Previously on Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem: I thought that was going to be the last part, but APPARENTLY NOT! Because there’s yet more backstory and puzzles to get out of the way, although we did find out who exactly is behind the ghost sightings, and also that that both Deirdre and Teegan were more involved with Mei’s accident than they let on.
With that final reveal from Deirdre, we go down into the tunnels. We somehow have directions on our phone telling us which way to turn — did we get these from Jason? I don’t know. Anyway, we need to follow the cardinal directions as listed on Nancy’s phone, but we also need to keep an eye on the compass, because we’re not always facing north.
After we’ve gone some ways into the tunnels, Joe will scream, and we’ll pause to hear some thumping coming from somewhere else in the maze. Nancy and the Hardys decide to split up — they’ll investigate the noise, while Nancy will keep looking for Mei. Luckily for the Hardys, there are signs scratched into the walls, so they don’t need Nancy’s directions to find their way around. Nancy snarks that if they get in trouble, Joe can just scream and she’ll definitely hear them. Heh.
We switch to the Hardys, and we get the letter Frances left for Lauren, for some reason. Then we follow the “signs” Frank mentioned — the initials “AW” are carved into various wooden beams in the maze, so we want to turn down the passageways that have an “AW” written by them.
We eventually exit the maze to find a door, and the banging noise is definitely coming from behind it. Joe is a total cowardly custard about investigating it, so Frank has to step up: “I’m Frank Hardy and this is my brother Joe. Do you need help?”
Deirdre: “YES! Doesn’t anyone answer their phone anymore?!” Hee! So Deirdre’s been stuck there all along; she says she’s being crushed between the door and…something heavy, I don’t know, so we need to solve a puzzle and unlock the door before she dies. No pressure!
So what we have here is a 3D puzzle, because naturally this door can’t just use a key. We need to put the pieces together to form an icosahedron — essentially, just rotating the pieces until they fit together. This puzzle seems tricky because it’s 3D and the instructions lean needlessly on the fact that an icosahedron has twenty faces and five of the faces need to meet at a point, but really, all you have to do is eyeball and guess at how the shapes fit together. You can hold the left mouse button down to test the fit — the pieces will all draw together, and the pieces that aren’t flush together are in the wrong position. You then have to keep swapping their positions so that each piece is in the right place, so that they sit flush together. I actually didn’t even read the instructions (and had no idea what an icosahedron was), and I basically just put it together through trial and error. So have heart!
We open the door and lift whatever that wooden thing is off of Deirdre. Joe’s mad that she wasn’t actually dying, and Deirdre’s like, “Well, I could have died!” Is this really the time, you guys? Deirdre explains that we’re inside the Hathorne House; she came here to look for the will, since you know, she opted out of the more pressing issue of FINDING MEI.
Deirdre says she found this room by pushing past a bookcase, and Frank muses that this secret room must be where Abigail Woodley was kept. It must be full of secrets! Secrets and puzzles! Like the giant puzzle right on the floor!
Alright, so this is where Frances’s letter to Lauren comes into play. Frank will explain that he doesn’t remember picking it up, and Joe will say that he stole it off of Nancy because he thought it might come in handy. So that explains our finding it above.
I like this puzzle a lot, by the way! It’s pretty easy, and the pagan festival/astrology theme ties very nicely to the overall witchy vibe of this game. So each paragraph of the letter corresponds to the rings of this puzzle, going from the outer rings to the inner ones. The first paragraph of the letter mentions Lauren coming to Frances “in midwinter” and making her days “the brightest.” This means we need to press “Yule” (the midwinter season) and “Litha” (the summer solstice), in that order. If you didn’t have an all-encompassing obsession with witchcraft at the age of 13 like I did, there’s a book on the table to help you ID the various seasons and Zodiac signs. Pressing the right pieces will cause the whole ring to move down. (Frank: “It moved down!” Deirdre: “Yes, we all saw it.”)
The next paragraph mentions Frances being “like a lion” and caring for Lauren, even though Lauren could be “stubborn like an ox.” This means we need to press Leo and Taurus, respectively. Then the third paragraph mentions “spring stirring” and “Samhain,” so we need to press the dates for the beginning of spring (2/2) and Halloween (10/31). Then, finally, the last paragraph wants us to press “earth” (triangle facing up, with a line through it) and “air” (upside down triangle with a line through it). Admittedly, I had some trouble with the last one — the letter mentions Lauren being free of her burdens, which is obviously air, but I basically guessed until I got “earth” right.
