Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem (Part One)

Holy God, it actually happened.

I don’t think anyone reading this recap is unfamiliar with the drama surrounding the release of Midnight in Salem, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it and I live for drama, so I’ll bring it up anyway. The previous title in the Nancy Drew games, Sea of Darkness, was released in spring 2015. You might be looking at the date on this post and being like, “Wow, Em, did you go into another depressive episode and take five years to write this recap?” No, I did not! After many delays, Midnight in Salem came out in December 2019 — past its postponed release date of November 2019, past its first postponed release date of spring 2019, and past its initial expected release date of fall 2015. (It took so long to come out, in fact, that the already-kind-of-a-ripoff series Miss Clue managed to put out the very boldly-titled Trials of Salem in 2016, which featured Lani Minella in the cast to boot.) Whether the game is good or bad, it’s amazing we’re even here.

BABBLING ABOUT ALL THE HER DRAMA BEGINS HERE;
SKIP IF YOU WANT TO JUST GET TO THE GAME

The game was largely postponed by financial difficulties at Her Interactive, which first resulted in the layoff of most of the staff — including Katie Chironis, who had just been inducted as the main writer and had written Sea of Darkness — and then resulted in Her scrabbling around for various ways to make money while trying to produce Midnight in Salem without having to pay any in-house staff. This included a mediocre mobile app (so I’ve heard; I’ve never played it) called Codes and Clues and a solid, like, three years of latching on to any obscure holiday on the calendar in order to promote a vaguely-related PC game sale. Fans obviously weren’t pleased, especially because Her refused to explain the delay at all. The most news we got about Midnight in Salem up until mid-2019 were some character sketches that had obviously been done before the layoffs, and later a game synopsis that was basically a rough outline that Katie Chironis had sent as an internal memo (I remember seeing her Tweets about this at the time, but can’t find them now.)

During this time, Her hired a new CEO named Penny Milliken, who was not super popular for some justified and some unjustified reasons. As mentioned above, Her Interactive was fishing around, trying to pivot to a more financially viable game format (incorporating Unity, testing virtual reality; the story changed a few times), but due to Her’s new policy of handling all inquiries with vague “Stay sleuthy!” encouragements and deleting comments that asked too many questions, nobody knew that at the time. In lieu of any information from the company, posts started swirling that suggested that Penny Milliken was single-handedly ruining Nancy Drew by delaying MID and ignoring the games’ fanbase of nostalgic millenials just to look hip to the current jive of mobile gaming.

Her handled all the public inquiries terribly — I’m definitely not denying that — but I also feel like people were a little…uh…naive about how well off the company was to begin with, particularly in the early days of the delay. Penny Milliken doesn’t seem like a great boss regardless — the way the staff was let go was cold (as was letting them go in general; it sounds like at least some of them were familiar with Unity), and she doesn’t seem too familiar with video games on the whole — but she wasn’t the cause of Her’s initial problems, no matter how much everyone wanted her to be. It’s not really surprising that a company that only sold $20 point-and-click PC games with about 5 hours’ worth of playthrough was struggling by the 2010s — the company was already in the red by 2011, as mentioned in the article linked above.

Were there other ways this could’ve gone? Maybe Her could’ve crowdfunded enough money to produce MID with the old staff as a final goodbye game, or maybe there was a way to widen the games’ audience via social media. (I’m not a fan of brands being ~sassy~ on the Internet because I feel Too Old For That, but even I think Her’s various feeds and timelines were criminally boring — I never kept up with any of them and just checked for game news every spring and fall like a clockwork.) There was certainly some arrogance — or maybe incompetence — convincing them that they could scramble to make the game on the little funds they had left, sell it to the audience they already had (who was also dwindling), and…make enough money to keep going? I don’t know.

