Previously on Nancy Drew: The Creature of Kapu Cave: We got dragged into some peer research drama with Quigley and Dr. Craven, which ultimately ended in us having to break into his research facility and steal some plants. Frank Hardy got a lead on who clobbered Joe, who’s sitting out the rest of this game with a head injury. Were that I could go with him.
So, to our (and presumably Quigley’s) disappointment, the Hilihili plant sample didn’t match the frass sample. Yup, we had a whole big thing about sneaking in there, stealing someone’s ID, and nearly getting busted stealing top-secret research, for absolutely nothing. This is not a good game.
Well, let’s drag ourselves all the way to Three Finger Rock and see what Quigley thinks of this, shall we?
Quigley’s disappointed, but she gets over it fast. She tells us to go test all the other plant samples she’s collected, and see if any of those match. Okay, so let’s just turn around and go all the way back to her camp after that five-second conversation.
Thankfully, we do have a match — it turns out the bugs have been eating fritillated flag beetles (judging from the Google results, a species that was made up for this game). So…I guess we have to…head all the way back to see Quigley again.
Quigley immediately remarks that it’s “impossible” that the bugs have only been eating fritillated flag beetles. Dude, Quigley, it better be possible, because I’m not turning around and testing those samples again. She says something must be causing an explosion in the beetle population, and we’ll have to put our dreams of having a TA of our own on hold. She zips back up to the trees, and we can’t talk to her again. When we try, she snaps that she’s been carrying us long enough, and we’re on our own now. Well, duh, Quigley. If you didn’t want to carry your assistant, maybe you should’ve picked someone who was actually studying entomology.
Anyway, she tells that she does have one last assignment for us — she found a metal ring at Kapu Cave, and she doesn’t know what it’s for. If we want to look into that, we can. It’s not like we have anything else to do.
So, off we go to Kapu Cave. We approach the big old face in the back…
…and Nancy will note that the ring fits right into its nose. I don’t know how she manages to reach up there and put it in. The Slenderman arms strike again? Once we’ve done that, we’re able to move the teeth, which each have a carving of an animal on them. Sadly, in order to figure out what to do with these, we need the help of Frank Hardy. I know. It’s painful.
I actually have to switch back and forth twice, since the first time Nancy calls, she’ll merely ask Frank about the teeth and hang up. If you switch back to Nancy and have her call a second time, she’ll tell Frank that Dr. Craven is working for Richard Aikens. Intriguing! Not that Frank does anything with this information. I guess I should’ve tried calling Richard Aikens, but whatever. Hindsight!
We pop in to ask Big Island Mike about Johnny Kuto and the pawn shop, but he claims ignorance. Except Johnny Kuto calls us like five seconds later, and says that he DOES know Big Island Mike. And, in fact, he doesn’t like him that much, as Big Island Mike “double-crossed” him. Frank’s all like, “Gee willikers!” and Johnny Kuto figures out that, perhaps, Frank’s not as cool as he’s trying to sound. He hangs up on us. Uh-oh.
Let’s check in with Pua. We suggest to her that her father’s not entirely on the up-and-up — perhaps hiding or fencing Johnny Kuto’s stuff for him — and she freaks out that her dad’s been going into the lava tunnels a lot, and he must be hiding the goods down there. The good news is, the earthquake caved in the entrance, so he hasn’t had the opportunity to move any of it. That means we won’t be able to get in there either, though. Ha ha, just kidding! Pua says there’s an entrance underwater, but it’s hard to get to, as you have to ride the currents to get to it. This stumps Frank, who’s from a landlocked town on the opposite coast, where people don’t snorkel much anyway.
Pfft, of course not. Frank’s like, “I totally know how to follow currents. It’s just like in Finding Nemo, right?” Pua tells us the map is in a trunk at the Immersion Center, and the password is Big Island Mike’s favorite flavor of shave ice. She makes us promise that, if it turns out Big Island Mike is up to something illegal, we won’t call the cops until we talk to her. “‘I promise I won’t call the police.’ Say it,” she says. Uh…I wouldn’t go around making that kind of deal with one of our suspects, but Frank’s like, “Sure, whatever.”
There’s also the option to rent some snorkeling equipment, which we’ll need to get to the tunnels. We can’t do that right now; we need 30 Big Island Bucks first. You can make necklaces or catch fish or whatever; personally I think catching fish is the fastest way. But we’ll do that later. Right now, let’s get into that trunk.
