Previously on Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse: We got a change of clothes, so now we look like all the Bavarian peasants running around this castle. We just want to look like the cool kids! We found out that the castle has a very dark history of young girls disappearing into the woods. Everyone’s like, “Uh, Nancy, you’re a young girl,” and Nancy’s like, “Yeah, but were those other girls super sleuths? I don’t think so.”
So someone closed the castle gates on us, leaving us with no way in or out. We were alone with the monster for a moment, but then it was like, “Eh, too much effort” and wandered off instead of kidnapping us. So we escaped that particular fate, but we still have to find a way out from between the gates.
In the wall next to us, we see this cupboard. It’s locked, but we find the key hidden behind a stone right above it.
The key opens the cupboard, where we find this puzzle. We want to slide the bars around so that the red, green, and blue bars are under the gate release sign.
The gates open, and now we can wander off into the woods in search of the monster! Nothing could go wrong! A piece of its clothing has snagged on the gate, and Nancy says that this is proof that it wasn’t her imagination. We didn’t need its clothing for that, Nancy. I have screencaps!
So off we go, into the spooooky woods. It’s entirely possible that we’re about to get abducted and murdered in here! Meanwhile, back in River Heights, Ned’s probably teaching himself how to crochet or some shit.
We come across this bush, and Nancy notes that it’s covered in the same kind of burr we found earlier. Wow, it’s a good thing that that burr only comes from a single bush in the entire forest. We try to follow the path, but the bush is in our way, so we have to use the shears to cut through it.
We find a camp behind the shrubs, and we pick up this mysterious…rock…thing. We also find a flashlight! Wait, we were running around the woods and the dungeons without a flashlight? We didn’t even have a glowstick?
Recalling the story page about a girl trapped in the well, we can assume that our next move is to look there. We use the flashlight to see down to the bottom, and we find this puzzle. The rock we found in the woods is put in the center of the design, and now we have to spin the stones so that the touching edges have the same pictures.
Once that’s done, the side of the well will open up to reveal another secret passageway. Aw yis. “I better take that stone tile with me; I don’t want anyone to follow me through,” Nancy says. What? Nancy? Taking precautions? I am shocked.
We go through a maze of dark, abandoned stone walls and dirt floors. On the floor, we find a bunch of copies of the castle newspaper — the English version, conveniently. There’s an article about how Karl’s approval rating is at a record low, because he’s refusing to deal with the monster. To make matters worse, he was also caught on tape ranting about how much he hates tourists and wishes they would stop coming to Castle Finster. Oooh, it looks like Karl has a motive to be scaring people away from the castle.
We find a fourth story page, with “ME” at the bottom, as well as a coded message.
Down one of the other hallways, we trip over a barrel, and when we look inside, we find the monster’s outfit. HMM. Well, maybe he just needs a change of clothes. Monsters do laundry too, Nancy!
At the end of the passage, we see an open door, that leads us back out into the forest. We come face to face with a huge rock, and Nancy will note that it’s the same boulder as in the story page we found. The page was about a girl hiding something in the woods, so we start digging on the ground around the boulder to see if we find anything.
We dig up this old-ass necklace. I love finding expensive jewelry buried in the dirt! Nancy muses that the girl in the story must have been hiding the necklace — but why? Right? I would’ve sold it, personally.
Under a nearby rock, we also find a map of the passages. Well, that’s infinitely more helpful than just stumbling around in the passages until we find a way out (Nancy’s body will lie in the Chamber of Secrets forever!), so we’ll use this to get around from now on. We go back in and follow the passages until we see a red arrow on the wall. The door after the arrow leads to…Nancy’s room. Dun dun dun! So that explains how people are getting in there and jacking up Nancy’s clothes. Curse you, mystery culprit! Do you want Nancy to be running around in horse shirts and mom jeans until the end of time?
We’re back in the castle now. Let’s see if it was Lukas who trapped us between the gates. Lukas denies it, although he’s like, “Although I did lock you out when you first showed up! Ah, remember the good times.” Nancy’s like, “Yeah, that was only like two hours ago.”
