“Wow, did they finally show Nancy’s face?” you might be asking. You’d be forgiven for thinking the redheaded chick on the cover of a Nancy Drew game is Nancy herself, but no, it’s some other character in the game who happens to share her exact description. Well, except for the ugly mom hair. Behind her are two of our other suspects, and some random girl. Who the fuck is that?
Whoops, I almost skipped this one! 2010 was a big year for Nancy Drew, where three games were released instead of their usual two. One of those games was this, a remastered version of the very first game, so it’s not listed chronologically with the rest of the series on Wikipedia. Consequently, I almost forgot about it and nearly went straight to Shadow at the Water’s Edge. Honestly, that would’ve been preferable, but this game exists, so here we are.
Full disclosure: I have played the original Secrets Can Kill once, and refuse to ever play it again to take screencaps. I just…can’t do the disc-switching again. I can’t.
Anyway, let’s go back to 1998, to Nancy Drew’s very first case. Nancy’s in Florida visiting her Aunt Eloise, when a murder occurs at the local high school. An undercover detective (“Beech”) has asked if Nancy will help solve the murder. Nancy writes a letter to her dad, happily announcing that she’s going to call the case “Secrets Can Kill!”, because that’s an appropriate reaction to a teenager getting murdered.
Not much has changed from the original game. The changes are mostly cosmetic, to fix the technological limitations that existed in 1998, as well as some changes to the suspects and end sequence to bring the game more in line with the formula of the later ones. The plot is basically the same, though, as is most of the bizarro dialogue and puzzles.
Honestly, this game doesn’t succeed as either a remaster or on its own. The 2D character models from the original obviously don’t fit with the series’ later aesthetic, but the misshapen lumps of clay that are now the characters are out-of-this-world bad. It’s weird because the graphics were improving, and then I just don’t know what happened here. Hulk and Connie are the only ones who look anything resembling normal. They kept the hissy, looping background music, which was already creepy but now also adds a weird uncanny valley effect to the game, because it’s so low-quality in comparison to the rerecorded voices and semi-updated graphics. The plot is still dumb and the puzzles don’t make any sense. The nostalgia factor is cool, as is being able to play this game without having to switch discs every five minutes, but otherwise…eh. Ehhh. Mercifully, it’s pretty short.
We start off at Aunt Eloise’s house. She’s at the school, but has left us a note telling us where to find everything we need. The key to the school library is in her safe, but unhelpfully, she hasn’t told us what the combination to the safe is. “Remember not to enter in a wrong combination!!!” she writes. Well, there would be no danger of that if you told us what it was, Eloise.
The combo is hidden amongst Aunt Eloise’s personal effects, so let’s snoop through all her stuff. There’s a key to the school teachers’ lounge in one of her books, and in the desk drawer, we find a letter from her sorority, “Sigma Phi Kappa Delta.”
The keypad for the safe is made up of Greek letters, so it’s safe to say that “Sigma Phi Kappa Delta” is the combination. The library key is hanging on the inside of the door, and there’s some other stuff in the safe that we can mess with.
Oh, fuck me, it’s a slider puzzle.
Inside the slider puzzle box is a note, telling us that Aunt Eloise’s school login is “Eloise Drew” and her password is “O WISE ELDER.” So it’s just an anagram of her name. I feel like we could’ve figured that out without opening the box.
Alright alright alright, we have everything we need, so now we can head over to the school and start poking around. Before we can leave, though, opening the safe has triggered a call from Detective Beech. He tells us that he’s at Maxine’s Diner, and he wants us to come see him once we’ve got some information. “What’s our cover?” Nancy asks. “Our what?” derps Detective Beech. Nancy’s like, “You know…our cover? Because we’re undercover? What kind of detective are you?” Hmm, is Detective Beech suspicious, or just incompetent? It’s so hard to tell in these games. Beech blusters that he’ll be our “Uncle Steve”, which doesn’t sound gross and sketch at all.
So we go over to the scene of the crime, Paseo del Mar High School. Hey, let’s call Ned and let him know how we’re doing. I’m such a good girlfriend. He answers in this super fake accent and is possibly pretending to be a woman. We’re like, “What the fuck?” and Ned derps, “I thought with you being undercover and everything, I had to take on a different persona!” Nancy’s really gonna have to carry everyone else in this game, isn’t she? We tell him not to mention the case to anyone, and he says, “Your secret’s safe with me…along with your heart.” Ugh. Ned, I like you. Please be less embarrassing.