Now, most normal people, when you ask what their favorite flavor of something is, will just tell you. Not in this game! Big Island Mike’s like, “You know what would be fun? Making you guess what my favorite flavor is. Go make me some shave ice and I’ll tell you if I like it.” Can you imagine the reviews for this guy? “I tried to make small talk with Big Island Mike, and he made me bring him food.”
Anyway, you have to go try a combination of 3 flavors, and Big Island Mike will tell you if you got one, two, or none of them right. The correct flavors are coconut, lime, and mango, which he calls “honi ‘awa” (“sour kiss”).
Armed with that knowledge, we can open the trunk with the map inside. Frank will note that the map is of the same face that Nancy described. Let’s call and tell her about this.
So the teeth will show a bunch of animals, not all the ones on the map. What we have to do is rotate the teeth until they show the correct animals, and then the face will open up and let us enter the tunnels. Woo! Secret tunnel through the volcano! Yeah! At this point, we call Frank, but the game won’t switch us back to him yet. Instead, Nancy will wander through the lava tunnels (“It’s so hot in here,” she derps), passing through various ~spooky~ areas with sounds of running water, wind, fire, and rock. We finally make it to a puzzle, where we’re meant to press the four elements in the order that we heard them (water, air, fire, earth). That will drop us down into a chamber, where we run into yet more puzzles.
In this one, we have to correctly number the pictures, as they’re supposed to tell a story. I thought it was meant to depict the creation of Hawaii, but it actually seems to be just a random story about some turtles. Basically it goes: there’s a volcano with some waves and a plant. The plant grows (potentially into an island?). A turtle shows up and lays some eggs. The volcano erupts, covers the plant/island, and it disappears, while two baby turtles swim away.
With that done, the statue’s eyes will open, and the giant stone blocking the entrance will roll forward, Indiana Jones-style. If we don’t jump out of the way, it kills us. I think at this point, anyone who knows me knows that I didn’t manage to get out of the way the first time. To the second chance button!
Once we successfully survive the bowling ball of doom, the game will dump us back into Frank’s POV. We now have to do his half of the mission, and the game will switch us back to Nancy for the final puzzle. Nancy’s left us a voicemail, telling us about how the current map opened the cave face up. “If the pictures on the current chart helped her, maybe they’ll help me,” Frank muses. I don’t know, Frank. You’re not in favor with the mystery-solving gods the way Nancy is.
But first, we have to get the Big Island Bucks to rent snorkeling equipment. On our way to the dock, we overhear Pua and Big Island Mike arguing. Big Island Mike says he’s come to his senses, and Pua screams that he’s going to “ruin everything.” Big Island Mike says she’ll do what he tells her do, and she says she’s never listening to him ever again! NOBODY UNDERSTANDS HER!
Well, we can talk to her about that later. Let’s go fishing first.
Blah, blah, catching fish blah…
Okay, let’s ask Pua what that’s all about. She just mutters that her dad can be such a “loser” sometimes. Frank says that his can, too. Hey, that’s no way to talk about the guy who lets you do whatever you want and solves your cases for you, Frank! Anyway, she won’t talk about it anymore, so there’s nothing left to do but turn in our fish and get the snorkeling equipment.
And thus, the end of the game begins. Following the currents turns out to be not that hard, as there are a bunch of pillars with the animals carved on them, so you just have to follow them in the order that they appeared on the map (eel, shark, octopus, turtle, octopus, porcupine fish, crab, urchin, manta ray). “WHOA!” Frank shrieks every time the current sucks him down a tunnel. I feel like yelling with a snorkel tube in your mouth is the fastest way to choke and drown that I can think of.
Frank comes through the tunnels from a different direction than Nancy, and we can see a bit of where she passed through — the big bowling ball of doom rolls above us and breaks the bridge she crossed earlier, etc. Now that she’s gotten it out of the way, we can climb over the statue with the story puzzle, and see a big room. And what’s this?
We find a bunch of crates, covered in beetles (fritillated flag beetles, putting two and two together). Someone’s been using this cave!