Weirdly, we can now bring up the various warning signs around the castle with Lukas. I haven’t been noticing them at all, but I guess we were supposed to. Lukas tells us that they used to be funnier, with Karl having jokes like, “Warning: Stairs. Falling may occur.” But then “they” made Karl change them. Speaking of Karl, Lukas tells us that Karl has a bunch of love letters in his desk. Isn’t that hilarious! Old people don’t deserve love!
We can ask him his feelings about the monster yet again. I kind of love how, from an in-story perspective, Nancy’s going around asking everyone, “How do you feel about the monster now? Are you scared of the monster now? How about now?” every like, five minutes. Lukas says that he’s seen it, or at least he thinks he has. Anja tells him that monsters aren’t real, but he can tell she doesn’t believe that herself. “Monsters aren’t real,” Nancy says. Lukas is like, “Well, then why do castles have gates and knights and shit?” and Nancy’s like, “Because of the fucking Crusades, kid.” No, just kidding. Instead, Nancy’s like, “Oh yeah, good point,” and Lukas shrieks that we weren’t supposed to agree with him. “You’re supposed to keep telling me monsters aren’t real! Now I’m never getting to sleep tonight.” Welcome to the real world, Lukas! Sometimes people are gonna say things you don’t want to hear!
Let’s go see Anja. She tells us that everyone knows how to operate the castle gates, so it could’ve been anyone who trapped us. But more importantly: we saw the monster? She’s all, “Tell me more! (Like does he have a car?)” Anja wonders if we should start warning people, and we have the option to say yes or no. I choose no, because I bet Nancy can bust this case wide open without freaking everyone out.
Also, honestly, if the villagers didn’t see the monster lumbering right through their own damn courtyard, that’s their own fault.
Then we show Anja the necklace we found in the woods. She freaks out: this necklace is real, not the junk she sells to tourists. Heh. She tells us that we shouldn’t be carrying it around — much like our dress, all the missing girls were wearing this necklace when they were abducted. What, the same necklace? Did it just keep coming back to the castle like an unlucky boomerang?
(If you back up and click on Anja again, she’ll say, “That was fast. Did you need something else?” I’m so weirded out by these new suspects, who know when I’m just clicking on them again and again.)
Renate is pretty remarkably chill, considering we just had a monster sighting and all. We ask if anyone’s tried to fight the monster — hey, we’ve seen it, and it’s not that terrifying. Like, I bet the Hardy Boys could take it on a good day, if Ned or someone helped out. Renate scowls that many knights in shining armor have tried, but knights in shining armor are no good — “A knight in shining armor never fought. A knight in dented, scraped armor, now that’s what you want.” Hey, maybe the knight is just real good at cleaning his armor. What’s with the bias against laundry in this game?
So anyway, Renate, how did you become a traveling storyteller? “Eh, it’s a long story,” she says. Then: “What, nothing? That was a joke. Ugh, Americans, you always have to tell them when you’re making a joke. Come now, we do it again. Ask me again.” Oh, sorry, Renate. I just thought you spoke exclusively in cryptic warnings and cranky one-liners about how old you are. Anyway, she tells us that she used to travel around with her father and sister “between the wars” — wait, what? This game came out in 2011, and seems to be set during that year. Even if Renate was just a little girl at the end of WWI, that would still make her nearly 100 years old right now. What are you doing, game? Anyway, Renate told us that her father was a storyteller before her, and she thought it was so cool that she wanted to be one just like him.
Finally, we can show her the necklace. As expected, Renate freaks out and tells us to get rid of it. Don’t tell me what to do, Renate.
We haven’t talked to Karl in a while, so let’s see what’s up with him. We also have to confront him about that article we found in the passageway, about how he’s trying to drive our “loud-talking, fanny pack-wearing” brethren away from the castle. They may be uncouth and have terrible fashion sense, but those are our people, Karl! He gets mad at us and kicks us out of his office.