All that said, it’s a totally unpopular opinion, but I don’t really fault Her for trying to go in a new direction. I think a lot of people feel understandably betrayed that a company that played such a big role in our childhoods had acted so classically corporate, laying off their staff and making changes that their audience didn’t want, but…well…the games as we knew them just weren’t sustainable, as sad as it is to hear. The whole thing was handled terribly, but the root problems went back to the pre-Milliken days — even as Her was putting out new games and doing interviews with fans, they were losing money behind the scenes and — I hate to think it, but — presumably kicking the can down the road until everything came to a head in 2015. Corporations gonna corporate, no matter how much we love their product.

Admittedly, though, the sense of betrayal probably would’ve been lessened if Her had been at all transparent instead of being like, “Midnight in Salem is coming! We don’t know when, and we can’t tell you what the game will be like, but Mei has albinism! Stay sleuthy!”

(And yet, after all of that, they ended up removing Mei’s albinism from the game. I swear.)

BABBLING ABOUT HER DRAMA ENDS HERE

But despite all of that, we have managed to crawl our way to Midnight in Salem, which…might be the last Nancy Drew game? I haven’t heard anything about a new one (admittedly, not that I’ve been paying much attention) and I can’t imagine that this game put Her back in a position to start churning out 2 games a year again, but as its very existence shows, anything can happen.

Anyway. I think the thing about this game is — at least for now — it’s totally impossible to divorce the game itself from its surrounding drama. No matter how decent or even good it might have been, it needed to be a really excellent game to overcome the nearly 5 years’ worth of bad feelings that had built up by its release.

And, well, Midnight in Salem is not really excellent. But if I were to at least try to rate it on its own, I would say: it’s fine. I feel like people are dunking on every single aspect of the game to express their unhappiness with Her Interactive as a whole, and while the game is mediocre, I don’t think it’s as disastrously irredeemable as the YouTube and Reddit comments make it seem. Admittedly, yes, Midnight in Salem is clunky, feels unfinished and outsourced, and has a very different vibe from the previous games. Nevertheless, I like a few of the new things they tried to do and I’m not overly bothered by any of the game’s flaws. It still has a lot of my favorite things — solid characters, a developed story, a well-drawn environment — and is fairly light on bullshit puzzles. I think, on the whole, it manages to escape being one of the worst Nancy Drew games. Maybe ten years from now, when it’s on sale in a Nancy Drew bundle on Steam, people will buy it for $10 and get along with it just fine.

So we start off…on a loading screen, because the Nancy Drew franchise thinks it’s The Sims now. This game is much, much more graphic-heavy than previous ones, and within like, a day of release, everyone found out that pushing the graphics past a particular setting, even on a high-end computer, would cause the game to lag like crazy. Sadly, this is not because the graphics are really good — rather, there are a lot of camera effects that I think are causing the lag. The character models themselves are, uh…well, you’ll see.

Several minutes of loading later, Nancy Drew is in Austria. We have kicked the “Welcome to my desk!” intro, but we still open with a letter to Ned, explaining the case so far: Nancy’s at a place called Moosham Castle, because her dad has asked her all casually to pick up a 400-year-old relic called the Book of Apologies while she’s there. Wow, it sure is convenient that Nancy was already on some kind of bizarro solo vacation in Austria when her dad decided he needed this book.

This monologue also introduces us to the new voice of Nancy, Brittany Cox. A big part of the outrage against Penny Milliken was also that — whether she made this decision personally or not — her reign as Her’s CEO began with the firing of Lani Minella, who had been the voice of Nancy Drew for nearly 20 years at that point. Personally, I’ve never disliked Lani Minella, but I’m not super attached to her voice either, so I wasn’t fussed about this. Rumors swirled that Lani’s firing had more to do with her leaking information to fans than anything else — maybe that’s true, or maybe she cost too much, or maybe they were hoping an image overhaul would help the games sell better. Like so many things Her has done, it was disappointing but not unrealistic for a company in their position. As strange as it is to have a new Nancy, I do like Brittany Cox’s performance in this game. If they ever make another game, I wouldn’t be mad if she stayed on as Nancy.