Note the shout out to the Royal Palladium in the poster above!
So we can explore the high school, and we run into the first of many “WTF” things about this game. The clues in Nancy Drew games are always realistic, or as realistic as these games can be. You find notes left in suspects’ desks, you break into safes, people specifically leave clues for a treasure hunt after their death; generally, they try to make the clues plausible objects or puzzles. This game, however, has odd puzzles left on the bulletin board, that turn out to be hints about Jake’s fate. The game attempts to explain this by saying Jake was on bulletin board duty. So…he knew he was going to die? He decided that leaving cryptic anagrams in the corners of the school bulletin boards was the best prevention?
It reminds me of more classic kids’ games, like Carmen Sandiego, where the puzzle-solving is much more strictly segregated from the gameplay elements. It’s definitely something they moved away from in the next few games, so it’s weird to see that they didn’t bother to remaster it.
Let’s use Aunt Eloise’s key and go into the library. There’s a drawer full of maps, and another puzzle is found on the back of one of the maps.
The red and blue letters unscramble to reveal the message, If anything happens to me, search under my combo in catalog. We don’t know his combo yet, so we’ll come back to that.
Each cryptic clue we find in this game is also accompanied by a chemical symbol and a number. Nancy is writing all of them down, so we can come back to them later. We pass by a table with a notebook on it. The notebook says, “JAKE WAS HERE”, and it’s full of clues! Clues that we don’t understand yet, such as “the elements tell the order” and “the answer to my fate lies in the box.” The only one that makes any kind of sense is “A matchbook behind Maxine’s schedule holds the first step.”
We leave the library and walk down the hall to the “study dome”, where we meet this nerd. His name is Hal Tanaka — well, actually, his first name isn’t really Hal, but he’s not going to tell us what his real first name is, because Nancy’s white ass probably doesn’t know how to pronounce it, and nobody calls him by his Japanese name anyway, so we can just call him Hal. So really, you didn’t need to tell us any of that at all, Hal. “Why do you think it’s easier to have an American name?” derps Nancy. “Because of fucking racism, Nancy,” Hal doesn’t say. JK, he wants to fit in and succeed in America so he can bring honor to us all. He’s a total nerdy Asian stereotype. You’d think they would’ve remastered that. They could’ve put “Now with more racial sensitivity!” on the box.
(Bizarrely, one of the dialogue options after that is “Why do you admire Americans?” Yeah, clearly they didn’t change all of the pre-Bush administration dialogue.)
So anyway, Hal, what’s new around school? He tells us that a murder was just committed. “Everyone is very stressed out.” Yeah, murder does that to you. He says that Jake was a bully, and nobody really liked him. Then he clams up and tells us that he has to study. That seems a little suspicious, but Nancy’s all, “Ah yes, you love studying because you’re Asian.”
We have Aunt Eloise’s key for the teachers’ lounge, so we should go check it out. The teachers’ lounge is right off of the student lounge, and what a coincidence, the only person sitting in the student lounge is the prissy hall monitor. We can try to use the key on the door, but she’ll snip at us that until we can show her some teaching credentials, we’re not allowed in.
Say hi to Connie, hall monitor extraordinaire. I take back what I said about her and Hulk being the only ones who look remotely normal; it’s just Hulk. She immediately starts gossiping about how the school has been TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL! lately. With very little prompting, she tells us all the gory details of Jake’s death: she heard he was pushed down the stairs, and his face was all messed up, like he was in a fight before he died. Well, what kind of guy was Jake? Who would he be fighting with? “Jake Rogers was a total creep,” Connie snaps. “Nobody liked him!” O! Kay! I know teenagers can be alarmingly unsympathetic to each other, but nobody feels a little bad that he was murdered? They don’t even feel bad for like, his parents?
The conversation ends there, but we can just step back and start it again. We ask if Connie’s noticed the weird messages on the bulletin boards, and she seethes that it’s probably the same person who keeps setting off the soda machine alarm. Once she catches them, she is going to bring the wrath of the hall monitor guards down on them. Anyway, what does Connie know about Hal? She shrugs that he’s a total workaholic, and he’s been burning himself out trying to get scholarships for college. “I guess it’s a big deal for his family that he get into a good school on a free ride,” she says. That is a terrible sentence. Content aside, grammatically it’s incredibly clunky. Maybe you should be studying, Connie, instead of waiting to bust me USING MY KEY to get into the teachers’ lounge.