Seeing as he’ll probably notice if we just try and click on him again, let’s do something else while he cools off. We found a couple of stained glass tiles lying around the castle, so let’s go figure out what to do with those.
There’s an alcove by Karl’s office containing this puzzle; it was missing tiles earlier, but we found them in the dining room and the glass room, respectively. The goal is to place all the tiles in the right order of layers to make it look like the design in the corner.
Once that’s done, the box opens up to give us this gear. It looks like a piece that’s missing from some machinery in the security booth.
We also find this book about the history of Castle Finster. It’s turned to a page about the Freiherr’s daughter, Else. Hey, that piece of paper Renate dropped said “Else, Castle Finster” in the corner. So we put the paper over the book, and the cutouts form instructions to open the clocks in the gift shop. Cool beans.
Alright, back to Karl! We ask about the castle’s events, specifically the “Die Ungeheuerlichkeit Nacht Festival.” That approximately translates to “The Monster Night Festival”, which is kind of a weird name for a festival that’s meant to celebrate another year without the monster. Nancy’s like, “But the monster’s back,” and Karl’s like, “Nobody has to know that! Also, we already paid for the custom-made cake.” Nancy: “Well, if you already have the cake.” Hee. Priorities! Anyway, Karl thinks the castle needs something positive to focus on. We bring up the courtyard attack and note that the monster seems to be after someone particular. Karl disagrees, although he wishes that were the case: “Then we would know what to expect.”
Now it’s time to hit Karl with the TRUTH! Tell us about the accident, Karl! You know, the accident that you mentioned once, and that we are now going to interrogate you about until you crack. Karl breaks down and confesses that when he first started, he thought it would be nice to give tours around the castle. He didn’t realize some of the structures were so fragile, and he accidentally trapped a bunch of tourists in one the dungeon cells. The cell collapsed, and Karl wasn’t able to do anything about it. Nobody died, but it’s made him paranoid about his bad luck, and he thinks it’s better if no one is able to come to the castle, so his bad luck can’t affect them. Karl tells us that when he was a young boy, his father took him into the city to see a marching band on a train, where Karl met his doppelgänger. Karl’s father was angry that Karl was playing with the identical stranger, and dragged him back to their own train car — “I remember looking at the boy, and he had the oddest smile.” Very creepy! Doppelgängers are indeed considered a harbinger of bad luck; Karl believes that meeting his cursed him for life. It’s a very effectively creepy conversation — Karl’s reluctance to talk about it is palpable.
Hmm, but we need a way to get Anja out of the gift shop first. To the security booth! On our way there, we trip over these stilts on the floor. “I wonder what Lukas is doing with these,” Nancy says.
Alrighty, so both Anja and Karl have buttons for the security alerts. And — I lied, we have to get Karl out of his office before we get Anja out of the gift shop. So we press Karl’s button, which will send him a signal to…go do security maneuvers or whatever. Either way, he’s now out of his office.
If you recall the significant sparrow painting in Karl’s office, we can now look behind it and find the key to his desk. We also find a copy of “Festival Planning for Beginners” on his desk. Oh, Karl. We find a planner, but it’s locked, so we can’t touch it quite yet. There’s a key lying on top of a sticky note that says “Anja,” so we can assume this is for the gift shop. Finally, there’s a letter from Karl to a woman named Mildred. Oh, how he longs to join her in that mysterious place called “Alberta”, but they cannot be together! But he cannot tell her why, for she would think him mad! Wow, I was not expecting Karl to be the character with a tragic love story in this game. Truly subverting my expectations.
Now that we have Anja’s key, we can go to the security booth and call her away from the gift shop.
Anja’s drawer is full of emails from Markus, berating the castle employees for not making enough money, and hinting that the castle may have to shut down. “Why would Anja print these?” Nancy wonders. Also note that the emails are dated from January, but they were printed in March (which, according to Karl’s calendar, is this month).
