Previously on Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse: A monster has been terrorizing Castle Finster for centuries, and people have been trying to capture it for about that long, but to no avail. Enter Nancy Drew, who’s going to bust this case open in one night. Several German detectives are rolling over in their graves. Said monster “attacked”, by which I mean started a fire in a trash can and then left. Apparently this is terrifying, and all the villagers are freaking out. Then we got into a fight with Ned, who’s developed some level of self-awareness and is starting to notice how often Nancy ditches him in these games.
So we got a bucket of water dumped on us, and naturally Nancy’s suitcase has been lost (just pack a carry-on, Nancy!), so we’ve had to borrow some traditional German clothes, and now we’re wandering around the castle dressed like a 19th-century Bavarian. Hey, it’s a look.
We go back down to the foyer, and we can read a book about the Brothers Grimm on the coffee table. When we’re done reading it, we’ll pick up this weird plug-looking key thing.
Lukas immediately mocks our outfit. “Your outfit is pretty weird too,” Nancy says, because I’m not about to take shit from a snotty 9-year-old in lederhosen. Anyway, this is his fault, since he put that bucket of water over our door. “I’m only allowed to watch two hours of television a week,” Lukas says. “I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.” Heh.
We can ask him about the rest of the suspects, since we’ve met them now: he’s not a huge fan of Renate, and neither is his dad. Lukas thinks she steals or something; whatever is up with her, no one here trusts her. Hmm. As for Markus, Lukas doesn’t know him, but he thinks his dad doesn’t like him. HMMM.
I go to Anja to talk to her about the monster, but she ropes us into talking about our boy problems instead. She offers us a shoulder to cry on: “Us girls have to stick together.” #Sisterhood! That’s nice and all, but let’s pry some more information out of Anja first. What are her thoughts on Renate? Surprisingly, Anja loves Renate — they spend hours talking together, although I really can’t imagine about what. Anja thinks people are too hard on Renate; on the other hand, she does admit that Renate has a suspicious tendency to show up whenever the monster does. Anja adds that the last time Renate was here, she told a story that terrified the castle and made everyone scared to go outside, and then she took the opportunity to snoop around the castle. So Renate is actually pretty creepy, but then again, we kind of knew that.
Anja tells us that Lukas is her nephew — his security guard dad is her brother, which is interesting. Lukas is very much a troublemaker, but a good kid under it all. Anja is lenient with him because she thinks he’s lonely, as he doesn’t seem to have many friends at school.
Now! “What do you think of the castle’s owner?” Nancy asks. Tell us all the gory details of your relationship, Anja! Anja’s all, “What’s his name? Markus, right?” like she didn’t used to bone the guy on the regular. She shrugs that he seems all right, if a little “culturally tone-deaf” — this whole lederhosen-and-dirndl thing isn’t what Germany is really like, it’s a “theme park” version of history. What’s funny is that I think that’s the exact phrasing someone used in a criticism of the Nancy games, so I imagine this is HER’s little dig at that. I dunno, it’s not like HER’s ever attempted to actually fix their depictions of other countries, so it’s like they want points for being self-aware without ever actually taking the criticism into consideration. On the other hand, the overblown, stereotypical settings are part of the series’ charm, much like Nancy’s corny one-liners and her mom jeans. Anyway, Anja says she would run the castle differently if she owned it, but brushes off the idea that she’s actually serious about taking over the castle.
Speaking of outfits, Anja compliments ours, but denies leaving the dress out for us. She muses that it seems familiar, somehow, but she can’t place it. Uh-oh. That never bodes well.
We bring up the monster attack, and Anja says that even though it seems silly to worry about the monster, the castle does have a dark history of girls disappearing.