Over at the gym, we find our last suspect in the school, Hector “Hulk” Sanchez. We’ve finally met a character that doesn’t look like one of my first year ceramics projects! I’d go so far to say that he looks like one of my intermediate ceramics projects.
“Do you know what destiny has brought you today?” he smoothes at us. “‘The Man,’ the number one football player in the state of Florida.” Apparently Paseo del Mar’s football team, the Manatees, are kind of a big deal. He’s expecting an offer from a big ten college any day now. “Unlike Jake Rogers, I’m a winner.” DUDE! I love how he just threw a diss to a murdered teenager in the middle of his bragging. Like Connie, he ends his introduction by saying that nobody liked Jake and nobody gives a single shit that he was brutally killed in the hallway a few feet over. The kids at this school are so fucked up.
Hulk is fantastically expressive, so I’m gonna be showing you a lot of pictures of him.
Hulk tells us that he has to get to practice, but we already know the game mechanics won’t let him move from this spot, so let’s just keep talking to him. We can ask about Hal, and Hulk reveals us that Hal and Jake spent quite a bit of time together, although Hal made it sound like he didn’t know Jake very well. Hulk likes Hal because Hal is “a huge fan of [his].” Huh. Well, scratch what I said about Hal being an Asian stereotype. He has layers, like being weirdly obsessed with high school football! Anyway, despite generally being pretty nice, apparently Hal is rather uptight and has snapped under pressure a couple of times. Interesting. And what about Connie Watson? Hulk tells us that she hangs out at the gym a lot, and she’s been having a tough time, possibly due to money problems. Are those two things supposed to be related?
Let’s go back to Hal and talk about this. “Have you heard of Hulk Sanchez?” Nancy asks. “Heard of him? Hulk holds the conference record for quarterback sacks. He’s been the state’s number one player since he was a freshman,” Hal gushes. I know that high school football is an uncommonly big deal in small town America, but Hulk’s not actually famous. Does Hal know this? It’s important to me that Hal knows this. Hal frets over Hulk’s well-being: apparently, he had a big injury, and it might jeopardize his chances of getting into a top school.
We ask for the gossip about Connie, and Hal notes that she and Jake dated. I’m guessing it didn’t end very well, given that she’s going around talking shit about him the day after his untimely death.
Finally: Connie told us that Hal studies too hard. Is that true? “I’m behind on my studies and must get back to the library. Bye, Nancy.” So…I’m gonna take that as a yes.
Let’s needle everyone about the gossip we’ve learned before we go check in with Detective Beech. We can ask Connie about Hulk, and she’ll note that he’s “a big jock on campus. Never dated him or anything.” I…didn’t ask you that, Connie. Should I be worried that Connie’s relation to her classmates is defined by whether or not she’s dated them? This feels sexist. Re: dating Jake, she snaps, “Can’t a girl make a mistake?” I mean, fair. Nancy chooses to cheat on Ned with Frank Hardy, so she really isn’t in a place to judge.
We bring up that Hulk told us Connie’s been having money troubles, she snaps, “What a dork!” Didn’t she just say he was a big jock? He can’t be both, Connie. Not in the world of 2-dimensional high school stereotypes.
With all that done, let’s go meet our undercover contact and our last suspects over at the diner. This game has a whopping total of 5 suspects, between the school and the diner. I was about to say that 5 seems to be the max number of suspects that HER will put in a game, but then I remembered that Stay Tuned for Danger has 6(!) — 7 if you count one of the phone contacts.
The first person we see when we talk in the diner is this mouth breather. Oh boy. Original flavor Daryl Gray was presumably created from a checklist of ’90s hot-guy stereotypes, with the smirky attitude, blue eyes, and floppy blonde hair. New formula Daryl looks like…this. Why does he look like this?
He tells us that he’s the student council president, and talks up Paseo del Mar — it’s a great school, just a shame about the murder. He seems genuinely freaked out by the situation, which is more than can be said for his ice-cold classmates. So anyway, does Daryl know anything about the murder? He’s all like, “Hell yeah I do!” and leans in to gossip that he’s heard that it’s kind of a big deal, and they’re calling in a special detective. “Maybe even the FBI!”
