Previously on Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships: We met our one and only suspect on the island, so now we’re just like finding out shady stuff about him while pretending we don’t know he’s the culprit. The kidnappers were all, “Ugh, hurry up and find our treasure already,” even though there’s no timekeeping system in this game, so like half a day has passed at most.
So the next bit in El Toro’s journal is about how some of his crew used pulleys to lift rocks — ergo, our next move must be to reconstruct this pulley system. Now, see, at some point way in the beginning of the game, I already played a game with the monkeys and won the pulley. I don’t know when or how, but I did. I completely forgot this when I came back to it, so I was running around wondering why I couldn’t trigger Nancy noticing that the pulley was missing, or why the stupid monkeys wouldn’t give it to me. My hand to God, I played at least three rounds of that coloring game with the monkey only to find that the pulley wasn’t among the prizes.
Yeah, it turns out it was in my inventory the entire time. That was embarrassing. So anyway, you put the missing gear in place and loop the rope around it. You want to have 30 feet of rope left when you’re done.
That’ll lift up the stone slab to its right, and we get another rainbow dial. I think we have five at this point? We have this one, the one we found in the octopus cave, the one we found in the bat cave, the one from the sudoku chest, and the one we got from the monkeys. Cool beans.
These games are largely non-linear, but this next bit doesn’t trigger until you get the dial from the pulley game. I know this because the pulley was driving me crazy so I tried to move on to this part, but I kept digging up random stuff and not the stuff I was supposed to be finding. Anyway, I have gotten the pulley dial now, so now our metal detector will successfully detect things that advance the plot and not just regular metal junk. So we go back to Shark Cove, and the very first thing Nancy finds is Bess’s bracelet. Oh snap!
Besides that, what we’re looking for is a bunch of small coins with the shapes of animals punched in the middle. We’ll also dig up a wheel that we can put all the coins on, which will help us solve our puzzle.
We still do dig up some stuff that we don’t need. This sure would’ve been helpful if we were in Ireland a whole other game ago.
So anyway, once we find all the coins, we put them on this wheel, and rotate them until they overlap in a way that makes the center picture look like the owl coin we found on Dove Isle. When that’s done, we get another rainbow disk.
While I was wandering around the Blue Hole wondering where the fuck I could find a pulley, not realizing it was right there in my inventory, I tried going scuba diving down the titular blue hole. It was super dark down there and Nancy noted that we need a light. As ever, the solution is not an underwater lantern or flashlight or something that you think would come with the scuba gear. Instead, we’re going to bargain with John for some glowsticks. Glowsticks are the lightbulbs of the Nancy Drew world.
When we roll up to John, he immediately starts whining at us about how annoying George was. Nancy freaks out at the realization that George was out here talking to our suspect. She’s not trained in the ways of clumsy interrogation the way Nancy is! John tells us to tell her to leave him alone. Moving on, does he have a glowstick we can use? He sure does, but only if we’ll program his GPS for him. “Is there a reason why you don’t program it?” Nancy asks. “Yeah. Because you’re here, and you want a glowstick.” Hee. Once again, he tells us that he just might tell the police on San Salvador (part of the Bahamas, by the by) that we’re out here and need to be rescued.
This is what the map should look like when it’s done. Half Moon Bay is already there as a reference, so you fill in the rest of the coordinates by counting off from there. It’s not math, but it is numbers. F that noise.
Once we’re done, we give it back to John, and he gives us some glowsticks.
So George, you have some explaining to do. She’s like, “He was so annoying and evil!” and Nancy’s like, “I appreciate you not just hanging around like a useless Hardy Boy, but maybe don’t antagonize the person who is clearly our culprit.” “I’ll be good,” George promises. Heh.
So we’ve got all the dials, and now it’s time to go swimming!
We found a plate with a bunch of symbols on it way back when we got stuck in the bat cave, and now we see them again on all the rocks here. Each symbol corresponds to a word in a paragraph El Toro wrote in his journal. So we follow the symbols in the order their words appear in the paragraph, and that’ll lead us to a door.
All the rainbow dials will automatically be placed in the door. They have to be arranged in this order: bee, ant, donkey, owl, panther, and camel. Then they have to be spun so the same colors are facing each other.
When that’s done, the door opens, and we find yet another puzzle. At least we’re not underwater anymore. This one is kind of tricky; it’s a bunch of hourglasses that are all running down at different speeds, and we have to turn them so that they all empty at the same time. I don’t have any screencaps of actually doing the puzzle, because keeping an eye of where the sand was, where the next hourglass to turn was, and taking screencaps was too much to do at once.
