Previously on Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy: God help me, we pretty much just spent the entire thing finishing up chores from part one. We came here to figure out who was terrorizing the other valedictorian candidates, but then we tripped over a puzzle book outside, and you know Nancy Drew loves to drop everything about the case she’s solving to figure out some drama from 100 years ago.
We got the music book from Mel, so now we can find out what the bass and coloratura’s ranges are, and find them on the piano. Then we have to play the notes on the lampshades. I’m musically illiterate and still don’t really understand what I’m doing, but whatever, I do it, and we get another star token. This one has a cat on it.
We need a book on etiquette for our next puzzle, but Rachel has it. What does she want us to do for her this time? Surprisingly, her task is (seemingly) pretty easy — she lent her math notebook to Mel, and now she’s afraid to ask for it back because she thinks Mel is a scary, devil-worshipping, Count Chocula-eating goth. Okay, fair enough.
Mel doesn’t have Rachel’s math notebook, because she left it in the library. Of course she did.
And so we go to the library. On our way, we get a text from Gossip Girl, telling us that apparently Corine and Izzy are hanging out now! The dialogue here is so stilted. No teenagers have ever called their friends their “gal pals”, even before the Internet turned it into a euphemism. Nancy’s all shocked that Izzy is “yucking it up” with Corine. I feel like the headmistress should’ve been less worried about Nancy blowing her cover by constantly being in the office, and more worried about Nancy blowing her cover by talking like my grandmother.
Corine is all twitterpated that the school thinks that she and Izzy are besties now. Nancy needles her about sending the picture out herself, but Corine denies it. She snips that Izzy may not like being seen with Corine, but, “Tough. Welcome to my world, queenie.” Sure, that definitely makes me believe the photo was real.
Izzy is not happy about the picture at all, and insists that it’s fake. She thinks that Mel or Leela sent the picture out to get back at her. Damn, sucks to be Corine. She’s so far off Izzy’s radar that Izzy doesn’t even consider her as a suspect.
(It is, by the way, so obviously Corine who sent it. I do like the implication that everyone hates her so much that Izzy thinks someone else would put her in a picture with Izzy to ruin her life.)
Rachel’s math notebook is the lost and found drawer, which is locked. It’s not hard at all; there’s Roman numerals on the outside of the drawer and that’s the combination.
We give the notebook back to Rachel, and decide to get nosy about why she doesn’t like Mel. Rachel’s like, “But I do like Mel,” and Nancy’s like, “But…you said…like five minutes ago…” and Rachel’s like, “Stop saying words.”
Rachel blows off her weirdness and gives us the book on Victorian dining. Inside the book, we find an ID card that is definitely a school photo and not somebody’s selfie shopped onto the background. We’ll need this later.
The book tells us how to identify each type of dining fork, and then we have to click on them in the order that they appear on the menu. Once that’s done, we get another token, this time with a…gorilla? No, wait, it’s an orangutan, as all the tokens are based on animals that appear in Poe stories. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.
Let’s call Ned. I bet he’s feeling neglected, since he has no life of his own outside of Nancy. We can run through all of our suspects with him, so let’s do that. When we gossip about Mel, Nancy’s like, “Believe it or not, there’s a goth living in the room next to mine.” Goths! So exotic! Such a rarity in the wild! She’s just a girl with dyed hair and a lot of Evanescence CDs, Nancy. We also tell Ned about snack shop duty, and Nancy says she enjoys it, because she can listen to everyone’s conversations and overhear some clues. Nancy, all we’ve heard so far is that all the girls think Mr. Harris is a dreamboat.
We finally get to the point, which is that we’ve found out that Rita Hallowell hid something valuable in Ramsey Hall — the dorm we’re staying in — and the Black Cat might be scaring the students off so she can find the treasure. What? This is so unnecessary. We already have a perfectly good setup with the Black Cat going after the valedictorian position, we don’t need a treasure hunt thrown in here.
With all that done, we can finally go to sleep. But then! A tapping noise wakes us up, and we go over the window to see that albino squirrel outside, holding our token. We run over to the window, but it races up a tree. Fuck you, squirrel, are you solving a mystery? We need that token way more!
So anyway, we watch the squirrel jump off the branches, and we have to memorize the order of the branches it jumps to so we can follow its path. Because the branches that hold a squirrel will also definitely hold the weight of a teenage girl.
When we get to the top, we find a beetle token in the squirrel’s nest. And then! We’re about to go down, when we hear the sound of chanting. ~*~*~SPOOOOOKY~*~*~
Nancy looks down and we see a bunch of mysterious figures gathered in a circle under the tree. They chant for a bit, then disperse. When we climb down from the tree, we find a purple bow hairclip on the ground, with a spider on it. I wonder who it could possibly belong to?