“You must have some pretty special contacts,” Nancy remarks. “Just special enough to see beautiful women like yourself,” Daryl smoothes. Oh, boy. If you ask him to explain the joke, he’ll start tripping over an explanation about how contacts can also mean contacts like for the eyes, so he can SEE Nancy, GET IT? Oh…yikes. I’m a nice person, so I’m gonna take pity on him and just change the subject. Sorry, Daryl.
Let’s ask if Jake has any enemies. “Doesn’t everyone?” Daryl asks. Uh…no? Why do all these kids think it’s normal to be murdered? Then he tries to blow us off and says that he has to get back to work, but we’re onto you, Daryl! There’s only one other person in the diner!
We can run down the rest of our suspects with him, so let’s see what Daryl has to say. He tells us that Hal is very intense about becoming a doctor (because he’s Asian), and that Hulk has “big muscles and big dreams” (what? I refuse to believe anyone voted for this weirdo to be their student council president). He notes that several football scouts are interested in Hulk, so he must be under a lot of pressure. Daryl doesn’t know Connie well; he thinks there’s something “mysterious” about her. “Kind of the same way I feel about you.” Ew, back off Daryl. One corny boyfriend is enough for us to handle. “I’m just saying — not playing,” he tells us. Man. Much like The X-Files and Liz Phair, Daryl has really fallen from his ’90s glory.
With that out of the way, let’s check in with Detective Beech. He wasn’t a character at all in the original game — “Detective Beach” is the beach Nancy visits at the end of the game. So congratulations, Detective Beech, on wrangling your way into this game.
We’re pretending he’s our “Uncle Steve”, which he is not stealth about, at all: “I haven’t seen you in a…uh, a long time! How’s your….” “Aunt Eloise,” Nancy has to prompt. Detective Beech, I am a busy person. I do not have time to be carrying you like this.
Detective Beech blusters that his undercover assignments aren’t usually so “suburban”, like being in a big city would somehow make him less of a fuckup. Anyway, he briefs us on Jake’s death: they couldn’t find any clues in his locker, computer, or phone; but he had a suspicious amount of cash deposits into his bank account. Beech thinks that Jake was involved in something shady, like drugs or blackmail. (Why not both?) I’m gonna guess that he was definitely involved in something shady if he was murdered.
So Beech wants us to hang around the school and see what we can find out about Jake. He also thinks that Jake might’ve kept a record of his activities in a journal, so if we could find that, it would be A+. Meanwhile, he’s gonna sit on his butt here at the diner and do nothing, like everyone Nancy ever works with.
This next bit is probably the only memorable part of the original game, but bizarrely it is completely optional here. I skipped past it entirely, and then somewhere around the game’s second life-or-death event I was like, “Wasn’t there supposed to be an explosion in the diner? That seemed like something I remembered freaking out over the first time I played the game.” What is supposed to happen is: We’re supposed to look for the matchbook Jake mentioned, behind his work schedule at the diner. The schedule is torn and there’s no matchbook there, but we do see a note on the table from Connie, telling Daryl that she can’t go to a dance with him. And then! We would find a pair of bolt cutters on the floor, propping up a pipe. When we pick the bolt cutters up, the pipe starts leaking gas. Shock, horror! Maxine’s is definitely getting a 0 in their next health inspection. We have to replace the bolt cutters with a nearby soup ladle, to avoid the entire diner blowing up, and then we would use the bolt cutters on a later puzzle.
However! If you forget to go into the kitchen, the game doesn’t require you to do this puzzle (“puzzle”) at all, and you can just go your happy way, thinking you’re making progress in the game and missing one of the clues entirely. It’s not a huge loss to the story — you can ask Connie about the note even if you didn’t see it — but it is one of the few exciting events in an otherwise fairly boring game, so it seems unwise to make it optional. I was happily walking around for the rest of the game, like “herp derp finished doing everything in Maxine’s! Didn’t miss a thing!” Then as the credits were rolling, I was like, “Wasn’t there a part where the diner blew up? That was a thing that was supposed to happen, right?”
You can somehow forget to do this entire sequence! I am so confused!
Anyway, the first act either ends with nearly getting burnt to a crisp or getting bored to death by Detective Beech, whichever route you took. Back to Paseo del Mar High! Up next: Daryl and his eyebrows can’t take a hint. Hal does not bring honor to us all.
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