(By the way, on the topic of people who have recently taken up the mantle of playing Nancy Drew: while I gave up on the CW Nancy Drew about four episodes in, I really like Kennedy McMann as Nancy? It’s tragic that she’s in yet another CW show that basically just takes the names of an existing property and uses them in a totally unrelated story, instead of an actual Nancy Drew adaptation.)

“Feels like ages since I was on my last adventure,” Nancy says as we get to the playing part of the game. Ha ha, game. I see what you did there. We’re hanging in the castle with a Dr. Elisabeth Hirst, who was Carson’s contact re: the book. She leads us to a room full of Judge Sewall‘s personal effects, and says that we’re free to look around — although the desk is locked, naturally, and there’s no key. Is that supposed to stop us, Elisabeth?

Anyway, if you don’t feel like clicking the Wikipedia link above: Samuel Sewall was one of the judges during the Salem Witch Trials, and the only(?) one to apologize for his role in them. He never actually wrote a Book of Apologies, but for the purposes of this game, he did — a whole book detailing who was wrongly accused during the trials — and that’s the MacGuffin that we’re after.

Elisabeth refuses to join us in the castle room because it’s too creepy — she vagues that there are possibly-non-metaphorical ghosts in here — but she offers to hang around outside so that we can ask her questions. Elisabeth, it’s broad daylight. Calm down.

So let’s ask if Judge Sewall was religious. Elisabeth is like, “He was a Puritan, what the fuck do you think?” except not in so many words. She and Nancy have a ham-fisted exchange about how the Bible is often misinterpreted by zealots and that leads to Bad Things like accusing people of being witches.

We have to tilt the camera down to get a good look at the desk, which is a bit annoying. We don’t really have free movement in this game — the actual ability to walk places is remarkably similar to the old games, where you click to proceed further down a set path, instead of actually being able to walk all over the environment. The closest incorporation of free movement is the ability to drag the camera around the environment when Nancy is standing still. In practice, this mostly just means that you constantly have to drag the camera down, since most interactive items are placed on tables that are just slightly below Nancy’s eye level.

We find this paper from Judge Sewall, begging for mercy. We also now have the ability to rotate objects that we find, which again, sounds cool but is a bit clunky — you have to drag items to turn them, which is annoying if your game is lagging or if you have a trackpad. It also only gets used for a couple of items, so you’ll find yourself rotating everything you come across only to find that it’s hardly ever worth it.

Nancy’s texting interface has also been updated to show how hip and current this game is. Dig Nancy and Ned’s lack of punctuation! This game is really down with the youths. There’s also a text exchange with Carson wherein he asks Nancy to get the book; he mentions that it’s for an “old friend.”

We turn to face Elisabeth — who is just a person-shaped shadow because I guess they didn’t want to design another character — and can interrogate her a bit more now. Weirdly, she’s in focus when you turn around, but when you click to interact with her, the camera will zoom in, focus on the door, and leave her blurry. Points for trying, I guess.

So we find out that Elisabeth doesn’t know Carson that well at all, but she’s totally willing to lend him this book because he just like, asked nicely, I guess. It turns out that the “old friend” Carson needs the book for is the present-day Judge of Salem. Not suspicious at all!

Elisabeth and Nancy banter some more about Austrian culture, except we’re only going to spend the next five minutes in Austria, so let’s move on.

We approach an object covered by a sheet to the right of the window, which turns out to be Judge Sewall’s desk. We find a letter that he wrote to Abigail Hathorne Woodley (not a real person, but probably a reference to Judge Hathorne), rambling about how terribly guilty he feels and how he won’t beg her forgiveness, but he hopes it makes her feel a little bit better that he’s going to be fucking miserable for the rest of his life. I guess this means Abigail Hathorne Woodley was one of the accused?

So we take a closer look at the desk, and find this carving. We click on the lantern to open up a compartment with a keyhole in it. Then we look to the right-hand desk corner, in which we find another compartment with a key. The key has a weird shape that just so happens to be the same weird shape as the desk’s keyhole.