Honestly, I find this to be really dumb. There are two kind of major twists thrown into the plot during this late stage, and the one coming up later makes a little more sense, but this secret society thing has jack shit to do with anything. I maintain that this is one of my favorite games, but its pacing is pretty bad.
We go back to our room and go to sleep. Our second day at Waverly dawns, during which time we are going to cram in the rest of the plot, because we spent the first half of the game doing chores.
The second we wake up, Nancy will automatically drop her phone, forcing us to crawl under her desk to get it it. Under the desk is a note from the Black Cat! Nancy notes that Danielle did get a second note after all. Did we…not think she did? Anyway, we also find and pocket a puzzle piece shaped like Oklahoma.
We can also ask Corine about the barrette, but she says it’s not hers.
Then, on our way out the door, we get another note. This one is definitely for us, and Corine tells us to stay away from closets to avoid Danielle’s fate.
We can go around and ask all the girls about the barrette; however, I am not a complete dumbass, so let’s just go straight to Mel. She claims ownership of the barrette, and Nancy says, “I know, it fell out of your hair at that cloak and dagger meeting you were at last night.” HA! Mel snaps that she’s not going to tell us anything, so we should just forget what we think we saw. “So it’s okay if I text everybody about what I ‘think’ I saw?” Nancy chirps. Is it bad that I love Nancy most when she’s blackmailing people?
Mel is not happy at all, but she agrees to tell us. The secret society is called the Blackwood Society, and it’s formed of seven students who go out about once a month and chant under the oak tree. And that’s all they do. Oh. Well, that was anticlimactic. Mel doesn’t know who the other members are — she just received an anonymous text to join, and gets more anonymous texts every time there’s a meeting. Mel gets all emo about how even though the society doesn’t do anything, she enjoys being a part of it because she likes how ~mysterious~ it is. “The unknown is something I’ve always felt…drawn to.” Okay, creepy.
On our way out — dang, everyone is up at 6 AM over winter break? — we get another text, gossiping that Nancy left France because of “secret boyfriend problems.” The only person we’ve even so much as mentioned a boyfriend to is Corine. Oh, Corine.
At some point, we will get a text message that Izzy is out of her room, so if we want to go in there and poke around, now is our chance. Who sends us this text? If it’s ever hinted at, I missed it. Also, isn’t Izzy always out of her room?
You’ll recall all the way back when we first looked at the school website, one student had gotten demerits for using an ID card to break into building. Let’s use that trick to open Izzy and Leela’s door.
Omg, is this the Jacob? What a dreamboat.
(Jokes aside, though, Kyler Mallory had two guys after her, which is just proof that attraction in the Nancy Drew universe is not like our earth attraction.)
We find a key taped to the back of the picture of Izzy on her desk, so we’ll have to use that in a bit. First things, first, though we got a tip from our anonymous texter that Izzy has the Black Cat book we’re looking for. Oh snap!
The book is actually on Leela’s side of the room, but it doesn’t matter, since both she and Izzy denied having the book when we asked. They sit on a throne of lies!
Nancy dorks out that we’ll get credit points for returning the book to the library. Nancy, you fool, we need it to solve the mystery! We’re not actually students here! Credit points don’t matter! I fear Nancy’s undercover alter ego is slowly subsuming her identity and she’ll never be quite the same. Anyway, when we look on the inside cover, we will find some more clues — note the star shapes at the top of the page are the same as our mysterious tokens. Intriguing!
The key we found behind Izzy’s picture opens up this trunk, and inside we find a cloak. “This is the cloak the leader of the Blackwood Society was wearing!” gasps Nancy. As though we could somehow tell all those cloaks apart in the dark, while ten feet off the ground in a tree.
Let’s go harass Izzy about this, shall we? We bug her to tell us the chant that the Blackwood Society does, and she agrees, after extorting an open-ended favor from us. I mean, we’re like ten minutes to the end of the game anyway, so good luck cashing that in, Izzy. She recites for us: “Three is fine, but five is more. Even nineteen defeats four. [Duh? 19 is a higher number?] Should just seven become lore, at least two will find the door.” Okay, so we’ll need that later.
We ask Izzy how she became the leader, and she says that she got an anonymous message to pick up the cloak by the oak tree and pick seven members. And she picked Mel? That would be worth needling her about, but we don’t get to.
Aaaand we have to do snack shop duty one more. We find out that Ms. Lambert asked Mr. Harris out for coffee, and he turned her down! I am scandalized!
It…is somehow not even 7 in the morning. Time has no meaning in this game. Anyway, I call Ned again, because I can. We tell him about the possible Edgar Allan Poe connection, as well as the fact that we got a Black Cat note. Nancy muses that either the Black Cat thinks Nancy is a valedictorian candidate — which is kind of impossible, since we just got here — orrrr they’re trying to get rid of everyone on the floor, regardless of valedictorian candidate status. So we’ve just been…on the wrong track this entire time? Good to know.
