I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Captivating Point and Click Adventure
I enjoyed playing through this game twice, I’d say that if you’re interested, you should pick it up.
It’s a story-based game inspired by the book of the same name by Harlan Ellison (who voices the character of AM in game).
–-{Graphics}—
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
Good, but this game was developed in the ’90s, so you can imagine that the graphics will reflect that era. The graphics are not bad at all. I’d say that they still hold up somewhat and the graphics don’t take away from the game.
– Real player with 31.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Point & Click Games.
Make no mistake about I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream….it is NOT a horror game, at least not in the typical sense. It’s not trying to make you jump in your seat and scream in shocked terror. It has no interest in what many would call “cheap thrills”. Instead, what this game wants to do is provoke your thought-process. It is a very cerebral game, with dark undertones that force you to think about the dark side of humanity, and whether or not there is redemption for our fatal flaws. It isn’t afraid to present you with disturbing topics such as suicide, rape, even genocide, and make you deal with them. Although there is a tint of light-heartedness, 99% percent of the game is drenched in an atmosphere of hopelessness as you scramble to make amends for the characters' pasts in an attempt to thwart the diabolical supercomputer, AM.
– Real player with 17.6 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Secret of Shadow Ranch
This is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games and my second time playing it. It’s the 10th game in the series, which I’m playing in order. When I wrote about Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (7th game, which had also been an old favorite, I mentioned that it didn’t hold up quite as well. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case here. Fyi, my actual playtime is probably more like 10-12 hours.
You are staying on a ranch in Arizona, where the appearance of a “phantom horse” accompanied an accident. You have to help out with some ranch chores, which is something I was looking forward to because of nostalgia. While some chores are one-offs you only do once (fixing wiring for chicken fence, preparing animal food in proper proportions, baking a cake), some you do each day (3 days). The daily chores are collecting chicken eggs and vegetables. Different variety of vegetables are picked at different stages, which you can read up on in an in-game website from your phone.
– Real player with 38.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Point & Click Games.
This is one of my favorite Nancy games. It’s right in the sweet spot of being a little old/outdated and having some of the newer features. It has a modern setting but follows a mystery from the 1800’s, so you still have your secret passageways and a great treasure hunt. The puzzles are just hard enough without leaving you stumped, and it’s always pretty obvious what you’re supposed to do next. Personally, I wasn’t too annoyed by the whole saddle thing, as I grew up with horses (yep sorry annoying horse person here) and it’s pretty accurate as far as horse etiquette goes. Same with the garden thing, just save before you pick vegetables and if you get frustrated you can find a walkthrough online to show you what the ripe veggies look like. My only complaint about this game is the roadrunner game. Good lord. If you want to keep your sanity, make sure you save before using your token so you don’t have to replay the same three levels of an incredibly slow arcade game over and over and over!
– Real player with 23.8 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Secret of the Old Clock
Afaik, this is the only Nancy Drew game that takes place in the past (1930, to be exact). The subtitle of this game was the title of the first Nancy Drew book, which was released that year. As Nancy Drew, you stay at the Lilac Inn in Illinois at the beginning of the Great Depression.
It’s not one of my favorite Nancy Drew games. While one puzzle referred to Shakespeare, it wasn’t all that educational like most other games in the series are. One of the main things about this game is driving around the roads on a world map. You can run out of gas or get a flat tire, so you have to attend to those. You can make money by delivering telegrams. You’re told you get a flat rate for each letter plus tips, but HER Interactive played a funny Depression joke because no one ever tips.
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Point & Click Games.
I have been a very regular player of mystery games most of my life. The Nancy Drew Franchise certainly are not at the top of mystery games I’ve played in my life, but i always enjoy them regardless of the quality compared to mystery games that are slightly more evolved when lookin at things like characters and exploration opportunities throughout the world.
Nancy drew is basic point and click with occasional typing needed.
The story is great, the puzzles are hard enough to make you spend some time trying to figure them out and they certainly push you to think out of the box sometimes.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake
2nd or 3rd time playing this one. It’s one of my favorites for the storyline. As Nancy Drew, you stay in a cabin on a lake in Pennsylvania that was once owned by a Prohibition-era gangster. Local legend has it that his four dogs still haunt the property. A state park operates in the vicinity, and you can go to its visitor center. While there is a real Moon Lake State Forest, it doesn’t seem to be related to the game as the game places itself in a fictional county.