Inserting the key in the keyhole causes the drawer to open, revealing this puzzle. “What a clever desk! It even comes with a labyrinth!” Nancy says. Nancy, it’s a maze puzzle. Let’s not be dramatic. Anyway, we have to guide the gray block through the maze and to the empty space at the top left. It’s the same as every other maze puzzle in these games, except now it’s 3D. Thrilling stuff!

Completing the maze opens up this drawer, and we find the Book of Apologies! Nancy and Elisabeth had been going on about how nobody knew whether or not the book really existed before this — way to ask Carson to find something that you don’t even know is real, Judge guy — but we’ve found it in like two minutes, so whatever. This has to be the fastest discovery of the treasure ever in a Nancy Drew game. I guess we can go home now!

Just kidding; the book is trapped in some kind of locked cage that we can’t open. Nancy says, “It’s locked” in her new voice, just in case you were worried that that line went away with Lani Minella. The lock has the initials “A.W.” on it, which is obviously Abigail Woodley, whom we just read a letter to, but Nancy has apparently already forgotten all about it. Ah, well. Nancy hasn’t solved a case in five years; I suppose her memory for detail is a little rusty.

In lieu of Nancy figuring out clues to open the lock, Elisabeth suggests that we just grab her handy-dandy bolt cutters and brute force the lock open. She and Nancy decide that we both need to go get the cutters and then come back for the book, instead of like…just one person going, or Nancy picking up the book and taking it with her.

We follow Elisabeth out into the courtyard, and there we get a call from Deirdre Shannon! It truly worries me that Nancy is always receiving and making international calls while she’s abroad. Her roaming fees must be atrocious.

Deirdre says that she’s “in the middle of something big”, but Nancy’s like, “Nothing you do could ever be more important than whatever I’m working on!” and hangs up. This is, obviously, a cutscene where we’re not allowed to choose the dialogue. I would never hang up on Deirdre Shannon.

We’ve managed to lose Elisabeth in the span of two minutes, so we turn around and go back into Judge Sewall’s room to wait for her, which is probably what we should’ve done to begin with. But when we get back inside, someone is there, stealing the Book of Apologies! The suspect turns to face us, but naturally their face is just an unidentifiable black hole. That’s how hoodies work in real life.

The thief distracts us with a smoke bomb and jumps out the window with the book — dangit, we shouldn’t have listened to Elisabeth when she told us to open the window for light! — and we give chase. The game gives you control for this part and it’s possible to get tripped up when we follow him into the trees where every screen looks the same, but it doesn’t matter if you make a wrong turn — obviously, for the sake of the story, he has to get away with the book no matter what you do.

(As we chase him, Nancy yells “Stop running!” like this thief is actually going to listen to us. Aw, I really did miss these corny-ass games.)

Again, no matter how fast you run or how many times you get turned around, we eventually catch up to the thief in this clearing here. Nancy tells herself to “move slowly” like we’re in a wildlife documentary instead of trying to jump a thief. In fairness, it seems like we might be able to sneak up on him, until Deirdre tries to call us back. The vibrating of her phone alerts the thief to our presence, and they throw another smoke bomb and disappear. When you think about it, though, this is our fault for hanging up on Deirdre in the first place. Nancy should really listen to me more often.

So anyway, we can take a look at the objects that the thief left behind: a canister that they used to make the smoke bomb, a key with the initials “A.W.” on it — at least Nancy recognizes the initials from the desk key this time — and a plane ticket to Boston. Whoa, do you think that this thief might be connected to Salem? The site of the historical witch trials, and also the place where the book was going to go anyway, since Carson’s judge friend wanted it?