In a neat detail, the weather outside changes — it’ll be a full-on blizzard by the end of the game — and we can see snow falling outside of the windows and every time we go outside.
We found a puzzle piece shaped like Oklahoma under our desk, and when we walk by this particular classroom, we can see that it has a puzzle of the US inside. If we try to break in during the day, we get busted and get demerits, so we’ll have to do it at night. We use our ID card for the second time to break into the classroom.
Also in the classroom is this wood carving of a raven. A raven, you say? Rita’s journal mentions a raven, and says we should “observe” the tail, bill, breast, and primary feathers. Pressing them in order will cause…the US map puzzle to fall apart. What the hell, Rita!
So we have to put the map of the US back together again. It’s kind of a pain once you get to the square states in the middle, but overall it’s not too hard. It’s one of the pictures Rachel needs, so we’ll take a picture of it, too.
Once we do that, the raven carving will turn in its frame to reveal a secret compartment with a token inside. We now have the raven token, the orangutan token, the beetle token, and the cat token. You’ll recall there were four star outlines in the Black Cat book, so we are four for four! You will also recall that we saw a bunch of star outlines in that cellar outside, so guess what we’ll have to do with the tokens?
But first, we have another side mystery to solve. As we turn to leave, Nancy will see Rachel sneaking by with a tray from the snack shop. Hold the fuck up, Rachel! Did the designated snack shop boss, Nancy Drew, say you could eat right now?
We follow Rachel to her room, and she disappears behind a panel in the wall. This puzzle gave me no shortage of frustration the first time I played this game; you have to get all the stars to light up without crossing through a star you already lit up.
Even if it takes you an hour to get through the puzzle, it doesn’t make a difference. I finally solve it and go up the staircase behind the panel, where Rachel is still eating her dinner, while another Rachel chills next to her. Wait, what the fuck?
So this is actually Rachel (left) and Kim (right), identical twins who are attending school as one person for the flimsiest reason ever. That’s why Rachel doesn’t always remember conversations she’s had or people she knows; because it’s not always her.
They BS that their mom is dead, and their dad is “clueless” when it comes to raising two girls, so they had to go off to boarding school or risk being put in a foster home. Dude, how bad is their father at parenting? Nancy’s mind is all blown, and she derps that she can’t believe no one else at school knows their secret. Kim admits that someone else does — they’ve been the ones leaving the Black Cat notes, because they’re being blackmailed. They don’t know who’s telling them to the leave the notes, and Nancy offers to look into it, because that’s totally not what she’s been doing the entire time she’s been here. Rachel and Kim are all pumped to have someone on their side.
So like…I like this twist and I think it’s fun — unlike the Blackwood Society subplot, it actually has something to do with the main story, and the hints about Rachel’s double personality are built up over the course of the game. But it’s also bullshit on so many levels. One, they say they’ll drop the ruse once they graduate, but how the fuck do they think Kim is gonna go to college? Only Rachel will have a high school diploma. Kim’s basically going to be an unperson. And shouldn’t someone be looking for her, since she’s completely dropped off the grid?
Also, why the fuck did they need our help doing that web design project? They’re not under any pressure at all! They only have half the workload the average student does!
Anyway, once we leave them, the game will switch us over to the next day. Having found all the tokens, we can go put them in the cellar. We have to use the Black Cat book to arrange the stories in chronological order, then count them off and put the tokens in the according slots. So the orangutan token is the 6th of all the stories, and it goes in the 6th slot, and so on.
The slats slide away, and we find a map of the boiler room, as well as the photo of Rita and her cat that Rachel was looking for. Man, we just keep saving Rachel’s ass, don’t we?
So we put Rita’s photo up on the website alongside the rest of the Waverly scenery photos that I did not bother to write about, and we are finally, finally done with Rachel’s web project.
Rachel tells us that there’s just one more thing that she needs, and then we’ll be done. What the hell, Rachel! Sigh, okay, what is it? She tells us that Corine’s English paper won an award, so a copy of it has to go up on the site. Seriously, she can’t send Kim on these errands?
Since we’re here, let’s ask her more about these twin-switching shenanigans. She tells us that they each attend certain classes, and AP Chem was one of her sister’s (note that she’s careful not to indicate which twin she is in the dialogue). Since her sister got sick that day, she went in her place, and flunked the test.
Hey, now that we’ve seen the twins together, can we tell if we’re talking to Rachel or Kim right now? You actually have to guess, because it’s based on this thing she does with her hair that she doesn’t do at all during this conversation tree. You can tell during later conversations, though, and it becomes obvious when you play through again. Rachel has a lock of hair that she lets hang out in front of her face, like so; Kim always keeps her hair tucked back behind her ears. We’re talking to Rachel right now, but like I said, she doesn’t mess with her hair at all, so it’s just guesswork.