Anja also has a key to wind the clocks, which we use to change the clock hands to the number from Renate’s cutout (7:21). That opens up the clock, and we get another gear for the security booth.
So the security booth just has an old Enigma machine hanging around, because why not. There’s a manual explaining how to use it, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. The code needs a “key” to create a base for all the transposing letters; the illustrations on the coded pages we found provide the keys. There are three pictures and three letters in a key. The key letters are the first letter of each picture, in German — so the sun is S (Sonn), the moon is M (Mond), and the comet is K (Komet). We know this from the little vocab boxes on the bottom of the castle newspaper.
The code on the sun/moon/comet message is that the combo for Karl’s planner is 8261. The bat/castle/knight code is that “the Freiherr’s daughter is step one.” Hmm.
Alright alright, so we trick Karl into leaving his office again, and go back to break into his planner. We take note of how he’s written down the names of his various Raid characters in different colors.
We can check this against the character guides, and notice that the colors correspond to the characters’ stats. So, for example, The Sea Hare is written in blue, so we want to check the magic stat, which is 5. The Gold Chicken is written in red, so we check its strength stat, which is 15.
The point of all this is to use the character notes to figure out the combo for this keypad lock on Karl’s cabinet. So The Sea Hare is listed as #1, with a stat of 5, so we put in 5 first. The combo is 5-13-15-11-9.
We find a bunch of employee files, including Sonny Joon’s. Check the references to the past games, as well as some future ones — The Deadly Device, and possibly Tomb of the Lost Queen and Midnight in Salem(!). Oh, HER, you used to have your shit together.
We can’t spend too long cackling at Sonny’s resume, as Karl comes back with a quickness. So let’s check the pertinent files, one of which is Anja’s. She has quite the resume, and a glowing recommendation from Castle Cast. Somewhat confusingly, it reads like this was her previous place of employment, but later conversations say that it’s a staffing agency, who provide the employees for Castle Finster. I don’t know. We can also look at her brother’s — Lukas’s dad’s — file, which contains a security report detailing all of the monster sightings. It looks like they started in February.
So let’s call Castle Cast and see if they can tell us anything about Anja. Also, on the way out of Karl’s office, we’ll pass the Freiherr’s daughter portrait, and Nancy will remark that we need to find the undamaged painting.
Anyway, up in our room, the Castle Cast dudes tell us that they can’t give out information about their employees without proper clearance. So let’s call Markus. Markus, Castle Cast is being mean to us! Oh, and what’s up with all these missing girls? Markus is like, “Oh yeah, the castle salesman did mention that. Oh, well, it’s a castle. That kind of stuff happens.” Does it, Markus? Does it really? We also tell him about someone giving us a traditional dress, to which he says, “Wow. I do not care about that problem. Put it on. Have fun.” Markus, if we get eaten, I’m blaming you.
He promises to call Castle Cast and give us clearance once we’re done talking. Okay, and one last question: is Markus having money problems? “Nope. I’m very rich,” he chirps. Hee. We tell him that his emails say otherwise, and he’s like, “Nah bruh. I have hella money.” How does he make this money, anyway? “I take money, I move it around, and bam! Additional money.” “That’s not very specific,” Nancy says. “You sound like my financial advisor,” Markus says. Markus is totally involved in some shady shit, isn’t he?
Anyway, we can now call Castle Cast, and find out about Anja. The person we’ve got on the phone — Jordan — gushes that they just loved Anja! She was amazing at getting the mail! Wait, what? Nancy’s like, “I thought she was a manager,” and Jordan’s like, “No…I don’t know what to tell you, but that’s not true.” Yikes! Well, if Anja lied on her resume, then wouldn’t her staffing place have, you know, noticed? Jordan says the castellan position is management, and Anja must have gotten promoted internally. “Probably from whoever’s in charge at the castle.” Would that be Karl or Markus? Hmm. Is it at all possible that this is a misunderstanding? Jordan says it’s not possible for Anja to have been hired as castellan just off of her resume — she vouches for Anja as a worker, and says she never did anything dishonest at Castle Cast, but she just doesn’t have the requirements to be castellan. So lying is the only way she could’ve gotten the job.