Deirdre calls a third time, and we finally pick up. We find out that she’s also in Salem — almost like that’s the setting of the game! Deirdre says that she’s helping her cousin out with a jam that she’s gotten into — but it turns out that case is more complicated than she thought, and Deirdre has yet to reach Nancy Drew levels of super sleuthdom. “You want my help?” Nancy cackles, like we didn’t need Deirdre’s help solving that murder that one time. Deirdre huffs that she could use our professional guidance, and Nancy chirps that we were on our way to Salem anyway — and a fresh perspective might help us on our own case! “Ugh, you’re already annoying me, and you’re not even here yet,” Deirdre says. HEE.

And thus, we cut to Salem, Massachusetts. We’ve arrived and Deirdre’s picked us up, and now she’s driving us to her cousin’s house, where we’ll be staying. And we get our first close-up look at the new character graphics! It’s — okay, well, to start on a positive note, we see several animated drivers go by and the background continuously moves throughout the entirety of this extremely long cutscene, which is cool. That said, Deirdre’s not nearly as cute as she was the last time we saw her (which you’ll recall was in ASH, a game that came out in 2011); her mouth movement doesn’t always sync up with the dialogue; she clips a bit through her seat; and her hands and head tend to make these overlarge, sweeping motions.

I do like that they’ve stuck to a green theme with her clothes — it gives her a consistent identity and if you really want to get deep with it, green is the color of envy and all that.

We drive past this burned-down house while Deirdre recaps her end of the game for us: she’s helping out her cousin, as she mentioned. She warns us to take her lead in the investigation: she might need help solving the case, but she does not want to subject her cousins to the Nancy Drew Interrogation Method. Ha! Nancy is all, “Hey, my interrogation technique has put away countless criminals!”

Speaking of! Let’s start with asking Deirdre some questions about this case. “Like anyone could stop you,” Deirdre sighs. Hee. So Deirdre, tell us about the cousin that you’re helping. She explains that the Parrys — called the Parrises in the game’s early production, but then changed for a stupid reason we’ll find out later — are related to her on her dad’s side. This is interesting because the Parry girls are pretty obviously half-Asian, which I initially thought was an admirably bold interpretation of this drawing of Deirdre. However, given how Deirdre looks in this game plus the different last names, I’m guessing that’s not the case, and they’re instead just meant to be far more distantly related.

Anyway, there are two Parry girls: Teegan, the older sister, and Mei, the younger. Mei has been accused of burning down “the most important historic mansion in Salem” (read: that building we just passed), and Deirdre is trying to clear her name. Teegan is a fine upstanding citizen and clutched her pearls at the very idea of Mei committing a crime; she called Deirdre for help because Teegan doesn’t know the first thing about criminal activity or clearing someone thereof. Mei, for her part, has always been more rebellious than Teegan and was a bit of a quiet, creepy child, which isn’t swaying anyone’s opinion in her favor. Moreover, she refuses to give an alibi. Deirdre tells us that the reason she called Nancy in, specifically, is because Mei is accused of burning down the Hathorne House, which everyone knows…is haunted. SpOokY!

With that, we pull up in front of the Parrys’ house. Deirdre gets out of the car, and Nancy’s POV swings around to follow her, giving us a good look at some other houses on the street. The graphics in this game are, as mentioned, a bit shoddy and clunky, but overall I like the level of detail? It makes the story world feel larger and more interactive, and while the character renders are mock-worthy, they don’t feel any more laughable than some of the earlier games’ dialogue, acting, or graphic choices.

Everyone in this game has gigantic hands, wtf.

We go inside and meet Teegan. It can’t be shown in screenshots — obviously — but one of the weirdest things the character models do is sort of sway awkwardly back and forth as you talk to them. I think it’s meant to imitate natural movement but, as with so many things in this game, it dips into the uncanny valley instead. It did look really familiar to me, and then I realized that it reminds me a bit of And Then There Were None and We Are Chicago. It doesn’t look quite as bad in those games, though — plus And Then There Were None came out in 2005, and We Are Chicago was made by an indie studio, so they both are a little more justified in that department.