Playing it again in my current playthrough of all the games in order, I liked it a little less. I think that’s because it was so memorable, the pleasant surprises weren’t so surprising (though I still didn’t remember who the culprit was–as usual, everyone is damn suspicious). I have to admit, though, that the puzzles weren’t as satisfying. The best was probably the one where who have to put files in order by year, except those years are written in Roman numerals. Most other major puzzles revolved around finding nature-related items in a forest maze. Finding the birds to photograph would have been fine, but it became overused the moment we had to trudge around there looking under specific rocks to find several bugs. On the other hand, the well/water pump puzzle was too simple and I feel like an interesting educational opportunity may have been missed there.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
I do not recomment this game for anyone who enjoys puzzles, solving mysteries, or a good challenge. The game goes out of its way to leave the hints as vague as possible and just give you the solutions through the in-game task list. The entire things felt like playing along to a walkthrough. I play on Senior Detective and usually the tasklist is there to remind you of information you’ve picked up, but in this game it just outright tells you what information you need for which puzzle and what to do to solve it. And if that isn’t enough Nancy will outright tell you! There were so many interesting puzzles here that were spoiled before I’d even gathered all the hints I would have needed to solve them the legitimate way. The only thing the game seemed to let me do was fiddle with wheel puzzles once it had given me the solution I needed to get to. Gee, thanks.
– Real player with 12.0 hrs in game
Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth
OLD STYLE HORROR… Oh Yea!
Intro:
This game is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, author of “The Call of Cthulhu” and progenitor of the Cthulhu Mythos. It is a reimagining of Lovecraft’s 1936 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth. Set mostly in the year 1922, the story follows Jack Walters (previously a police detective) and now private detective who is trying to solve cases even when there wasn’t any evidence. On September 6, 1915, he was called by the police to investigate a decrepit manor where gunshots were heard. A group of an unknown cult (Fellowship of the Yith) lived there and it’s leader, Victor Holt, demanded the police only send Jack in exchange for their cooperation. Strangely, Jack had never met or heard of Victor Holt before. As Jack entered the manor’s compound, all hell broke loose and both the police and the cultists started shooting at one another. You take it from here. All hell is about to break loose in the game.
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
I am a fan of both Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s fantastic literary body having read most of his work and also the Role playing game the Call of Cthulhu (the table top one not the new one). I very much enjoyed this game despite the glitches (should you wish to play without the glitches I would suggest that you either buy this game on good old games or install the patch that can be found online, and turn down the resolution for the very last bit of the game to the lowest setting).
I have to say that don’t go into this game expecting something akin to one of Lovecraft’s stories word for word, while it deals with the same themes and even one of the same characters this game is a bit of Lovecraft salad. You get bits from The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow out of time, Dagon, At the Mountains of Madness and even some references to The
– Real player with 33.7 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Danger on Deception Island
Wow, this game is great! :) You get to do lots of great stuff in this game, like go kayaking, go on exciting scavenger hunts for multiple people, learn about whales, ships, nautical terms and rope techniques, discover secret passageways in caves, and more! This game has an Irish/Scottish theme about it, so the majority of the soundtrack in this game is Celtic, so catchy! If you love Nancy Drew games and Celtic music, then this game is for you! You also get to places by a bike as your transport. Make sure to wear your helmet whenever you go for a bike ride, though, or you’ll have a nasty fall! :D This game is pretty tricky, like all the Nancy Drew games, but if you get stuck, you can get around that by looking at the walkthrough (either from articles or youtube videos). This game is very exciting and fun, especially the ending, when you come face to face with the culprit (don’t worry, I’m not revealing anything of his/her indentity ;) ) Definitely recommended! :)
– Real player with 23.6 hrs in game
This is a questionable Nancy Drew game, but I recommend it because all Nancy Drew games earn a thumbs up in my heart.
More seriously, though, this is one of the older games so the visuals are lackluster. That’s not a huge hurtle, but the plot in this one is less memorable than the other games. The puzzles are pretty easy, and that can be a pro or a con in my opinion. I love the ending of this game, and it’s one of the more action packed Nancy Drew conclusions (the endings to Nancy Drew have a tendency to be slightly lackluster).
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon
Updated Review:
I’m not sure if I can recommend getting this game again with newer Operating Systems(for example, WIN 10). Although the game is playable, it also lags very badly in areas of heavy animation scenes. The lag doesn’t really make any sense seeing as there is no CD drive it’s reading from. It should run smoothly– especially when nothing else is running in the background. There are also moments when you try to go in and out of the game window and it crashes the game with error messages. This game also cannot understand how to transfer sounds through an HDMI cable should you try to connect your computer to a TV. Although the game is playable, and I’ve loved this game since I was a child, it’s hard for me to recommend it until HER decides to clean it up and fix the lingering issues with it.
– Real player with 19.3 hrs in game
I enjoyed this one. The setting and surroundings are absolutely beautiful, the puzzles all felt refreshing and in keeping with the theme, and the characters that you get to interact with are all fun and interesting.