(If you press things in the wrong order, the room will shake a bit, and Deirdre will shriek, “What are you doing? DON’T DO THAT!” Hee. God, I love having her as a sidekick.)
A model version of the Hathorne House rises up out of the rings. All we have to do is basically poke at it and press the parts of the house in the right order: the front door, then the chimney, which opens up an attic room. We then push a button underneath the table in the attic.
Another part of the house will open up, and we’ll find Frances’s will. So like, when Frances Tuttle was putting this puzzle together, was she imagining Lauren finding her letter hidden away inside the secretary drawer, then finding the secret room, then being like, “Ah yes, I will use the clues from this letter to solve this giant puzzle in the floor, then I will correctly open up this model house to find the will”? At no point did she picture Lauren being unable to find it, then the time limit on the house running out and Lauren being left homeless?
Finding the will triggers the switch to Nancy, who’s found Mei. She’s unconscious for some reason — it’s never explained how exactly she gets knocked out — but we manage to bring her around. We tell her that Jason has spilled the beans about everything to us, and we’re looking for the Book of Apologies. Mei claims not to know where it is.
We can look around a bit and see all the stuff Jason and Mei have stored down here — there’s a ton of Mei’s art, plus a gym bag that I assume is Jason’s. I remember some people clowning the gym bag as well, since the label on it is like…the same one that appears on the default object from the Unity catalog or something? Essentially, it’s just straight-up a stock Unity object that they didn’t bother customizing at all.
You can also pick up the piece of paper next to Mei, and see that she’s been accepted to the Waverly Academy of Art! This feels a bit odd, since Waverly was definitely a high school, and Mei seems to at least be in college or taking a gap year? Well, whatever the situation is, I’m sure Mei will fit in better there than in Salem. She and Mel can bond over their emo personalities and deadpan voices!
As we look around, we notice a big poster that says “PREMONITIONS” on the wall. We can click on it, and it will reveal an alcove with an old chest inside. Nancy is intrigued! I am more intrigued, personally, by the band poster to the right of the alcove. Is that some corpse paint I see? I told you Mei listened to black metal.
Anydoodle, this is another puzzle. We have a bunch of drawer-looking things with different shapes around their edges, and we want to arrange them so that they all slot correctly into place.
Completing the puzzle gets us the Book of Apologies! Although now that I’m actually thinking about it, do we need the book? The only reason Judge Danforth wanted it is because it helped replace the AW evidence that was stolen from his office; assuming we catch Alicia, we can recover the evidence, can’t we? Well, whatever. For the purposes of the game, we have recovered the book and it was a totally necessary thing to do. Mei asks why we’ve gone through so much trouble to help her when she was a total unhelpful dick to us, and we’re like, “Oh, Mei, you’re not even close to being our most assholeish client.” I think that award still goes to Paula “I’m Going to Fire You For Being a Victim of Attempted Murder” Santos.
Finding the book switches us back to the Hardy Boys. They’re escaping the house with Deirdre, on Deirdre’s orders. Frank wants to stay and help Nancy, but Deirdre reminds them that they have to get the will to the judge before the end of the day. She adds that Nancy has gotten herself out of scrapes hundreds of times before, and if they go back down there, they could all die. I mean, it sounds callous, but she has a point, especially the part where Nancy has escaped from situations like this a bajillion times without anyone’s help. Frank’s like, “But if I don’t show up to dramatically save her, then how will she ever dump her boyfriend for me?!” Shut up, Frank. Deirdre convinces them in the end, and they all go to give the will to Judge Danforth.
Meanwhile, a hooded figure watches them from the trees and runs off when they mention Nancy and Mei are alone down there.
We switch back to Mei and Nancy. We’ve found the book, but now the tunnels are flooding, with ergot-poisoned water, you’ll recall. We hear Alicia’s voice echoing down the tunnels, saying, “This little bloodhound gang has run around long enough.” Ha! Frank and Joe Hardy wish they had written “The Bad Touch.” Also, was that her spying on Deirdre from the trees? Did Jason tell her that we’d found the book? Jason!!!