Once we’re done with that, we get a key. Then another door will open, and we’ll find El Toro’s treasure. We also find a map of the western US, and Nancy’s like, “This is the most important thing in this room!” So we grab the map and turn around to head on out of there. Uh, Nancy? Do the kidnappers not want that huge chest of coins and jewelry? Nancy?
Ooookay, apparently not. So we roll on back to the hotel, and George shows us a note from the kidnappers. They know Nancy has the treasure, so they want her to fork it over to John, and then Nancy will receive instructions on how to find Bess. And of course, Nancy must deliver the treasure alone. George doesn’t like that at all, but Nancy points out that “given the animosity” between her and John, it’s probably best she doesn’t come along. (If you didn’t make George talk to John, Nancy will just say, “Even if he’s not [in on the kidnapping], we could blow everything if you contradict these instructions.”) George is like, “But what if something happens to you? What if I never see you again?” Nancy’s like, “Did you just doubt my mystery-solving skills? You stay here and think about what you’ve done.”
There’s no more conversation options for Coucou, either, so the only thing left to do is go to the beach and trigger the end of the game.
We bring the map to John, and he’s like, “Hell no, get your crazy kidnapping drama away from me.” Nancy says that he has to take it or we’ll never see Bess again, and he heaves a huge sigh and is all, “Fine, if you insist, I’ll take your map that shows the way to a bunch of buried treasure. WHAT A HASSLE.”
And now, there’s one final thing he wants us to do for him. Okay, sure, what’s that?
“Just watch.”
We watch accordingly, and John pulls off yet another wig. “Remember me, Nancy?” he asks.
“Oh my gosh,” Nancy says. “You’re…that guy from New York. The one who threatened the life of Rick Arlen. You’re the agent! David…? No. Daniel? Darren? Darwin. Derek? Dick. Drake –!” HA! You all remember Dwayne Powers, don’t you? He’s back, all the way from 1999, to seek revenge on Nancy. I wonder what inspired the writers to make him the villain? He’s certainly become quite memetic in the Nancy Drew fandom, but I don’t know if that’s because he comes back in this game. I guess he’s actually the first Nancy Drew villain proper — the culprit of Secrets Can Kill isn’t one of the suspects we can talk to — and it was the 10th-year anniversary of Stay Tuned for Danger, so that might be the reason. Anyway, Nancy’s like, “Shouldn’t you be in jail?” and Dwayne reveals that he did go to prison — “for several long years.” Like, say from 1999 to 2009? Are they acknowledging the passage of time in these games? And yet, Nancy is still 18 years old.
Dwayne reveals his evil plan to us: while he was in prison, he met a volunteer who used to work at the monkey research center. The volunteer innocently told him all about the island and gave him El Toro’s journal, which he thought would lead to the mythical city of Cibola. After getting out of jail, Dwayne decided to lure Nancy to the island and have her find El Toro’s treasure for him, so that he could be rich and also have sweet, sweet revenge. He planted clues suggesting the Gibsons were the kidnappers to throw Nancy off his track. Uh…what clues were those? We found a couple of things suggesting that someone was stalking Nancy, and we talked to George about the Gibsons exactly once. Well, whatever. Dwayne cackles that Nancy fell for his plan — he even made her believe there were mysterious Others on the island! So…was that him moving through the bushes earlier, then? Because if not, there might not be other people, but we haven’t ruled out the polar bear possibility yet. Dwayne gloats that we fixed his boat for him, too. Nancy’s like, “Whatever, I do chores and solve mysteries for all my villains.” Yeah, you’re not special, Dwayne. Anyway, to the point: now that he’s revealed himself, where’s Bess?
Dwayne tells us that she’s been close by this entire time. Then he goes over to pull something from behind a tree, while ominousing that we should watch where we step. This seems like a good time run, right, Nancy?
So Dwayne slooowly walks over the tree and slooowly reaches behind it, and Nancy just stands there, derping, “Oh no.” And then we get yanked up in one of his traps again. Oh, Nancy.
Dwayne dumps us down a hole somewhere. The good news is, Bess is here! Hi, Bess! Wow, she does not look great. They spent more effort on George than her, that’s for sure. But I mean, she has been underground for a few days, so maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on her.
Bess babbles on about how glad she is to see us — weirdly, she mentions that it was getting stuffy down there, until Dwayne opened up the top to throw Nancy in. Was he just gonna let Bess suffocate? Anyway, Bess has found a door in the wall, so we just have to open it and escape to freedom!
Or…not. So the key we got from the hourglass puzzle will open up the door, which will lead us to El Toro’s room. I guess he just chilled here until he died…conveniently sitting up, with a sword in his hand? I don’t think that’s how death works. But anyway, we find yet another key clutched in his skeletal hand, so we just yank it out from his bones. I like how Nancy has no qualms about touching a 500-year-old skeleton.