One of the things that makes this game really creepy, I think, is that gendered violence has never been a part of the Nancy Drew universe — we’ve had culprits of both sexes, and they’re usually motivated by buried treasure, revenge, or general craziness (lookin’ at you, Renee). The game doesn’t say why the monster targets girls specifically, leading us to assume that it’s just because they’re female, just like in real life. Maybe it’s because young girls are the target audience of these games, that HER doesn’t want to focus on that particular type of crime, so its appearance here adds a layer of dark realism to this game.
So anyway, let’s just…completely shift gears away from the idea of a monster in the woods carrying young girls off, and talk about glassblowing! We noticed a book about glass earlier, over a display in the gift shop. Anja tells us that she makes the glass herself, right here in the castle. There’s a glass shop in the basement, but we can’t go there, as Anja or Karl need to supervise us, and they’re far too busy. Doing what? Playing board games?
Now that all that’s out of the way, let’s talk about boys with Anja. We can break out the nail polish and hair straighteners and make a slumber party out of it! Nancy sighs that she wants to apologize to Ned for unceremoniously ditching him, but he also needs to let her live her life. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be with him, just that she, you know, needs some space so she can run off to Europe whenever she feels like it. Anja’s like, “Okay, so just call him up and tell him that.” Nancy’s like, “Oh. I thought your advice was gonna be longer.”
Anja waxes on about a boyfriend she had when she was younger and how in love they were. Was this boyfriend Markus? Does she know that Nancy already knows the TRUTH? For some reason, we can’t call her on pretending not to know Markus earlier; instead, we ask if they dated, and she says yes. Then how come you were all acting like you didn’t know he owned the castle, huh? HUH? Man, I hate when these games don’t let me be as aggressive as I want to. Anja is pretty chill about the whole thing, and tells us that she and Markus have moved on and have decided to be mature about working together. If she says so.
We exit the gift shop, and promptly get a call from Ned. He apologizes and says that he shouldn’t blame Nancy for having a more exciting life than him; she’s a super sleuth and that’s just how it is. Nevertheless, he is going to try to have more of his own life, so he’s not marinating in resentment while she’s off having adventures. Aw. That’s a nice sentiment and resolution to this, I think. Ned suggests that maybe one day he’ll even be able to help her on a case, which is some nice foreshadowing for the next game. Nancy dorks that she’s happy to have such a great boyfriend in her life, and then tells him she’ll call him on the land line. She’s all pleased that they’ve made up: “Huzzah!” she writes in her journal. Oh my God, Nancy, sometimes it’s hard to pretend I’m you.
But first, since we’re here, let’s bug Lukas again. We ask him about his reputation as a prankster, and he gets all snippy that he’s not a mere prankster — he has something big planned that will elevate him to…prankmeister, or something. Nancy’s like, “Man, you need to get outside more,” and Lukas admits that he doesn’t have any friends. Kids at school call him “Creepy Lukas” because of all the horror stories surrounding the castle, and they definitely don’t want to come over and hang out here with him. Aw, man. This shit is getting me in all my grammar school feelings 🙁
I feel bad enough for Lukas that I play a round of Monster with him, which is a fairly easy game. Basically there are three monsters on the board, and every turn, you kill a cow that’s connected to one of the monsters. Lukas is the farmer who has to figure out where the monsters are, while we have to kill cows without getting caught. Then we switch, before the game ends. If we win, Lukas will give us Raid cards.
I don’t feel bad enough to play more than once, though. Let’s go talk to Karl! Ned can wait a little longer, right?
We show Karl the burr and ask if he recognizes what kind of plant it’s from. Uh, didn’t Renate say Karl never leaves the castle? I feel like maybe he can’t help us here. He tells us that the burr came from the woods. Ah, yes, that really narrows it down. Nevertheless, that’s apparently the solution to the burr clue, so we’ll have to go out there and…find…the single plant…that this burr came off of. Which is in the woods. Somewhere. Anyway, we also tell Karl that we want to see the glass room, and he just hands over the key without questioning us. He’s like, “Supervision? What supervision? Uh, don’t walk into the furnace. That’s all I got.”