Ah, remember how Anja said she “crossed her fingers” when she sent in her resume? Nifty little double meaning there.
We ask if it’s possible that Castle Cast sent emails on Markus’s behalf, and Jordan gasps that that would be strictly against company policy! There are rules against it in their pamphlets! Oh, well, if the pamphlets say so.
Let’s call Ned, because I feel bad about leaving him hanging for like half of the last recap. We tell him about the monster attack, and Nancy says that the monster was unusually tall. Hmm, might that have something to do with the stilts we found?
We also tell him about Markus’s emails. Nancy muses that despite Markus being hella rich, a castle seems like the definition of a money pit — maybe he’s desperate enough to bring in visitors that he’s staging monster attacks. HMMM.
We can swing by for a philosophical speech from Renate — she waxes on about how perhaps the monster is real, something terrible that lives in the woods, or perhaps it’s all a metaphor for a serial killer that preys on young girls. Could go either way! Cool, glad we had this talk, Renate.
Down in the gift shop, we find the original version of the Freiherr’s daughter portrait on one of the postcards. If we buy it, the price sticker comes off and we can see that there’s an “EN” in the corner.
And now that we’ve given her three of our hard-earned euros, let’s confront Anja about being a lying liar. Lying’s only okay when Nancy Drew does it, Anja! We tell her that we called Castle Cast, and she blusters that they’re very busy, and we shouldn’t bother them. “You mean you don’t want me to find out that you lied on your resume,” Nancy says. “Too late for that.” Anja wails that she just wanted the castellan job so badly — she didn’t think she was hurting anyone. Nancy’s all, “You hurt justice, that’s what you hurt.” Anja tells us that she was just a poor girl with no opportunities, and lying was the only way she could get ahead and build a secure future for herself. Nancy’s upper-middle class ass is all, “But you still lied, and that’s the worst crime of all!” She says she won’t tattle on Anja, but Anja needs to come clean. “I’ll be checking,” she says. Jesus, Nancy, Anja works for a corny German tourist trap, not the State Department.
Once we leave the gift shop, we get another security alert about the monster. We go into the security booth and see that it’s in the glass room, but it’s already gone once we get there. Nancy will notice some footprints on the floor, and we follow them back into the hallway.
Oh my God, it’s the monster! No, wait, it’s just Lukas.
Oh, no, wait, it is the monster! We start to lecture Lukas about his prank, but then we see the real monster lumber by the window. Lukas is like, “Hey, my costume was pretty accurate!” Lukas, now is not the time.
Now, we could just go to the security booth and see who’s not in their usual places. Or we could not! Yeah, let’s not. Running into our culprit when we’re alone and probably stuck in the dungeons or some shit sounds like way more fun.
We tell Anja about Lukas, and she’s all like, “Oh cool, case closed.” Yeah, we probably should’ve started off by saying he’s not the real monster. She bitters that this means the monster is real, and of course Karl is too incompetent to do anything about it. Okay, well, just letting you know, Anja! See ya! “Auf Wiedersehen,” she says. I forgot to mention it before, but that’s what she says at the end of all of our conversations. That’ll become pertinent in a bit.
We go to tell the news to Karl, too. Like Anja, he jumps ahead and is like, “Woo, time for the getting-rid-of-the-monster festival! But instead of being about the monster showing up, it will be about sending that scoundrel to the strictest military school on the planet. Hmm, is there something worse than military school? I should ask the internet. Could I send him to the circus? Is that still done?” Hee. We quickly correct him and say that, on the contrary, this is proof that Lukas isn’t the monster. Karl opts to be delusional, and starts blustering that Lukas is definitely the monster, because Karl wants him to be the monster, ergo he is, case closed, we can all go home now. Oookay. Hey, what about those love letters in his drawer? “That is none of your business! Get out!” What? I just want to know about your girlfriend who lives in Canada!
