Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy (Part One)

~*~SPOOKY~*~

Being that I already did Phantom of Venice back in 2011(!), we get to skip right to The Haunting of Castle Malloy! This game is decent, but at this point, I was getting a little tired of “Nancy spends a spooky night in a haunted house inhabited by a weird family.” It retreads a lot of ground that was already covered in The Curse of Blackmoor Manor and Legend of the Crystal Skull (right down to the swamps). The ending is also pretty lame and unrealistic. I like the various drama between the characters, though, and since the suspects tend to be the most important part of the game for me, that raises it a lot in my opinion. It’s definitely better than Blackmoor Manor, although that’s not saying much.

Also, I believe this is the only Nancy Drew game to explicitly mention alcohol. So, points for that.

My last save in this game is from 2011. God, I’ve been playing these games forever.

So Nancy Drew is set to go to Ireland. She’s been asked to be the maid of honor at Kyler Mallory’s wedding — to Nancy’s surprise, since she hasn’t seen Kyler since she stayed with Nancy as an exchange student “a couple of years ago.” Seriously, Kyler has no other friends she could ask? She had to hit up some girl on another continent who she stayed with for two weeks in high school?

Also, I am definitely going to slip up and call Kyler “Kyle” at some point during this writeup, so you know, don’t be surprised.

But anyway, Nancy is willing to come be in the wedding, since she’ll get to go to Ireland and stay at Kyler’s old family castle, Castle Malloy. She derps that she’s never seen a castle before, much less stayed in one. Uh, Nancy? You have done both of those things.

Kyler’s marrying some dude named Matthew. The wedding’s set for the 1st of June, and Nancy mentions that she has to be there a few days early, so we’re in late May here. And so we go, off to Ireland!

A story: I went to a school with a lot of Irish teachers, and a lot of my classmates’ parents were from Ireland. All of them had Irish accents, and they pronounced “Ireland” something that, to my 5-year-old ears, sounded closer to “Are-land.” So I used to go home after kindergarten and ask my mother where “Are-land” was, and she was like, “Do you mean Ireland?” and I was like, “No, I mean Are-land,” and she was like, “Right, Ireland,” and I was like, “No! Fuck Ireland! Where is Are-land?” And that’s how I spent the first seven years of my life thinking that I was being gaslit about the existence of Ireland.

Anyway, I choose Junior Detective mode and the game begins. Nancy is driving down some dark, abandoned road, talking to Ned. He notes that Nancy’s luggage arrived and she got her rental car, so everything went off without a hitch. There’s nothing that could cause us to end up in some kind of disaster that would kick off a mystery!

Oh, wait, I spoke too soon. Ned asks Nancy if she’s talking on the phone while driving (bad form, Nancy!), and she derps that it’s no problem, since the road is so abandoned. The second she says that, a bright white thing darts across the road, causing Nancy to crash her car. Nice going. Nancy veers off into a ditch, and we hear an “eerie wailing.” ~*~*~SPOOKY~*~*~

We have to walk the rest of the way to the castle, but conveniently it’s like, right up the road. At the entrance to Castle Malloy, we find a creepy doll dressed like a groom, with a ring that says “M” around its neck. DUN DUN DUN!!!

We make our way up the path to the castle, where we’re promptly greeted by some grumpy old Irish dude. He snarls at us that the wedding’s off, so we can fuck off to where we came from and stop bothering him. Nancy tries to tell him that our car’s in a ditch and we have nowhere to go, and he’s like, “Don’t care! Bye now!” Man, we’re not even five minutes into the game and someone’s already being a dick to Nancy.

He tells us to walk down the road to the inn, but we already know we’re not going to be staying there. I just skipped ahead to getting into the castle, but if you do walk to the inn, you’ll find they have no vacancies.

We walk around the castle, at some point we’ll have the option of looking up. The light is still on in one of the windows, and Nancy will say that Kyler must still be up. The old guy told us she was sleeping! He sits on a throne of lies!