Once again, we run through our remaining suspects with him. Karl likes Renate and thinks she’s a great storyteller — he doesn’t understand why Anja doesn’t want her around! Wait, what? Anja told us she and Renate were besties! Karl ominously suggests that perhaps Anja is pretending to be friendlier than she really is. Yikes.
Karl knows a little more about the monster legend, which he’ll tell us: nobody’s ever seen the monster, “only the destruction it leaves behind.” This means, of course, that nobody can identify what kind of animal/human/Frankenstein hybrid it is. In the olden days, the villagers used to leave food for the monster so it wouldn’t attack their livestock, but one day it broke into the castle and carried away the Freiher’s [sic] only daughter. The Freiherr was pissed and ordered that they stop leaving food for the monster, and the daughter was never found. Karl’s like, “Of course, this whole story could’ve been made up.”
We leave Karl’s office, and run straight into this portrait in the hall, titled “Freiherr’s Daughter”. Well, hey, what are the chances that this is the exact same Freiherr’s daughter that we were just talking about? The plaque notes that the portrait was damaged by fire in 2006 — I love when the newer games give concrete dates, just because it so clearly throws off the bizarro, vaguely present day timeframe that the series tries to place the games in — and that this is a restored version. Interesting.
Let’s check out the glass room. Back in River Heights, Ned is staring sadly at the phone, waiting for it to ring. We find some glassblowing tools lying around, which we promptly steal.
Then I open up the furnace and burn myself to a crisp. Uh, maybe I should come back later.
Then, instead of calling Ned, we go to see Renate. Wow, I do not remember dicking Ned around this much when I was actually playing the game. Renate is pissed to see us in our traditional gown, and yells at us to change right now. She refuses to talk to us until Nancy’s back in her mom jeans. Well, damn, Renate, maybe you should’ve lent us some clothes if you’re gonna be like this about it!
But when we get back to our room, Nancy’s clothes have been shredded! Hey, what gives, this is like one of Nancy’s least visually offensive outfits so far. Although it does bear a frightening resemblance to my Catholic school uniform.
Over by the fireplace, we find this page that’s been mysteriously dropped on our floor. By whoever shredded our clothes? It’s a story about the monster, and it seems like finding the monster has something to do with the well in the courtyard. Also note the “TK” in the corner.
Since we’re in our room, let’s go to the phone and call…Frank. Wow, I am the worst girlfriend ever. Frank tells us that he’s glad Nancy and Ned are back together. I imagine he’s saying that while sliding pins into a voodoo doll of Ned. “Thanks for being such a good friend,” Nancy says. Heh. Frank’s probably silently crying on the other end of the line. Friendzoned again 🙁, he writes in his diary later that night.
We ask after Joe, which prompts Frank to read a letter Joe has written about the end of Nedcy. I’m going to quote the whole thing, because it is amazing: “Dear Nancy Drew — he used your last name for some reason — I’m glad you and Ned are back together. You go together like peanut butter and jelly. When you’re apart, it’s like peanut butter and sadness, or peanut butter and uncomfortable silences. Either way, you’re looking at a sandwich that no one wants, and probably no one will buy it ever.” Nancy’s like, “Uh, that’s nice,” and Frank says, “Oh, you wish that was the end of the note. It goes on: A world where Ned and Nancy are not together as a couple is as disturbing as it is dangerous to the quantum makeup of our interstellar plane of reality. You know what, I’m just going to stop reading there.” Hee.
We can run down our suspects and recap the game so far. Nancy notes that the castle residents seem to think that the monster is the same one that terrorized the castle centuries ago, but that’s not possible, is it? “Maybe the monster is just a convenient scapegoat,” Frank says. “Scapegoat?” Nancy says, and then Frank has to explain what a scapegoat is. Nancy, I feel embarrassed for you. We also bring up Renate’s over the top reaction to our dress, and Frank muses that perhaps it reminds her of something painful in her past. Uh, isn’t this dress like 19th-century style? Maybe even older, like medieval. Renate’s not that old. Still, the clothes shredding makes Frank and Nancy think that someone’s trying to keep her in the costume, possibly for nefarious purposes. Uh-oh.