Alrighty, so now we have to go look for clues. We want to go look at all the places that the monster’s been seen — the courtyard, the glass room, the solarium, and by that…random tree off to the side. Let’s go!
We use the secret passage in the glass room to get back down into the dungeons. Remember this key thing we saw on the wall? It’s meant for the necklace to fit into, and when we put it there, we can turn it clockwise or counterclockwise. Turning it clockwise opens up the trapdoor in the floor. “I’m glad I wasn’t standing on that,” Nancy says.
Turning it counterclockwise opens up a door to another secret passageway. Aw yis. We go through, and find ourselves in the tunnels that connect to the well and the woods.
Walking, walking…hey, what’s this? This looks like the scarf from Renate’s story. Dude, was that story real?
We see this tree painting, which I’m gonna guess is related to that tree on the map. There’s a door at this end of the passageway, which opens out into the woods.
Another tree! We’re making progress! Nancy muses that we should stick around here and see if the monster shows up. You know, stick around here, in the woods, the place where the monster abducts girls. Why not.
We also find a pile of coins, and another coded message that we’ll have to decrypt in the security booth.
Sure enough, the monster shows up. We can take a picture of it on our phone before leaving the forest area. We’ll get much views on the Internet!
Let’s go see Karl again. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he says. “Why are you here?” Because I’m a super-sleuth, Karl! Keep up! Karl muses that perhaps that’s so, but something about this whole thing seems weird. “Markus, or whoever recommended you be sent here, maybe they had not the best of intentions.” So it’s possible someone else brought us here? Hmm.
Then we show him the picture of the monster we took on the phone, confirming it’s not Lukas. I bet you feel like a dick now, don’t you, Karl? “This is not good,” Karl says. Yeah, we kind of got that.
Let’s go back to the security booth to solve the coded message we found in the forest. We take a look at the CCTV monitors, and notice Anja going out into the woods. Suspicious!
We decode the message we found, and it comes out as, “Legend ending, find young woman to cast as the victim.” Creepy! Nancy realizes that the message means her. Hey, it could be Anja! She can’t be older than thirty!
We can actually have a pretty interesting phone conversation with Ned, so let’s do that. First, he wants us to come up with a team name for an unspecified activity that we’re going to do together (which will come up in the next game, Alibi in Ashes). I choose “Clue Crew” because that’s only the most obvious Nancy Drew nickname ever. “Ooh, edgy,” Ned says. Oh, Ned, you’re so sad. Anyway, getting down to the mystery — we tell Ned more about the attacks, and wonder if this really is a continuation of the castle’s long, bloody history. Ned tells us that in his classes — because he actually goes to school, you’ll recall — he learned that humans like to find patterns in random things; it’s possible that the disappearing girls in the past were just random, but now someone is trying to use the monster story to their advantage.
He also notes that the whole thing is pretty theatrical. There’s costumes and props involved — but of course, it’s not worth it if there’s no audience. That clicks something for Nancy, who realizes that Markus is bringing down investors to Castle Finster, and they must be the audience for the monster, particularly the bit where the monster carries Nancy off. “How much time do you have?” Ned asks. “However long it takes me to finish the game,” Nancy doesn’t say. Just kidding — she doesn’t know, but not long, since Markus is supposed to be arriving tonight. So it looks like the monster’s real target is Markus, with the goal of making him look bad in front of his investors. Hmm.
We can also call the Hardy boys with the same information, and that leads to a little more philosophical discussion of what a monster really is — “We’ve learned as much as we can about them, given them scientific names, but take a swim with a shark and tell me it’s not a monster” — but that’s about it. Okay, good talk.
Now let’s call Markus. We ask if he knew Anja lied on her resume, and he says he didn’t — but still, she has a lot of moxie and she’s a good worker, and that’s what matters. “Still, I wouldn’t expect her to do something like that,” he says. He tells us he initially bought Castle Finster to live in, but decided it was way too creepy. “So…you decided to bring tourists in to visit it,” Nancy deadpans. “A good vacation ends with you looking at your home and promising you’ll never leave it again,” Markus says. Heh.