On our way out, we get a text that the Black Cat has gotten Izzy again. We go to talk to her about it, and she calls in her favor by demanding that we figure out what happened. She says it was like her whole hard drive had been erased. Whatever. Back up your work next time, Izzy.
So Corine, how about handing over that English essay, without making us do any menial labor for you? She agrees to put it on a flash drive for us, “But while I do that, could you do me a favor?”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Okay. She wants us to get her a bagel from the snack shop, so we go do snack shop duty one more time. On our way out, we get another note from the Black Cat. Two notes! Dun dun dun!
We give Corine her bagel, get her flash drive, upload Corine’s paper to the school website, and we are shocked to find out that it’s about Edgar Allan Poe and Rita Hallowell! Apparently, Poe’s final works were in his trunk, which was turned over to his doctor and the nurse who was with him when he died. We know that nurse was Rita Hallowell, and it seems like Corine might know, too. Oh snap!
We go to Rachel and ask her why she sent us the second note from the Black Cat. It’s played kinda weirdly, because we know she and Kim are being blackmailed into leaving the notes. It’s not like that’s suddenly changed in the past 24 hours, Nancy. Anyway, Rachel says she didn’t send anything — the Black Cat herself must have left it for us. OH SNAP! (x2)
Uploading the essay was the last thing we needed to do for Rachel, and with like three things left to do in the game, it’s not a minute too soon. Later, Rach!
With everything done, we go back to our room. Corine’s out, and we can finally poke around her desk. We find a piece of paper with Izzy’s password and “Steps to Reformatting” written on it. Oh, Corine. Why you gotta be like this? We also find a sticky note with “CELLAR” written on it.
Welp, let’s go to the cellar and get to the end of the game, shall we?
It’s a full-on blizzard outside and we can barely see in front of us. It’s a nice, eerie touch.
In the cellar, Nancy will find a set of blueprints. She compares them to the ones we found with Rita’s photo, and note that the original blueprints show a room behind the cellar. Spooky!
The blueprints have numbered the levers on the furnace, so we click them based on the Blackwood Society chant: 3, 5, 19, 4, 7, 2. With that, the door in the wall opens. To the Black Cat!
Hi, Corine! She looks really pretty in this cutscene. A little heavy on the eyeliner, but very pretty. Lying on the grate in front of her is Edgar Allan Poe’s last manuscript, which was the treasure Rita Hallowell hid. Corine reveals that she found out about the manuscript when doing research for her English paper, and became the Black Cat so she could search the building with impunity.
Okay, but like…why did she want to find the manuscript that badly? Because she’s an Edger Allan Poe fangirl? Did she think finding the manuscript would clinch the valedictorian race for her? Clearly she didn’t need to get rid of everyone in the dorm to search, since Nancy’s been ducking into the cellar every day with no problem. Also, not to be rude, but if everyone hates Corine, it’s not like any of them would care what she was up to.
Well, whatever. She innocently snips that she’s not the Black Cat, and we reveal that we also know about Rachel and Kim, and how Corine’s been blackmailing them. “You’re smart,” Corine says. “But are you smart enough to live to tell the tale? I don’t think so.”
And with that, she runs out of the cellar, and a gigantic swinging axe descends from the ceiling. What the hell! Where did this come from! Why would you ever put this in a girls’ high school? It’s based on The Pit and the Pendulum, although I would point out that in that story, the narrator is tied down while the pendulum swings. Is there something stopping us from just…standing out of its way?
Well, whatever. Let’s solve a puzzle to get out of here!
So basically the grates on each circle will line up with similarly-shaped stones, and we have to pull the handle to make the stones disappear. The goal is to use all four circles to make all the stones disappear. I’m gonna be real, I don’t understand how this puzzle works, and I pretty much have always won just by dumb luck and repeatedly pulling the handle.
We stop the pendulum from dropping any further, and the door Corine escaped through opens. We follow her, and end up in Mel’s room. Mel’s like, “The fuck is going on here?” and refuses to let us leave until we explain everything. Nancy is all too happy to do so, and Corine is officially caught.
Holy shit Corine looks terrifying.
Nancy explains that without the clues that we found, Corine didn’t know to look in the cellar, so she had to scour the entire building, and that’s why she needed to get everyone out of the rooms. Fair enough. I still don’t know what she wanted the manuscript for, though. Nancy merely explains Corine’s motives as “greed, guile, and a subconscious desire to retaliate against her classmates.” So…she was going to sell the manuscript? Oh my God, I don’t know!
Anyway, Rachel and Kim were expelled, but then a bunch of alumnae banded together and decided to pay for both of them to attend school. Uh…so is Kim going to get a diploma for attending just one semester of school or something?
Megan comes back to school, and the valedictorian race is officially between her, Leela, Mel, and Izzy. And we don’t find out which of them wins! What the fuck!
THE END.
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