Okay, it looks like I didn’t call Ned at all. Whoops! Let’s go talk to Anja, and ask her about the monster’s mysteriously long lifespan. She doesn’t give us a straight answer, but she seems to think that the monster really has been alive for centuries, saying the reason it’s so scary is because it’s from a time we don’t know how to survive in anymore.
Let’s use some of our hard-earned money to buy snacks. Remember how Renate loves Black Forest cake, and it makes her pass out? We’ll be doing that soon, so let’s keep this handy.
We tell Renate we can’t change out of our clothes, as someone’s ripped up the outfit we arrived in. Renate muses that someone wants us to “look the part.” Hmm. Anyway, let’s ask Renate more about her job. We’ve heard that she’s always conveniently around when the monster is, what’s up with that? Renate gets hella defensive, and snips that we better watch what we say.
So, anyway, Renate, do you like…have a house? Renate vagues that “home” is wherever she is — it’s hard to always be leaving home, but traveling is nice, because in a way, she’s always heading home. So…I’m guessing no, then. She tells us that she doesn’t have any family left, but doesn’t seem particularly bitter about it: “Don’t be [sorry]. We had beautiful days while they lasted.” Aw, so Renate wasn’t always as salty and bitter as she is now.
We also ask about her reputation as a thief/monster chaster/generally creepy old woman, and Renate’s like, “I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation!” She’s salty that storytelling is dying out as a career option, what with kids these days being into video games and movies. I would’ve thought that storytelling would’ve started dying out with the advent of like…books, but okay. Renate ominouses that the stories that have been passed down for “millenia” are dying off. And anyone who doesn’t know the stories will probably die, too, if it just so happens to turn out that they’re real.
We have a final option to ask Renate her thoughts on Karl, and she’s like, “Ugh, he’s such a fuckup.” Hee. I love that that’s the universal opinion of Karl around here. He did kind of ditch us in the face of a two-inch tall fire, so I can see where they’re coming from.
Now we want to knock Renate out, and we know that giving her cake will send her into a food coma. #relatable, tbh. Weirdly, in the walkthroughs I’ve seen, she’s always pleased to take the cake, but when I gave it to her, she goes, “That? Uh, all right.” Is my cake not good enough for you, Renate? Why am I so bad at these games?
Once she’s passed out, we can look through her bag. Nancy will note the mysterious brown box piled under all her other crap, and says we need to get to it without waking her up. Well, how hard can that be?
Ah, shit. Okay, let’s try again.
Dude, come on!
Okay, I finally mange to pile everything away from the box without waking up Renate. Also, are those…”chicken-scented” markers? What would that even be like?
The box is locked by this puzzle. It’s similar to a puzzle that appeared in Secret of the Old Clock — we have to place the correct color in each circle, and the four lights at the bottom of each column indicate if we have the the correct colors in each column and if they’re in the right place. There are seven colors, but only four slots. Once you fill in one column, the lights will tell you if you have the correct colors, and if any of them are in the right place, and then you move on to the next column and try to fill it in again. There are 10 columns, so 10 chances to get it right.
Once we get the box opened, we find this map, marked with places the monster’s been seen, and places where girls have disappeared. “It seems like she’s tracking the monster!” Nancy gasps. OMG, could Renate be a fellow girl detective? She could be our sidekick!
Nancy will also note that this castle appears to have a dungeon (of course it does). We’ll have to find our way there soon.
We also find another page from the monster story, with an N at the corner. “I’d better hang on to this,” Nancy says.
Nancy logics out that the glass room is the lowest accessible room in the castle, ergo the entrance to the dungeon is in here.
In order to open up the passage to the dungeon, we have to slide this metal door in front of the furnace, then use a pair of tongs that are lying around to lift the lever under the “A.”