You don’t have to make these phone calls; I believe this next bit is triggered a little while after you solve the “cast Nancy as the victim” message. We get a call from Karl, telling us to come to his office. He tells us that Lukas is missing, and he doesn’t think it’s a prank this time. Karl tells us that we have to make sure Lukas is okay — sure, the kid is a pain, but “[e]veryone in the castle is family.” Aw.
Before we go look for him, though, we can ask Karl what Anja might be doing, going out into the woods. Karl flips out that she’s not supposed to go out there, and she knows it.
There’s a final option to keep helping with Karl’s new board game character, and if you did keep helping Karl pick traits for the character, we would’ve gotten a special card from him. I didn’t, though, because I’m here to solve the real mysteries! And also I forgot.
Let’s also wrap up Renate’s sideplot before the end of the game, too. We give her the scarf we found, and she gasps that she thought it was lost forever. Nancy says that the story Renate told us about the lost girls in the woods — that was Renate and her sister, wasn’t it? Renate’s sister went into the woods, and Renate couldn’t save her. Renate corrects us: she was the little girl; her older sister was the one who disappeared. Oh, wow, that’s really sad. And really dark! Because — okay, it’s not a spoiler to say that the monster is clearly one of our suspects. But Renate’s sister really did disappear, as did all those girls in the past. Even if it was random, as Ned says, and not the work of a single monster, those tragedies were real, and whatever really happened to those girls remains a mystery. This game is dark, dudes.
Renate tells us that she comes around whenever she hears news of the monster — she used to want to find the truth and fight the monster or whatever; now she just wants closure, and maybe to keep people safe from whatever’s out there, so nobody else meets her sister’s fate.
Man. Now I’m just sad.
We can also go see Anja, but we can’t ask her about her little trip out to the woods, as she’s freaking out over Lukas. He is her nephew, so I guess that’s understandable. She begs us to help her find him. Yeah, yeah, Nancy has to do everything around here.
We check out the foyer and see signs that Lukas has been dragged off. The dungeons seems like the logical place to take him, so we go to the glass room, and see one of Lukas’s Monster game pieces. We know we’re on the right track, so we go down into the dungeons.
We hear Lukas’s voice, so we check all the cells, and find him in the one near the necklace key thing on the wall.
The puzzle to get him out is a little tricky — it’s one of those “pressing one button affects several of the pieces” puzzles, and you have to move quickly. The bar moves automatically across the board once it’s released, and we want to get it to the end without touching any of the raised pegs. So we want to press the right buttons to depress the pegs before the bar touches them.
“Thanks, Nancy! I’m outta here!” Lukas chirps. Wait, you don’t want to stick around and like…help us? Man, kids these days ain’t grateful. Unfortunately for us, when we try to follow him out, the door shuts before we can get through. Lukas goes for help, and…well, I guess we just sit here, right?
Oh, no, wait, someone comes out of nowhere and knocks us out 🙁 Damn, culprit, do you know how many times Nancy’s been hit on the head? Can’t you try something else?
When we come to, we’re locked in a cell under the trapdoor. We can turn our flashlight on and see that there’s a puzzle in the wall that will help us escape. The images on the wall are the same ones from the story pages, so we want to check the pages to see what order they go in, and then press the images in the right order (necklace, boulder, well, shield, trapdoor).
This slides the wall back to reveal another puzzle. The pages will automatically come out in this order (and “Entkommen” is German for “escape”), and we want to spell the word out in this shape. When the letters are placed, they slide down the line to the next place, so you want to place the letters in the space before where they’re supposed to go.
Solving the puzzle opens the door up into the well’s passageways. Nancy spies a bag in one of the corridors, and notes that that wasn’t there the last time we were down here.