Anyway, so we can pick up some rocks and throw them at Kyler’s window. It’s too bad we don’t have a boombox. Then we could get her attention that way, Say Anything-style. I just want to be John Cusack, okay 🙁

We get Kyler’s attention, and she comes down to rescue us. She tells the old guy (“Donal”) to let us in. He grumps about it, but agrees. And thus, we have our “grouchy old man who hates Nancy” character. He won’t be the villain, because they never are.

So this is Kyler, the bride-to-be. Given that she stayed with Nancy as an exchange student, she’s got to be only a few years older than Nancy at the most. I don’t know why a 21-year-old is A) getting married and B) dressed like a medieval lady who’s already given birth to an heir and a spare.

We ask Kyler what’s up with the wedding, and she tells us it’s been postponed, as Matt’s disappeared. Oh snap! Kyler’s not worried, though, as she’s sure Matt’s just playing a prank. Even Nancy thinks that’s stupid: “He disappeared as a prank?” Kyler’s like, “Stop saying words.”

She tells us about the grouchy old guy we met: that’s the castle’s caretaker, Donal Delany. He’s very Irish, and likes Kyler because she’s of Irish descent (even though she’s from London, as her wedding invitation notes). He’s less fond of Matt, who’s an evil Englishman. Donal thinks the fairies will be pissed if the castle becomes a site for that most unholy of unions, between an English and Irish person. Another story: at my aforementioned school, one of my classmates had an Irish mom and an English dad. She told us this once, and all the Irish kids were like, “OMG that is WILD how did they even MEET, were they RUN OUT OF TOWN, did your grandparents DISOWN THEM” and the rest of us were like, “…aren’t Ireland and the UK right next to each other? Why are you guys acting so weird?” (In our defense, we were seven.)

Anyway, Kyler tells us why she’s so convinced Matt will reappear: she can hear him sometimes, calling to her. His voice is faint, but she’s sure it’s him. So he hasn’t run off or anything; he must be hiding somewhere around the castle. Hmm. Fair enough.

We tell Kyler about our car being stuck in a ditch, and how we saw some weird ghost thing that caused us to crash. We show her the doll of Matt, and she freaks out that the doll is wearing his ring. Then she decides that the white thing was probably Matt himself, trying to scare us. Matt better pony up the money for car repair when we find him, then.

We ask if she’s here by herself, and she tells us about our other suspects: there’s a guy named Kit Foley staying downstairs; he’s Matt’s best friend. Like Kyler, he lives in London, but his parents are Irish, which Donal is over the moon about. Gosh, I wonder if Donal wants Kyler to break up with Matt and marry Kit instead? Speaking of Donal, we ask about him, and Kyler tells us that he sort of came with the castle — Grandpa Mallory’s estate pays him, and Kyler figures that since her grandpa liked him so much, she’ll put up with him, even if Donal spends all his time going on about fairies and leprechauns and Riverdance. Because he’s Irish, you know.

Kyler tells us what she’s been up to recently, which is reading about her heritage. She didn’t even know she was Irish until her grandpa died and left her Castle Malloy. See, he changed his name from Malloy to Mallory, so nobody would know he was Irish. He was all ashamed on account of his brother, Brendan Malloy, who was a spy during World War II. Brendan Malloy lived at the castle during the war, and he was rumored to be a double agent, passing his intel to the Axis. The ~truth~ might be somewhere in the castle, but Kyler muses that given how smart Brendan was, it’s unlikely to ever be found. Uh, but is Brendan smarter than Nancy Drew? That’s a trick question, nobody is smarter than Nancy Drew. We’ll bust open your family’s secrets, Kyler! If you need references, just ask Joy Trent!

Weirdly, Kyler tells us that the five months she spent with the Drews — Nancy, Carson, Hannah, and Togo* — were a “very happy time.” That’s why she invited Nancy to be her maid of honor. Let it go, Kyler. Nancy hasn’t even mentioned you before this game.

* At no point before has Nancy mentioned her dog, Togo, so you’d be forgiven for having no idea what Kyler’s talking about.