The perspective is also slightly off — as noted, everyone’s hands and hips are huge.

A N Y W A Y. The Parry parents aren’t around, as they’ve taken a page out of Carson Drew’s book and have disappeared to Africa when their children need them. They’re off “on safari in Namibia”, and they won’t be back until the “very expensive courier” that Teegan hired manages to track them down in the bush. I’m surprised they haven’t taken Carson’s fave 3,000-mile Kenya-Burkina Faso tour.

Teegan bitters to us that they’ve lived here in Salem for 20 years, but the townspeople turned on them the second Mei was accused of arson. Nancy’s like, “Been there.” Has Mei considered getting herself arrested and solving the case from jail? Teegan vagues that the suspicion is mutual: Mei’s been pretty people-shy ever since some Mysterious Incident that Teegan elects not to explain, except we find out what it is two minutes later anyway. She tells us to come visit her at the museum, where she works, once we’re settled in. Then she warns us not to get suckered into a “witches’ walking tour”, given by a woman named Olivia Ravencroft, who Teegan says is a total fraud. Deirdre’s like, “Didn’t you two used to be friends?” and Teegan’s like, “Stop saying words.”

Teegan says she has time for one question before she leaves, so let’s ask her about the fire. Teegan immediately gets all defensive and says that bringing up the fire will just upset Mei, and why did Deirdre even bring Nancy here if she’s going to be all insensitive!! Oh, Teegan, you’re new here and it shows. Deirdre cuts her off and says that Nancy is asking about the other fire, the one that just happened at Hathorne House. You know, the one that Mei is currently accused of? Keep up, Teegan. She tells us that there was another fire a long time ago in which Mei had some kind of “accident”, which is the Mysterious Incident alluded to above.

Teegan gives us an educational spiel about how Hathorne House used to belong to Judge Hathorne, aka the judge from the Salem Witch Trials, aka the dude who has the same last name as that Abigail Hathorne Woodley lady we were just reading about. It is, apparently, one of the oldest surviving buildings from 17th century Salem.

By the way, I have actually been to Salem, and while there is no Hathorne House, there are two houses associated with the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is descended from Judge Hathorne. One of them has a secret passage inside, which I thought was v. cool and v. Nancy Drew when I saw it.

We cut away to the kitchen, and then Mei comes downstairs to see Deirdre. She teases Deirdre a bit about not coming to see her sooner, which I think is a nice character detail — I love that Deirdre is actually close with her grumpy arty cousin. Nancy bounces in and greets Mei with enthusiasm, and Mei just turns around and walks into the living room. Hee.

“She really doesn’t want to talk,” Nancy observes. “Any advice?” Deirdre: “Hmm. Do better?” Also hee.

We follow Mei into the living room. Anyone who asked Her for an update about this game between 2015 and 2018 got the response that they couldn’t give away any details, but they COULD tell you that the character Mei has albinism! This apparently does not seem to be the case anymore — she looks to have dark eyes and her blonde hair just seems dyed. Instead, the townspeople are now suspicious of Mei because the first fire she was in left her with a bunch of scars on her face. Mei is the Phantom of the Opera.

Her voice also sounded really familiar, and then I looked it up and saw that she’s also the voice of Juleka in the English dub of Miraculous Ladybug.

So Mei! Let’s get down to business and clear your name! Is it cool if we look around your house? Mei just scoffs, “You’re so weird” and refuses to talk to us anymore. Hee. I like her already.

We can’t get anything else out of Mei right now, so let’s start looking around for clues. In the living room trash can, we find a ripped-up piece of paper. When we put it back together, it reads “I KNOW.” Spooky!

We also find a can of “Rust-B-Gone” on the shelf above the basket, so we steal it. Ah, it’s been so long since we just jacked shit from someone’s house when we’re supposed to be helping them. Feels good, man.