Inside the bag are spare monster costume bits, and a book titled The Captive Curse. Hey, that’s the name of our game! Is the book about a girl detective busting a monster mystery wide open? No, it actually turns out to be about the history of the monster legend — we turn to a page that notes that apart from the Freiherr’s daughter, none of the other missing girls from the legend were ever confirmed to be real. Hmm.
We also find yet another email from Markus! The email says that the employees must go along with the plan, even though they’re worried about the welfare of “the girl.” They’re going to give the investors a show they’ll never forget! Nancy notices that the date on the email is tomorrow (although it says it was printed out two days ago. You’d think someone would notice that). The “monster” is trying to frame Markus.
Well, huh. Which of our suspects has the motive to want to hurt Markus?
Let’s back up and head into the dungeon to see if Lukas has opened the door yet. On our way there, though, we come face to face with the monster. We can now accuse one of our suspects. Naming the wrong suspect will end the game, but luckily I am a super-sleuth and know who it is. Anja, j’accuse!
“Looks like I don’t need this now,” Anja says, taking off the mask. “If you had ANY idea how hot it was in that thing — well, enough with the niceties.” We can watch as a pebble(?) rolls along the floor and over the trapdoor, where Anja’s standing as she rants. The castle should be hers, not Markus’s! She was the one who helped him become an important businessman, and stood by him when he was a nobody, and as soon as he became a big deal, he dumped her. Oh, ouch. I mean, I know she’s the villain and all, but that’s not uncommon behavior, sadly. On the other hand, I guess he might’ve sensed the crazy lurking underneath Anja’s business moxie.
Anja says she wants to ruin Markus — what if, say, he orchestrated the monster sightings as a publicity stunt? And she has some emails and letters proving it? And what if, say, the stunt went horribly wrong and there was a deadly accident? That would really ruin his reputation. And also kill us, Anja. Did you think about that, huh?
“You won’t get away with this!” Nancy says, because that’s what she always says. “Yes, I will,” Anja says. “Don’t you see? You’re the girl in the dress. And I’m the monster.” Creepy!
At this point she makes a lunge at us, so we want to put the necklace in the key thing and turn it, and the trapdoor will open under Anja.
Ah, I love getting to literally look down at the villain while we gloat. Anja begs us not to leave her down here, to which Nancy snarks, “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m the girl in the dress, and you’re the monster, remember?” Burn.
Anja snarls that this isn’t over — we’ve made an enemy out of her, and she will have her revenge! “Well, there’s a waiting list, so I hope you’re patient,” Nancy says. Man, her one-liners have improved so much! And Anja says what she’s been saying to us at the end of every conversation: “Auf Wiedersehen, Nancy. Do you know what that means? It means ‘Until we meet again.'” Dun dun dun! I must say, I wouldn’t mind Anja coming back. She’s fantastically creepy, and “seething vengeance” is a delightful and not-often-seen motive in these games!
So Anja goes to jail — actual jail, not “private castle jail”, i.e. the dungeon — and Markus is all shocked that she was bitter enough over their breakup to try and wreak vengeance. Yeah, Anja, I gotta say — I was on the phone with him all day, and he is not exactly a prize. Anyway, Markus decides that having a castle is too much responsibility, and sells it. The new owners decide to fixate less on the castle’s bloody history, and replace the Monster Night Festival with the “Finster Festival.” Alliteration is the way to any tourist’s heart!
Since the monster turned out to be a hoax, Karl decides that he’s not cursed after all, and goes off to Canada to meet his lady love. Watch out for overly competitive Eastern European skiiers, Karl!
Renate leaves Castle Finster the very next day, and Nancy wonders if they’ll ever meet again. Probably not. I’m just saying, she’s like 98 years old.
Lukas’s mom presumably gets the job elsewhere and they move away. Lukas is all happy that he’s making friends at his new school.
And Nancy’s luggage is somewhere in Moldova. I’m amazed these games even know where Moldova is. (Admittedly, everything I know about Moldova, I learned from Eurovision.)
THE END.
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