Finally, with all the exposition out of the way, Kyler gives us our first task. Yup, there’s a mystery to be solved, and Kyler’s just going to sit on her ass and make us do chores for her. She’s one of those suspects. Anyway, she wants us to use the printing press downstairs to print their wedding invitations. Matt was supposed to do it, but then he disappeared. Alrighty. Kyler also notes that they have all sorts of mechanical gizmos lying around, as Brendan Malloy was something of an inventor. Not unlike Albert Penvellyn, in another game where we wander around a spooky old house in the middle of the night while vague supernatural shenanigans go on.

Kyler’s hanging in the library, which we can explore a bit. We find some puzzles that we don’t have the pieces to complete yet, except for a Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Oh, man, I frickin’ love Tower of Hanoi puzzles (Towers of Hanoi?). We complete it, and Nancy gets a lantern. “This’ll come in handy,” she notes. We also find a book on the Zodiac. Interesting stuff.

There’s another door in the library, but when we open it, there’s a straight drop down. Jesus, Kyler, I know you said the castle’s not in the greatest shape, but at least make sure it has floors before you invite people over.

Off we go, exploring the rest of the ~*~spooky~*~ castle. We find a creepy nursery, where a crow is just chilling on one of the tables. It flies off when we enter, and drops an orange gemstone. We also rock the creepy abandoned rocking horse, and a token rolls out. Intriguing!

There’s a puzzle box on the shelf, where you have to flip around the pictures of otters until they match. When you get it right, the box opens to give us a gear. I’m guessing we’ll need a few of these.

“EVIL RETURNS TO THE EVILDOER”, plus some smashed china. ~*~*~SPOOKY~*~*~!!!

In the nursery is a book, titled “Le lapin bleu” (“The Blue Rabbit”), which we will need later. Right now, though, we have to do a puzzle with the dollhouse. The various dolls — which are all made out of cloth, like the doll of Matt we found — can be moved, and have to be placed according to the instructions on the side. When they’re in their proper places, we get another token. On our way out, we can look at the fireplace, and we find a pair of broken glasses lying there. HMMM.

We go downstairs to find the printing press, and also find another one of our suspects! This is Kit Foley, Matt’s best friend. He immediately tells us that his black eye is from walking into a door. I bet it’s not.

Nancy remarks that he doesn’t have much reason to be here anymore, and Kit says he’s not going to leave Kyler alone until she comes to her senses and realizes that Matt got cold feet and ditched their wedding. He explains that Matt and Kyler’s relationship is “tempestuous”, and they’re getting married too soon. Fair enough. I mean, they’re like barely out of college. He tells us that he and Kyler went out for a walk, and when they came back, Matt was gone. His luggage is missing from the nursery, too, which is how Kit knows Matt’s not coming back.

Moving on: if he’s from London, why does he sound so American? “Oh my God, Nancy, you can’t just ask people why they’re American,” he says. No, just kidding. Kit tells us that he is American, but his family moved to London when he was young. (His father works for Krolmeister, everyone’s favorite fake Nancy Drew company.)

We ask what he’s working on, and he tells us he works for a real estate development company, and he’s doing some sketches for their projects. He muses that the land the castle sits on would be the perfect place for some luxury homes. They would sell like lightning!

THEY WOULD NOW, WOULD THEY? I’M ONTO YOU, KIT.

The printing press is down here, so let’s print the wedding invitations. It’s not that hard; there’s a plate by the press, and you just put the black ink on it, put paper on top of the inked plate, and press it. When it’s done, Nancy will look at the invitation, and note that Matt’s best man is a guy called Alan Paine, not Kit. “That’s kinda weird,” Nancy notes. Is it as weird as inviting some rando you barely know to be your maid of honor, though? Also weird: dude, are Kyler and Matt both orphans? That’s rough.

We can see a table covered in wedding presents and crap, and we find a weight for the puzzle in the library. And! We find a most interesting photo: I think it’s meant to be of Kyler and Kit, but honestly, the graphics in these games are so jank that I can’t be certain. Anyway, they look like they used to be quite friendly. Let’s keep that in mind.

