoder book, which gives us the message: “ROUGE BLANC ROUGE BLEU ROUGE.” “Looks like French to me,” Nancy derps.
Back at the moulin, we note that one of the columns has the same windmill design as that thing we got in the catacombs. When we put it in, the bottom of the column will open up and reveal a set of sliding bars. We slide them to show the colors from the decoder (red, white, red, blue, red), and the windmill will turn on, and a trapdoor will open up to reveal a set of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs is a door, which the key from the hazelnut box will open. Our mystery is about to be revealed! Not the mystery Amy Grunhild hired us for, of why Minette is acting so weird. The other mystery we decided to solve instead. I’m starting to see why no one pays Nancy to do this.
We find a room full of stained glass, and Nancy will marvel that that‘s what Noisette stole during the war. There’s a letter in the room detailing Noisette’s whole plan, and for some reason Nancy can translate it perfectly. Even though she needed a dictionary to get through “rouge blanc rouge.” Oh, Nancy. Noisette writes that Hans von Schwesterkrank helped her hide the stained glass from the Nazis, but when the war was over, everyone turned on her for being friends with a German soldier. She was pissed at them for not believing her, so she passive-aggressively refused to tell anyone about the stained glass for years and years, which is why it was up to Nancy Drew to find it. She wanted whoever found the glass to make sure it was returned to wherever it was before the war. Aw! Let’s go back aboveground and tell everyone about this.
There’s a bizarre puzzle before you can leave, where the door locks behind you and you have to shift-cipher your way out. It’s dumb because it’s not like the villain locks you in, it just…comes down and you have to do another puzzle before you can get out. I don’t like it. Anyway, the message on the lock refers to the decoder machine, an M380. So the shift is 380 (first letter shifts 3 places to the right, second 8, etc), and when you put the resulting gibberish into the decoder, it comes up with “Deux un cinq sept.” So you put in 2 1 5 7, and the door opens. That was unnecessary.
Minette’s back, and when we come up under the floor, we can hear her talking. To Gunther and Ernst Schmeck! The East German smugglers! And it sounds like they’re looking for more than freedom. (I’m sorry, that was too easy.) They gush over how the dress Minette is designing will allow them to hear every word spoken around the First Lady at the World Summit, and they’ll be able to sell a bunch of state secrets and get super rich. Minette snaps that she wants to get paid now, since she put up with all of their threatening phone calls, notes, and dead flowers — they remark that those were “incentives” to keep her focused on the dress instead of her other projects. Maybe Amy Grunhild should’ve tried that with Nancy, and she would’ve actually spent time investigating Minette. Anyway, the Schmecks refuse to pay Minette, and presumably leave. Nancy clutches her pearls and says we have to tell the police.
We exit the trapdoor and face the dress. It occurs to me that unless they’re using “First Lady” to mean some other president’s wife, this dress is presumably for Laura Bush. Anyway, we move to grab it —
— and Minette sneaks up behind us! “You were eavesdropping, weren’t you?” she asks. OF COURSE we were, Minette! What are you, new? We’re all like, “You’ll never get away with this!” and Minette says that she’s going to “knock [our] nosy little block off.” Yup, Minette practices Ichi-Do. But Nancy bought a book on it yesterday, so we should be able to defeat her, right?
Or maybe not. “I coulda been a contender!” Nancy gasps as I fail to block Minette over and over. Heh. Sorry, Nancy. I’ve never been very good at the endgames. So what you’re supposed to do is remember which Ichi-Do strike matches which yell, so you can figure out where Minette’s going to try to hit you, and block her. I dunno what you’re supposed to do if the rat in the catacombs steals your book before you can read it.
Anyway, I nearly die, but as long as you get Minette down to minimal health before she does you, you win the game. “Life is so horribly un-rude,” she says as she falls down. Indeed.
Minette’s mask rolls off to reveal that she has an alien tattoo on her face. Nancy voiceovers that she wore the mask to hide it, because she got it “on the spur of the moment” and immediately regretted it. I think that’s E-rated for “she was totally wasted.” Sonny Joon’s not mentioned, but given his obsession with aliens, he probably had something to do with it. Anyway, it turns out the Schmecks commissioned Minette to make a dress infused with tiny circuits, which would allow them to bug the World Summit. You’d think someone would notice they’re wearing an electric dress (it sounds like it would be itchy, at least), but then again, Laura Bush is married to Dubya. Anyway, that’s why she was behind on all her work.
Noisette Tornade’s name is cleared and all the original stained glass is returned to various “churches” around Paris. There isn’t a single depiction of Jesus being bloodily crucified in any of that glass, I will point out. That made up like 80% of the windows at the churches I went to.
Heather takes over Minette’s spring show — if you got her fired, it’s mentioned that Amy Grunhild asks her to come back. This is where tattling on Heather can come back to bite you — if you did, Nancy will mention that Heather doesn’t invite her to the show. If you didn’t, she lets Nancy be one of the models. Oddly, in the version where Heather’s been fired, Nancy mentions that Jean Michel is “still raving” about the show, while there’s no mention of that in the other one. I guess Nancy’s presence brought the whole thing down.
THE END.
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