I would be tempted to list this as one of my favourites in the series, but a couple of gripes hold me back. The first is the music which felt pretty half-hearted by ND standards, and the second is the cast. The characters were so great that I was disappointed that the writers didn’t do more with them. The other characters, even the Hardy Boys, barely feel related to the sory or the game as it progresses. Nancy could have solved the entire thing without talking to anyone except for Bess and George on the phone. The only mystery that involves the rest of the cast never even gets solved! The ‘bad guy’ at the end of the game was a big disappointment as well, which is a shame since it left a bitter taste at the end of an otherwise enjoyable game.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Secrets Can Kill REMASTERED
Unimportant little Rant:
People really want to find any flaw they can with the Nancy Drew series. I have been playing this game series since I was about 5. I’m 20 now. I love the clunky art style, and like 12 fps you get when scrolling around, it’s charming more so than ugly. It gives me a feeling of going back to 2007 and playing these kinds of games all over again, when I couldn’t just find a review or guide to it and beat it in half an hour, but actually had to use the in-game books and phone for clues and help. I guess as younger and younger people start to play this series, they might not fully appreciate it, much like I don’t think I could fully appreciate an N64 game. With that being said, I hope whatever your opinion on the series, you will try to rate it based on the time it came out and not now. It obviously is littered with problems if you think about it from a 2021 perspective, but if you could imagine yourself back in the 2000s, this game was one of the better series coming out for the point-and-click adventure genre at the time. Now you have much better story games like LIS and most of Telltale Games' series, but the Nancy Drew games to me still retain that old flair and charm of early 2000’s point and clicks.
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game
ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! :) :) :) :) For those who love playing Nancy Drew games, you are going to love this one, because it’s much better than the majority of the older Nancy Drew games. If you read 2 reviews I’ve made on 2 of the older Nancy Drew games (Treasure in the Royal Tower and The Final Scene), and read the problems that are in both of them, none of those problems are even in this one, because it’s actually a remake, that’s why it’s called remastered, it’s a newer and improved version of the original ‘Secrets Can Kill’ one that was made in the 1980s, so it has the feel of the older games, with a better story than the majority of ones in the newer games lately, but has the features of the newer ones, like:
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Message in a Haunted Mansion
I remember why I don’t like these early games. Between the weird characters, old graphics, and dull plot it does little to excite. Worst of all, I found myself having to call for help every other second because the gameplay is so arbitrary. It is mostly a guessing game, and I still have no idea if I did everything I was supposed to. I know I missed the seance, which caused me to worry that I was going to have to restart the whole game, but I managed to finish it. My interactions with Abby were just non-existent. Also, the dumbest second chance in the series has to be Louis realizing you snooped through his stuff simply by you saying you saw a phrase in a book. It could be any book Mr. Guilty. Overall, I wish I had just saved the $3 and ignored this game.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
The second Nancy Drew game I’m (re)playing and the third in the series, although I don’t think I ever played this one before.
It takes place in San Francisco, but you spend the whole time in a Victorian mansion that a friend of a the Drew family’s housekeeper is trying to renovate to turn into a B&B. Something I like about the Nancy Drew games is how they try to incorporate the history and culture of a place. This one features a bit of Wild West/Gold Rush history (with made-up characters for the game) along with the influence of Chinese immigrants. In fact, get a notebook out if you play this, because a game-long puzzle has you collecting Chinese characters (which the game told me are called hanzi) that you will need to be able to distinguish. My Chinese handwriting is way better than my handwriting with the latin alphabet, but I also spent like 10x the time and effort.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Curse of Blackmoor Manor
This game started out good but got more frustrating as it went along. Eventually, I used more than one walkthrough just to save myself the time of trying to figure things out only to be stuck and needing help anyway. I don’t like using walkthroughs so that was disappointing. Also, as the game went on, it went from interesting to boring. Once Nancy had her assignment and met the characters, the storyline didn’t progress. It was all about figuring out where to go and how to get there and solving puzzles, With regards to solving puzzles, a lot of information can be given for any one puzzle and might not be needed for a long time. This means you have to remember where the information was and then go back to it. Another thing I disliked about this game is the sheer volume of tedious information you are required to remember. I recommend taking a snapshot with your cell to save yourself the trouble of memorizing a ton of info or of having to write it all down.
– Real player with 44.9 hrs in game
So I have played a few Nancy Drew games, and i only enjoyed the japanese ghost one, others were too meh for me especially the story. So after many reviews on whats popular, i chose this one. And the judgement is correct its pretty epic. I played right off the bat as a senior detective, and you know these games are pretty toughies but i really wanted a challenge. Also this is the only game which i keep notes on (for a detective game) and i was determined to finish it without a guide and I DID. it was such a wonderful feeling, the puzzles were tough but not impossible. The story is pretty great as well, i loved the twist ending. The music is cool as well, art of course and since this game has aged well you cannot really complain. What i hated was the go in the dark passageways with a green light. There were several fun mini games and i enjoyed all of em.
– Real player with 22.1 hrs in game