So now we have to charge through the tunnels to escape the water and/or Alicia. As we move, the tunnels shake and we keep seeing a bunch of Puritan ghosts zoom past us. Mei keeps freaking out, probably because she’s got open head and leg wounds that are coming in contact with ergot-infected water.
So when you leave the flooding room, you want to go forward five clicks, then left-right-left-right-right-left, then forward twice more. I don’t believe there’s any signs to guide you this time — it’s basically just guesswork. Mei and Nancy run into this small room, and Mei starts panicking that they’re trapped in here and all the Puritan ghosts are coming for them, specifically to punish Mei for what she’s done. Nancy’s like, “Say what?”, and Mei finally reveals exactly what happened when she was nine: Teegan, Olivia, and Lauren were always hanging out and roleplaying The Craft when they were in high school; Mei wanted to come along but Teegan didn’t want her kid sister hanging out with them. One night, they went out to go do witchy shit in the shed, and Mei followed them (sneaking out past Deirdre, you’ll recall). She hid in the shed and made noises to scare them; Teegan, Olivia, and Lauren ran away, knocking over a candle and trapping Mei in the shed as they went.
Nancy correctly says that it really doesn’t sound like Mei’s fault at all — like, Mei didn’t even try to start a fire to scare them, she was just making silly noises. Nevertheless, Mei blames herself. You have two options here: you can say that the whole thing was an accident, or you can blame it on Teegan and her friends. I pick the second one, even though I don’t entirely agree with it, just because I wanted to see how this more inflammatory statement plays out. Nancy says that Teegan let Mei take the blame for the first fire and she was going to let it happen again, which…I mean…she’s not wrong. Mei cries that the whole “nearly killing Teegan’s sister” thing broke up Teegan’s friend group and made Teegan all emo, and it’s Mei’s fault that Teegan lost everything. If Mei doesn’t take the fall for her now, then she’ll lose it all again! Nancy’s like, “Teegan was literally the one that set the house on fire.”
Alright, we can get to the Parrys’ fucked-up sibling relationship later. Right now, we need light so we can scope out the room. We ask Mei for her lighter, to which she asks, “You smoke?” Nancy: “Only when I’m on fire.” Dig that reference to an earlier game! Oh, Her, I see you trying to bank on nostalgia to stave off complaints about this game.
Mei’s lighter has a leopard-print design, which Nancy needles her about, and Mei admits that it was Olivia’s — she dropped it during the shed fire, and Mei picked it up and kept it. “Also, I’m addicted to animal prints,” she deadpans. Nancy: “We all have our vices.” Mei: “What’s yours? Chocolate milk?” “Actually, it’s petty theft and infidelity,” Nancy doesn’t say.
We use Mei’s lighter to light an oil lamp in the corner, where we also find a wooden feather and a note that says, “I am just a shadow.” Nancy also hints that we should look more closely at the “AW” carving on the barrel. When we do, we can pull the planks of wood away to get a crowbar, which Nancy immediately wants to use to pull away the bricks in the wall so we can escape.
Mei stops us, telling us that she has a bad feeling about yanking out the bricks. Nancy’s like, “Well, it’s that or drown,” and Mei bleats that she doesn’t know how, but she psychically knows that breaking the wall will doom us to a watery grave. She claims that ever since the accident, she’s had premonitions, and her burn scars hurt whenever Voldemort’s nearby something bad is about to happen. Nancy believes her, although she adds that she doesn’t think Mei is psychic — she’s probably just really observant, and her scars probably hurt because the burned skin is sensitive to changes in the air or something. You know, just in case you think this game was leaning too hard into the supernatural stuff. Anyway, Nancy adds that she’s still going to break down the wall because there’s no other way out of here, but like, we’ll be careful about it.
We look again at the “I am just a shadow” note, and see that it now has another “AW” written on it, with the points of the letters clearly being bricks. We turn to the wall and see that that several of the bricks have “AW” scratched into them. The top-center one is marked on the note, so we have to use the crowbar on that “AW” brick, which will reveal another wooden feather.