That’s it for the living room, so let’s explore upstairs. We pass Mei’s room, with all of its obvious Punk Rock (TM) stickers, if you didn’t realize how edgy and cool she is by now. We try the door, but Nancy says we shouldn’t go in without an invitation. And the room remains locked for the rest of the game, which is disappointing considering Mei is one of our main suspects.

In the room where Nancy is staying, we find a photo on the nightstand. It shows Teegan and two other women, captioned “Coven.” Mysterious!

Before we head out and explore the town, let’s talk to Deirdre some more. We note that, when Mei asked her why it took so long to come by, Deirdre was evasive with her answer. This means that Deirdre wasn’t at the house before she came to pick us up from the airport, so where was she? Deirdre admits that she went to the police station to see how their investigation was going. She says that when they found out that she’s Mei’s cousin, they started laughing at her. “So they think Mei did it,” Nancy notes.

Then Deirdre went to go see the Hathorne House, but she got scared off by “some weirdo” who told her that the house’s ghost was going to steal her soul. She doesn’t note if this weirdo was male or female or what — I don’t know if it’s meant to be the lady who lives there, who we’ll meet later.

Nancy also asks if Deirdre found anything out at the police station, and she says that a Judge Danforth is looking over the particulars of the Hathorne House estate. Deirdre tried to get into his office to talk to him, but he wouldn’t let her in. Nancy says “I know him,” so I guess that makes Judge Danforth Carson’s friend, the one we were getting the Book of Apologies for. I hope he’s not mad at us for losing it!

Deirdre wonders who would benefit from the Hathorne House burning down — maybe an insurance claim? Nancy’s like, “Your boring theory would probably be correct in real life, but you gotta start thinking ‘revenge’ and ‘buried treasure’ if you want to be in this game.”

Finally, we can bring up the witch tour that Olivia Ravencroft is running. Nancy thinks that it’ll be a good opportunity to see the town while also looking into one of our suspects. Deirdre snarks that we better not let Teegan find out about this, and Nancy wonders why Teegan doesn’t like Olivia. Deirdre shrugs that Olivia probably steals tourists from Teegan’s museum and it’s not that deep.

Alright, that’s all the house dialogue over, so let’s get moving to see the town. When we step out of the house, we’ll get a call from Ned. He’s on vacation somewhere, and he — somewhat jokingly — tells Nancy that she should consider relaxing and having fun more often, too. Nancy chirps that busting criminals is fun for her. A girl’s voice pops up in the background (“Ned! Come on!”) and Nancy passive-aggressives that it sounds like Ned’s vacation is going just fine. Ned blusters that he’s not doing anything too crazy — like, say, cheating on Nancy — and then abruptly ends the conversation, as the girl on the other end snarks, “Call you later, Nancy.” Nancy’s like, “Yikes.”

Personally, I don’t mind occasionally seeing Nancy be the insecure one in her relationship with Ned — that role always goes to Ned, so it’s novel to have the roles reversed every now and then — but after this conversation, Ned hardly ever picks up for the rest of the game, implying that he’s ignoring or cheating on Nancy, which is way out of character. There’s also some Frank/Nancy hints in this game, which makes me cagey because I do not trust Frank Hardy.

Just to be sure, maybe I should go check the house and see if I forgot anything and — oh, hi, Deirdre.

Yeah, so Deirdre accompanies us almost everywhere in the game — except when we explicitly have to split up — and if you ever turn around, you’ll find her right up in your face. I mean, I love the concept of going everywhere with Deirdre Shannon, but she could back up a little.

Before we leave, we can go around Deirdre and find a lighter lying just to the left of the front door. Mysterious!

With all that said, let’s go into town and start investigating. I expect this recap will be a little longer than usual — not just because I spent most of this first post babbling about the game’s history and graphics; there’s actually quite a bit of dialogue and plot in this game overall, so we’ll see how many parts it ends up being.

Up next: We meet our suspects and Nancy Drew shuts down the idea of going rogue and committing crimes with Deirdre, thus crushing my dreams of a Carmen Sandiego spinoff with the two of them.