That’s pretty much all there is to do inside the castle, so let’s go outside. Donal is off getting wasted at the pub; maybe we should go talk to him. When we go outside, though, Nancy sees a bizarro light coming from one of the towers. We know it can’t be Kyler, because that would require her to get off her butt and do something. Furthermore, when we ask the various characters about it, we find out that the staircase was destroyed years ago, and there’s no way to get into the tower. MYSTERIOUS.

So we can wander around the castle grounds in third person. When we get near an area we can enter, it’ll light up. There’s a garden, a fairy ring, a bunch of crosses, and a bayou bog. When we wander into the garden, we’ll see that crow again, and Nancy will wonder what it’s doing here. How do you even know it’s the same crow, Nancy?

In the garden, we find Kyler’s wedding vows. Gasp, shock! She seems to be having second thoughts about the whole matter, which I guess is supposed to be suspicious. I’m mostly relieved that these two twenty-year-olds are rethinking this.

We find Donal at the “Screaming Banshee” inn. He’s all cranky because he wants to get wasted, but the mix maid’s out sick. Of course, if someone (read: us) were to make him a drink, he might be in a better mood. Yeah, whatever, Donal. Here we go with the menial labor again.

Anyway, the mix maid game is pretty fun. It’s your average Nancy Drew food prep game, but better because there’s alcohol. I mean, Donal calls his drink “juice”, but that’s a big ol’ beer tap right there, so it’s not fooling anyone.

On the other hand, the method behind this game is incredibly stupid. The bartender, Seamus, is like, “Oh yeah, I like to draw pictures of everyone’s order instead of writing them down. So you get to figure out the picture, then look in the book to see what the order is! The recipe is also written in pictures!” I think perhaps Seamus is just overcompensating for a failed art career in his past. Anyway, we also get to keep our tips, so we can also play this game whenever we need money.

Donal’s tongue has been successfully loosened by beer juice, and now he’ll answer our questions. We ask what he thinks happened to Matt, and he’s like, “Who’s Matt? Do you mean THE SASANACH?” Ooookay, Donal. He thinks “the Good People” have taken him, to stop the filthy sinful union of an Englishman and Irish woman. And wherever they’ve taken Matt, he’s not coming back. “‘Tis not the first time [they’ve] seen fit to meddle in the affairs of Castle Malloy. Caused the explosion, they did.” Nancy’s like, “Oooh, what explosion?” Maybe I don’t care, Nancy. Maybe I just want to find Matt, and not spend all of my time digging into this family’s tragic past. However, we need to do so in order to solve the mystery, so let’s listen to Donal drunkenly babble on about the history of Castle Malloy.

He tells us about Brendan — conveniently the only other Malloy we’ve heard of — and his shenanigans during the war. Apparently Brendan was in charge of a rocket fuel project, which he thought he could just work on in his garage, instead of like, a lab. Anyway, one night he blew up pretty much the whole castle, taking himself, his wife, and their daughter Fiona with it. Donal thinks this was the work of the Good People, who had “taken a shine” to Fiona and would rather take her to the great fairy ring in the sky than see her grow old. Nancy’s like, “That’s pretty fucked up,” and Donal ominouses that the Good People have plans for Nancy, too. For one, they’ve trapped her at Castle Malloy: her car keys had disappeared from the car. Nancy’s like, “It’s a rental so…whatever.”

Back to the point, Nancy asks if Donal hates all English people equally, or if Matt is special. Donal snarls that Matt is arrogant and has no respect — he keeps nosing around the castle and getting his sticky English paws on everything. Nancy’s like, “Well, what do you think of Kit?” It turns out that Donal frickin’ loves Kit, because Kit’s like, a quarter Irish or whatever. He chirps that it’s obvious that Kit’s in love with Kyler, and they’re totes magotes meant to get married and have lots of Irish babies together. “Wait, Kit’s not in love with Kyler,” Nancy derps. Oh, Nancy. What kind of detective are you? “Blind, are ya now?” Donal asks. Hee. He thinks Kit showed up early to stop the wedding, but the fairies did his work for him. “Ah, the luck of the Irish,” Donal sighs. I thought the luck of the Irish is when you become a leprechaun after someone steals your lucky coin?