So we put the two wooden feathers in this display on the wall, brush some dust off of the angel’s face, and we have our next puzzle: we need to align the feathers on the right side of the angel to match the positions of the feathers on the left side. It’s one of those “moving one piece moves the others” puzzles, and you want to click the rightmost feather twice, second-to-rightmost feather twice, and the leftmost feather three times. This pops open the box the angel is holding, and we see that there’s a keyhole in the shape of “AW” written on it. We can finally use the “AW” key we found in Austria on it, and the panel swings open to reveal a hole in the wall.
To freedom! And (for real this time) the end of the game!
We cut to the courthouse, where we encounter Deirdre and the Hardys running to the judge’s office. We tell them to wait outside while we go in and hit the judge and Alicia with THE TRUTH! We lay out all the evidence we found — Alicia paid Jason to steal the AW evidence, she’s been poisoning Lauren’s water supply, and she used her credit card to pay for his flight to Austria, where he stole the Book of Apologies for her.
Alicia cracks and snaps that she would’ve gotten away with it if Jason wasn’t such a fucking idiot. I mean…that’s probably true. Judge Danforth is like, “Why would you do such dastardly things!” and Alicia rants that she only did it because she cares about Salem the most; she thinks the only way to save the town is to modernize it instead of being stuck in the past, and she was the only person with the guts to do what had to be done. They could build houses on the Hathorne House land and bring in new people to live in Salem! Nancy wonders who Alicia imagines would be the owner of said new houses, and Alicia snarls that she deserves to make some money in real estate after everything she’s put up with in this town.
I gotta say that Alicia’s not entirely in the wrong — it’s kind of similar to the Ithorians vs. Czerka plot in KOTOR II, in that while her grand vision is sort of grossly capitalistic and callous, diversifying the town’s economy and trying to make it bigger is not a bad thing overall — and we’ve seen how the insular nature of Salem has led to some serious prejudice against anyone different. On the other hand, Alicia’s actual goal really just seems to be becoming the landlord of a large housing complex, with zero thought given to creating the necessary jobs or infrastructure that would attract new people to live there.
Alicia says that we can’t prove anything and tries to storm out, but Frank stops her and says the police are already on their way. So…when we told everyone to wait outside, they took that to mean “stand right behind Nancy”? Whatever.
“This is unbelievable!” Alicia bleats. “I only wanted…to make Salem…” She does not finish with the phrase “great again”, but whatever, it’s implied.
Judge Danforth says that nevertheless, Alicia is right: there’s no will, and thus the house is going to be turned over to the state anyway, just like Alicia wanted. I mean, assuming she gets arrested, this still throws a wrench in her plans, doesn’t it? She can’t develop the land from jail. Anyway, we tell the judge that we have in fact found a will, and here we have three options to choose the ending for the game:
- Mention both the will and the Book of Apologies. This leads to a speech about how Lauren is the sole legal owner of the house, but we also suggest that Judge Danforth liase with her and Teegan to build an Accused Witches memorial on the property.
- Mention the Book of Apologies only. Nancy suggests that the estate be divvied up between the descendants of the people listed in the book, which will leave Lauren homeless, but hey — maybe “the good people of Salem will open their doors to her”! Ah, yes, because the people of Salem have shown themselves to be super generous and understanding in this game.
- Mention the will only. Nancy says that the Accused Witches group has zero evidence proving their ownership of the property, and thus Lauren is the only person with any ownership over the estate.
I chose option 1, partly because it feels like the “right” option (kind of like how Light Side Revan is the canon ending of KOTOR, since I’m referencing these games now), and also because I did not complete that bullshit drawer puzzle to find the Book of Apologies for nothing.
Judge Danforth will then ask who set the Hathorne House fire, and here we have another two options: say Teegan set it on purpose to force Lauren out and claim the property for AW (which will get Teegan arrested), or say Teegan set it on accident (which will get her community service). I choose the second one, because you know, Teegan is a cowardly custard, but I don’t think she’s quite an arsonist.
After all that, we can’t choose any more conversation options, and Nancy will instead give an unprompted speech ripping Judge Danforth apart for accusing Mei without evidence and ostracizing her for an accident that happened when she was in fourth grade. “You know, this town has a history of judges behaving without sound jurisprudence and I would expect, after 300 years, you would be able to right that wrong.” Go off, Nancy! We then give him a final reminder that Judge Danforth’s son is the real criminal here — apart from Alicia — not Mei, and the judge should probably remember that the next time he starts getting on his high horse about treating people differently just because they look like the Phantom of the Opera.