The way out is a panel against the wall that’s full of keyholes. But which one? El Toro’s journal gives us a hint, but first, there’s one last step to finding his treasure. His journal has a drawing of one of the keyholes in particular, and if we use the key on that one, we find a box behind one of the paintings.
So we’ve found more treasure. Cool, cool. And now to get out of here.
(By the way, I brought up Nancy’s journal at this point, just to see what she thinks about meeting Dwayne Powers again. “Now Bess and I are both trapped. If George knew, oh boy would I be in trouble.” I think George is kind of the least of our worries right now, Nancy.)
Man, the last entry in El Toro’s journal is depressing. In my ~research~ for this game, I came across the wiki entry for the Narváez expedition and…Jesus, “16th-century European explorer” really is not a job I would want to do.
The way out is a puzzle, naturally. Frustratingly, the solution changes every time, so walkthroughs won’t help. Basically, the green is bronze, and the red is iron. El Toro’s journal tells us that if the bottom row has 2+ cutout plates, then the correct keyhole isn’t round; if the skull plate is next to an iron plate, then the keyhole has a cutout pattern, and so on.
To freedom!
Whoops. Okay, let’s try again.
I’M NOT GOOD AT PUZZLES, OKAY 🙁
OH THANK GOD. The third time around, I pick the right keyhole (and the right key…it turns out I mixed up El Toro’s skeleton key and the hourglass key, which obviously fucked me right up), and a door opens in the wall.
When we get back to the hotel, George has finally gotten the satellite phone to work, and a floatplane has arrived to rescue us. She and Bess scream and hug, and she tells us that she’s called the Coast Guard, plus the police in every surrounding jurisdiction. Nancy, being Nancy, convinces the floatplane to take her up to she can help search for Dwayne from the air.
But when they find his boat, it’s empty! DUN DUN DUN! Nancy wonders if Dwayne escaped after all, or if he fell overboard and drowned. Well, it’s good to know the possibility is open for him to return to another game! It would be funny if they did a game where all the suspects were past villains out to get revenge on Nancy. That’s assuming HER ever makes another game, of course.
The Gibsons showed up like the next day, and they were like, “Wow, some crazy shit happened while we were gone.” They offer to let us stay and have a real vacation, but obviously Nancy and her friends are like, “We were just deeply traumatized on this island, so…maybe not.”
El Toro’s treasure was also turned over to the authorities, and now Spain and the Bahamas are fighting over whether or not Spain gets to keep it, since El Toro found it in the name of Glorious España, or if the Bahamas get to keep it, since it was found on their land and all, and also colonization stopped being a fun concept in the 400+ years since El Toro died. Nancy’s like, “Whatever, geopolitics are for squares.”
And that’s the end! Let’s see what special bonus features I picked up on. What’s interesting about this game is that it’s pretty non-linear, and you can theoretically still beat it even after missing some huge plot points. You get a special award for “finding the Aussie” — I don’t know a single person who’s played this game and not busted Dwayne’s fake Jamaican persona, but apparently you can (I did forget to grab the license when I was coming out of the bat cave and had to turn around and get it). That would be an interesting scene to see — I’m guessing he would just pull off his fake dreads wig instead of the bandana, in that case. As I mentioned before, you don’t have to make George talk to him either, but if you do, there are some slight changes in dialogue all the way to the end of the game. That’s some nice attention to detail.
You don’t have to find that hidden box with the gold bird in El Toro’s room, either, but I did, so whatever.
I…kind of liked this last third of the game? Once I never had to go climbing up the monkey rock ever again, and also didn’t have to go sailing all over creation, it started to be a lot more enjoyable. The puzzles at the end strike a nice balance between being challenging but not mind-blowingly frustrating (like UNDERWATER SUDOKU, BUT WITHOUT NUMBERS, WHILE YOU SLOWLY WATCH YOUR AIR SUPPLY DISSIPATE). The Dwayne reveal is ridiculous but remains fun, and as I said, I like the whole concept of a villain coming back for revenge on Nancy. I love continuity-heavy series, so I enjoyed the references to past games, as well as having a friend of Nancy’s around to snark on her personality traits. I know not to expect too much from children’s mystery adventure games — and I know the games make more sense with only loose references to their own history, because otherwise how would you make 30 games without Nancy ever aging? — but I still like the idea of a serialized Nancy (my kingdom for a Nancy Drew TV series!). This game came really close to pushing all my buttons, and then it gave up and was terrible. I could’ve done with more talking to George or more clues that the culprit was stalking Nancy, but instead I got a lot of convoluted navigation and BS puzzles, George being useless, and a stupid talking parrot. And the monkeys. I am never over those monkeys.
THE END.
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