Finally, we can ask Donal about the name of this inn — what is a banshee, anyway? This is just exposition for the wacky things that will soon happen in this game. Donal explains that a banshee is a wailing woman — sometimes also taking the form of a crow — who wears a gray robe and has crazy hair. Their appearance is a warning of DEATH! Dun dun dun! I’m gonna spoil this game for you and tell you that absolutely no one dies. I feel cheated. Anyway, Nancy’s like, “Oh, I totally saw one on my way here.” Donal muses that for Nancy to have seen a banshee on her first night in Ireland makes her “a very special lass indeed.” You know it, Donal.

Alright, and that was Irish Mythology 101 with Donal. I play mix maid one more time, so I’m up to 15 dollars/euros/tokens/whatever form of currency this game is using. Then I go outside, where there’s a phone we can use. Nancy puts in her phone card (from the company “LepreCOM,” haha, get it), and we can call Ned or Bess. They’re both at a party (given by the “Dunhills”), and this game presumably takes place over the course of one night, as they never leave.

I call Ned first, and tell him about driving off into a ditch. Nancy’s like, “But it’s not my fault, I was run off the road by a banshee!” Ned’s less than impressed with this excuse. We also tell him about the mystery on our hands, and how Kyler thinks Matt’s just disappeared as a joke. “[He] thinks disappearing less than a week before his wedding is funny? I’m no expert on marriage or anything, but I don’t think that’s a good sign.” Hee. We also tell him about Kit’s black eye from walking into a door, and Ned notes, “When a guy says that, it usually means he walked into some other guy’s fist.” Also hee! I love when Ned has a personality in these games.

Nancy notes that it’s a little weird that Kyler refuses to believe Matt’s disappearance is anything but a joke. Could she be suspicious? She totally could be, although I think given how her maid of honor is some girl she met once in high school, Kyler has some deeper issues that this game won’t explore. She’s an orphan so…abandonment, maybe? It’d make sense as to why she’s so delusional about her fiancé disappearing. Interestingly, the option to talk about Kyler comes up along with our other three suspects, but you can only choose one of them. I both love and hate when games do this; if I had known I could only talk about one of them, I probably would’ve picked gossiping about Kit’s unrequited crush. On the other hand, I do kinda like when the game forces you to stick with whatever crappy choices you make. Anyway, Nancy moves on to talking about the mysterious lights in the tower: our next step is figuring out a way to get in there, because there are no stairs to the tower, but clearly someone’s up there. Nancy thinks it might be Matt, and Ned snarks, “You just said there’s no way to get in. Did he learn how to fly?” Man, Ned, I know you’re excited about finally having a personality, but slow your roll dissing Nancy’s deductive skills.

That’s all we can talk about with Ned, so then Nancy calls Bess and George. Bess chirps that this party is full of shirtless guys grilling things and she never wants to leave. Heh. We fill them in on our mystery; Bess and George also think that Matt’s disappearance is a dick move. Nancy muses that she doesn’t think Matt’s disappearance is a prank — she thinks it has something to do with the possible banshee who ran her off the road. “You wrecked your car?” Bess asks, all shocked. Are you new here, Bess? Nancy tries to explain, but then Bess and George are, as George says, “hopelessly distracted by a truly amazing set of washboard abs.” I like all these references to topless men in this game. Between this and the beer, this game might be rated E+ instead of E.

We tell them about finding the freaky doll of Matt (George: “Dolls are freaky, period”), and Bess says it sounds like we’ve found a mystery. “Imagine that,” George deadpans. We also tell them about Kyler possibly having second thoughts about her wedding, and they muse that she might have made Matt disappear so they wouldn’t have to get married. HMM.

That’s the end of the conversation tree for them, and so we ought to head back to the castle. Up next: Kyler gives us more errands. Everyone tells us that the bog is creepy, dangerous, and that we might die in there, so of course we go waltzing right in.