With that, we fade out and return back to the Parry house, where our cast has gathered for a final scene. Jason and Mei are out on the front porch, and we hear Jason apologize to Mei. “For what?” Mei asks. Uh, letting you take the fall for crimes he committed? Not defending you while his dad was smearing you all over town? JK, Jason merely apologizes for telling Nancy about their secret hiding place in the tunnels, since they promised not to share it with anyone else. Mei forgives him, saying that he saved her life. She adds that there’s a good person underneath his “pretty boy” exterior, and she knows it won’t go away. Mei, he let the entire town turn on you while withholding information about the Hathorne House. That’s kind of fucked up, right, Mei? Mei???
Essentially, all we do during this part is go through the house and say goodbye to our ex-suspects. It’s actually quite bittersweet — Nancy rarely wraps up her cases this way; we usually cut to Nancy recapping the ending once she catches the culprit. Actually talking to each of our suspects and getting closure gives a sense of “leaving” the game that feels genuinely cathartic.
Anyway, next up is Teegan and Deirdre. If you chose to accuse Teegan of intentionally setting the fire earlier, she won’t be here, as she’s been arrested. But since we chose to be nice, Teegan thanks us for bailing her out, and says she’ll probably never stop feeling guilt about what she did to Mei. She adds that she’s going to work on improving her relationship with her sister, and she’s glad Lauren got the house in the end — hopefully one day they can make up, too. Deirdre says she’s glad she called us here, to which Nancy chirps, “It was my pleasure!” Deirdre: “Ugh, that attitude just kills me.” Hee.
Mei thanks us for clearing her name and tells us that she’s going to leave Salem to go to art school. Nancy says they might meet again some day, and Mei says, “That wouldn’t be the worst.” Aw! She likes us, she really likes us!
In the kitchen, we can talk to Lauren and Olivia. We tell Lauren about our idea to put an Accused Witches memorial on the estate, and she says she thinks it’s a nice idea. I mean, Lauren’s beef with Teegan aside, isn’t she also descended from an accused witch? It would be as much her memorial as anyone else’s.
Olivia teasingly invites us to join her coven, and thanks us for bringing her, Teegan, and Lauren together again.
Then there’s the Hardys. They want to know if we’re interested in joining their detective agency, and Nancy blows them off. Not while you’re trying to stare into my soul like that, Frank.
Hey, can we go in Mei’s room now? No, we still cannot. Dammit, game!
We take one last look from our room in the house…
There’s nothing left to do in the house, so we exit through the front door to trigger the last scene. Again, the ability to deliberately “leave” the game’s world, and walk out while our suspects stay behind and celebrate, feels very melancholy and gives the end of this game a weight that I really like.
We walk down the street while Nancy calls Ned. She tells him that she wants to take trip to Austria, just the two of them. “No cases this time. Just the two of us,” she says, and that’s the last line of the game. Rejected, Frank Hardy!
Despite everything, I think I come down on the side of liking this game — it’s not my favorite by a long shot, but I’m firmly in the “it’s not that bad” camp. It managed to hit enough of my personal favorite buttons (I could never really hate a game with this much Deirdre Shannon) that I’m willing to overlook most of its flaws. Even without my personal bias, I think the core story is solid and beautiful, with the same excellent grasp of grief and guilt that many other later-era Nancy games have. The quiet resolutions at the end, with the characters needing to go their separate ways to deal with their flaws, but hoping that one day they’ll meet again as better people, is a lovely, muted way to end their stories. It’s not so baldly optimistic as a more childish game would be, but it still leaves you with some hope that the people you helped aren’t total lost causes.
I will admit that the successful story probably can’t be credited to Her’s current staff — it sounds like it was mostly written before all the layoffs, with only some minor tweaks. The janky graphics, lack of puzzles and side plots, and clunky interface, on the other hand, were all them. I won’t deny that watching the characters sway back and forth constantly was distracting or that cutting from one endless conversation to another made me feel more like I was watching a movie than playing an adventure game. Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing NPCs walking around Salem, I liked watching the story unfold, and I was feeling some kind of way about our suspects by the end. Like, come on. Midnight in Salem is still better than any of the games that were set on tropical islands.
THE END.
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