Wooo, secret tunnel!
In the passageway, we find a trap door as well as a mysterious keyhole-type-thing. Nancy will also pick up another mysterious story page. The one we find this time has an “OM” in the corner.
That’s all the clues for the passageway so far, so we go back to the glass room. We trip over a loose cord, and we can plug it in to get the sander working. Now we can sharpen the shears we found in the courtyard, so Nancy can stab anyone that gets too close to her.
Back in the foyer, Lukas wants us to distract Karl so Lukas can prank him. We agree, because it’d be hypocritical of Nancy to hold someone back from dicking another person around, but also because we want to get Lukas away from his area so we can snoop.
So we go to see Karl. Before we get to Lukas’s prank, we have a new conversation option to talk about the missing girls. “Those, I do not like to talk about,” Karl snips. Nancy’s like, “Dude, help me out here,” and Karl relents and grumbles that the girls are the monster’s past victims. There are rumors that the monster takes the girls to live with it as its bride in the forest, which is creepy enough on its own. Nancy’s like, “Golly, is that what you think?” and Karl snorts, “No. Come on now.” Heh. Then he says, “Those girls never come back, that alone is enough to keep me up at night.”
Another thing that really adds to the atmosphere of the game is that the characters actually treat the disappearing girls with gravitas, instead of being like, “Oh ha ha! Silly legends! The girls probably ran away to party in 19th-century Berlin or some shit!” Every conversation with the characters really does feel like they’re imparting dark secrets.
Karl adds that if the monster really is back, we should probably stop cosplaying as one its victims. Nancy’s like, “Say what?” Karl points out that the victims have always been young women, which Nancy is, and they tended to run around in old-fashioned clothes, like Nancy is. He’s like, “I’m just saying.” Uh-oh.
Finally, we can distract him, by which I mean flat-out tell him that Lukas wants to prank him, and it would be cool if he just sat here and let it happen. Karl agrees to pretend not to know Lukas is coming. Heh. So maybe Karl’s not quite as dumb as he seems.
…you know, it just occurred me, there are like absolutely zero chores in this game. That’s crazy, and also kind of delightful. This game has, I think, some of the best pacing in the series.
We go back to report to Lukas that Karl’s ready for him, but first, let’s ask if Lukas knows anything about the missing girls. Sure, let’s ask the 9-year-old about the violent abduction and murder of a bunch of girls. Lukas shrugs that he’s heard that the monster killed them. Then he races off to go prank Karl, so we can poke around his area. We spy a piece of paper under the chair behind Lukas, so now we can read it.
There’s a message written in code, to Lukas from his dad. It’s telling him how to get into the security booth so he can visit his dad. Aw, that’s sweet. Given that Lukas is just a kid, the code’s not hard to crack — we just have to swap the letters vertically in each line — and we find out that we have to play the glockenspiel in the foyer. The notes are hidden around the castle.
The note tells us where to find all the musical notes, so we just run around the castle collecting all of them. In order, the notes are: G, D, B, G, A.
I found the passage to the security booth earlier, but let’s see if Lukas will tell us where it is, anyway. He won’t, but we can ask some questions about his family now. He tells us that his English is so good because his mom is American, but she’s not really around because she’s always on business trips. Right now she’s interviewing for a new job, so they might have to move. Nancy’s like, “Well, you live in a monster-infested castle and all your classmates hate you, so maybe that’s a good thing?” Lukas insists that he likes living here.
The glockenspiel that we have to play is in one of the foyer wall panels, underneath the clock. We play the correct notes, and another panel will open up.
The security booth is empty, and all the monitors are shut down. Dude, there’s a monster on the loose! I feel like someone should be watching out for that. Anyway, so we find a puzzle that will turn the power on to the booth, but we can’t solve it yet.
We find this phone, which sends out security alerts to the castle. We can put our cell phone in the tray, and now we’ll be alerted whenever something suspicious happens. Behind the phone, we find the manual to help us solve the power puzzle.