Big Island Mike and Pua show up. Yup, they’re our culprits. Pua admits that she gave the map to Frank for him to figure out, and then followed him through the tunnels. Nancy and the Hardy Boys really gotta stop solving mysteries for the villains. Anyway, Big Island Mike explains the plot of the game: he owes a lot of money to some very shady people. The land that the Hilihili is on will revert to him if the facility ever closes down; ergo, his plan was to ruin the pineapple crop and pin it on the Hilihili. Joe was right: Pua does do something besides surfing, and that’s helping her dad spray chemicals around the jungle. Big Island Mike bought some chemicals off Johnny Kuto, and spread the story about Kane Okala so people would stay out of the jungle, where they were spraying the plants. But the earthquake made Big Island Mike think that he’s displeased Pele, so he’s stopping his operation now. And if we could just not tell anyone, everything will be fine! Oh, boy. Do the Mapus know they’re talking to Frank Hardy, Head Snitch of All Time? I think even Nancy keeps secrets better than he does.
Although, actually, Frank doesn’t actually say he’s going to go to the police, for great justice and all that. Instead, another earthquake causes the ground under Frank and Big Island Mike to…rearrange itself? I don’t know.
This is the guy Nancy always cheats on her boyfriend with.
Anyway, when everything stops shaking, half the floor’s gone and Big Island Mike and Frank are somehow on opposite sides of the room than they started on. We switch back to Nancy’s view, which is kind of weird because we control Frank for this final puzzle anyway. The goal is to move Frank across the floor, to get to the stairs behind Big Island Mike before Mike makes it across to Pua. The floor tiles they’re standing on will occasionally disappear before you move to them, so sometimes you have to jump in a direction that’s counterproductive to getting to the other side.
So as I mentioned, Frank never actually says that he’s going to tattle on the Mapus, but if Big Island Mike beats Frank to the other side of the room, he and Pua will get all villainous and ditch us in the lava tunnels. “You shoulda stuck to catching bugs,” Big Island Mike snarks. You know what, Big Island Mike? Nancy Drew can catch bugs and criminals at the same time. She’s that good.
Anyway, I get Frank to safety, and the Mapus sigh that they should’ve just gone surfing.
And so the game ends. Nancy says that everyone get out of the lava tunnels eventually, and ties up all our loose ends: Big Island Mike’s aunt used to the own the land the Hilihili is on, and she willed all her money to the foundation. But if they closed, then the land would revert to the Mapus. Big Island Mike, you’ll recall, used to work for a pineapple grower, so he knew that the beetles would ruin the crops if there were enough of them. (The whispering noises we heard in the jungle, by the way, were all the beetles rubbing their legs together. Ick.) Then the Mapus spread the rumor that the Hilihili was causing the crop failure, which made Richard Aikens so nervous that he hired the Hardy Boys to dig around to find something to discredit the Mapus. (I thought it was weird that a biotech company would be using a surfer to market anything!) Anyway, with the Mapus’ plot exposed, the beetle and bug population have fallen to normal levels, to Quigley’s chagrin. She’s gonna have to find a new project to get famous off of.
Speaking of Quigley, it’s not mentioned if she really was spying on Dr. Craven or not. The evidence sort of points to yes, but there’s no concrete hint as to who would have hired her (Life Works Bio Chem?), nor is she given any motive. (EDIT: There’s a final, really difficult to unlock dialogue with her that explains this. After she gives you the stone ring for the cave, she’ll refuse to talk to you, but if you keep clicking on her, she’ll eventually come back down. Then you can confront her about stealing, and she’ll reveal that she’s a broke academic, and Life Works Bio Chem paid her to see what Dr. Craven was researching. So that explains that entire subplot, and I actually think it’s a really interesting side story, if only this game didn’t make it a) optional and b) buried in nonintuitive conversations. I feel like these games are not long enough to be able to get away with making their subplots completely optional.)
Halfway through writing this thing, I realized I’m getting alarmingly close to some games I haven’t finished yet, like Ransom of the Seven Ships. Playing that game has made me realize that this one isn’t that bad? I mean, I still think it’s not good, but I would point out that I would group it in with Danger on Deception Island and Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake as “solidly mediocre” games. It might still be the worst of those games, but it’s not in the “aggressively bad” group with The Shattered Medallion and Ransom of the Seven Ships. The Mapus are really anticlimactic as villains, but I thought investigating their shady dealings was kind of fun — I think the game would’ve been better if we spent more time doing that, although I also really like Quigley as a character. Also, the Big Island Bucks system was the worst. Anyway, this game is finally over, and I’ve never been so glad to leave Hawaii in my life.
THE END.
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