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 It’s right in the sweet spot of being a little old/outdated and having some of the newer features.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®: 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
Read More: Best Based On A Novel Point & Click Games.
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®: 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
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
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®: 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
Nancy Drew®: Labyrinth of Lies
it’s okay! i probably would’ve given it a thumbs down if i’d played it before midnight in salem, but it’s definitely better than midnight in salem.
my main complaint is the pacing and the amount of spoon-feeding. there are a lot of nd games where you are sort of led gently through the story, but this one feels less like you’re driving it and more like it’s being told to you with puzzles. most of the major breakthroughs don’t feel like things that you did yourself, but that might just be me. that being said, the sets are pretty, if a little immersion-breaking. the characters vary in quality imo.
– Real player with 44.3 hrs in game
This morning I was fired from my job after 25 years of working there. My boss had retired and let this POS college grad with $200,000 in student debt and an ego the size of Texas take over, firing everyone over the age of 35 in order to “progress the company into the next century.” FCK YOU, CHAD! FCK YOU AND YOUR PORSCHE YOUR DAD BOUGHT YOU! Have fun looking for the huge sh*t I took in your wiper fluid container!!!
TlDr Nancy Drew 8/10 Would recommend
– Real player with 17.1 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®: Legend of the Crystal Skull
A little bit of mixed feelings on this one.
The set up in the very beginning is sort of weak in my opinion. Sure getting knocked out sucks but it doesn’t seem reason enough to stick around. But it later becomes clear that this mystery is about a lot more than just finding out about who attacked Nancy.
I liked the setting but the actual playable area was small, the house has only 4 rooms for example. Would be nice to have more places to explore. Being able to play as Bess was cool but here area was even smaller to explore.
– Real player with 19.9 hrs in game
(This reviews is not only for the “Legend of the Crystal Skull” but for all the other ND series)
I’ve been playing ND series from the very first one and still find thier games to be so enjoyable. Also, I think their games are way too underrated.
ND games have full of challenging puzzles, so much to explore that just makes you busy! And each series explore certain locations that makes you feel like you have been there and learnt some new knowleges about that place.
The graphics might not be the most beautiful things amongst other games but, to me, the adventure games is not really about how beautiful it looks, but it is about the content of the game.
– Real player with 19.7 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Sea of Darkness
This game hands-down has the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a Nancy Drew game- from the gorgeous northern lights in the sky to the stunning ice caves to the characters themselves, the graphics were absolutely beautiful in my opinion. I found all of the characters to be likeable/ could sympathize with them to some extent as well. If anything, I wish there was even more dialogue so I could have spent more time getting to know some of the characters. This game was chock-full of puzzles and I found them to be quite challenging on Master sleuth level. Something that surprised/ disappointed me was how few “fatal errors” there were to make in this game- I’ve heard there were only three total. I weirdly enjoy the deaths in these games and was a little disappointed to have so few. All in all, an awesome game which I would strongly recommend. It took me 15 hours to complete.
– Real player with 15.2 hrs in game
Not bad as far as Nancy Drew games go…
I’ve been loyally playing these since ‘Secrets can Kill’ first came out back in the 90s so I can assure you this is better than the atrocity which was ‘The Creature of Kapu Cave’ or the utter nonsense which was ‘Ransom of the Seven Ships’. This game was a much better ‘ship’ game that’s for certain and the ‘ship facts’ were fun to listen to.
It definitely ranks below the kings of the saga, but it is still enjoyable. The puzzles are not bad, though some of them use common themes and it feels a tad repetitive. The mini games are fun though and I enjoyed making enough money to purchase everything in the gift shop (because I can). Plus the Iceland scenery is nice. In general the plot was… a bit more mediocre than some of the other games - I suspected the guilty party immediately and the climax felt a bit stunted.
– Real player with 14.7 hrs in game