Like most of these puzzles, I am not going to pretend to understand what’s happening here. Clicking on a number sends charges to all of the numbers connected to it, and we have 5 chances to click on the right numbers to get all 18 buttons lit up. The walkthrough says to click 10, 8, 2, 7, and 6, and that is what I did. Please don’t ask me to explain any further, because I cannot.
We can now see what’s going on in all the castle’s rooms, and…hey, is that Renate creeping around the gift shop? “What’s she doing there?” wonders Nancy. Yeah, she doesn’t really seem the type to want a wacky monster T-shirt — but then again, people can have layers!
We go to the gift shop, and Nancy will note that Renate was looking at the clocks. Hmm, but why? Then we find a piece of paper, with a bunch of mysterious cutouts in it. It looks like Renate dropped this, so it must be important.
I went to see if there’s anything we can say to Karl — he tells us that he didn’t mange to catch Lukas pranking him. Then we can step back and talk to him again — “Didn’t we just have a conversation?” Karl asks. Hee! These games are getting frighteningly self-aware. Anyway, we can keep helping him create a new character for his board game, and that’s about it.
Ah, here’s the part where I called Ned. Sorry to keep you waiting, Ned! It’s a good thing he has no life and nothing better to do. We tell him about our weird dress and finding the dungeon, and Ned gets sidetracked into a ramble: “You know, someone had to invent the first dungeon. So one day someone had to say…you know, the living room’s nice and the kitchen’s great, but you know what we need? Our own private jail.” Heh. Ned advises us to steer clear of the dungeon. Ned, we can’t do that, that’s where all the clues are, keep up.
We ask how Ned’s search for excitement is going, and he says that he’s found something fun for all of us to do — him, Nancy, Bess, and George. Uh, wasn’t the point of this whole thing for Ned to do something not involving Nancy? Whatever. Anyway, he tells us we’ll need a team name, which is foreshadowing for the next game. Ned muses that maybe he should get an edgier presentation — “Get a motorcycle maybe? Stay out past ten pm? Return library books at the wrong branch?” OMG, and I finally have the opportunity to post my favorite Nancy Drew thing, ever:
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NED TURNS BAD BOY, INDEED.
Ned whines that he feels lame when Nancy and the Hardy Boys go on and on about their exciting lives. “Maybe I should get a hobby,” he muses. Oh, Ned. Is this the saddest depiction of him in the games so far? I think it is.
Anyway, let’s go talk to Renate about her little visit to the gift shop. Renate denies going in there, and is like, “I’m just a feeble old lady, I can’t remember where I am or what I’m doing!” Somehow, I doubt that. Anyway, we can also ask if she likes traveling around, and Renate rants about how in her day, every town used to be different and traveling was fun, but now everywhere’s the same and there are Starbucks and McDonald’s on every corner, and kids these days are too coddled and are ruining the housing market because they spend all their money on avocado toast. Whatever, Renate.
We leave Renate, and promptly get a call from security: “Monster sighted on castle grounds. This is not a drill.” Oh, snap!
We run to the security booth and see the the monster is out in the courtyard. So by all means, let’s go outside and say hi.
The monster’s just leaving the courtyard, and Nancy tries to follow it. Sure! Let’s just follow the scary, girl-kidnapping monster into the dark woods. WHY NOT. (I might have started singing “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark” here. Don’t judge me.)
Unfortunately for us, the gates come down on both sides, trapping us in the entryway. Then the monster comes back! It jump scares its way into the frame and is like, “Sup.” Then it lumbers off into the woods, leaving us stuck here. What, is Nancy Drew not good enough to be carried off? I will have you know that we are grade-A kidnapping material, buddy!
Anyway, I’ll end this part here, trapped outside the castle. OR ARE WE? Up next: Nancy escapes, as you knew she would. We finally go into the spooky woods, and everyone tells us their personal problems.
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