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
Read More: Best Mouse only Classic Games.
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
Point Perfect
This is a fun little twitch-action arcade game with randomized elements and a quirky and immature sense of humor. It’s not nearly as difficult as the store page makes it out to be; it’s surprisingly well-balanced, clever, and fair.
In this game, you control the same mouse cursor that is used by your operating system (if you find the game too difficult, you might have to tweak your mouse’s speed and acceleration settings, or just get a better mouse). You defend yourself by dodging enemies and gain points by drawing selection boxes around enemies. You can collect up to 3 powerups to expand the size of your selection box, but you’ll lose them if you die. And that’s all there is to it.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mouse only Action Games.
A simple but unique game in which the mouse cursor is your spaceship. You attack by dragging boxes over your enemies while weaving carefully around obstacles and bullets. Sounds easy, but it ain’t; one wrong twitch of the mouse, and you’re dead. The mechanics are very slick, though, so it’ll always be your fault. If you enjoy trollish humor, you will more than likely get a kick out of the multitude of meme-inspired bosses (my favorite so far is an emoticon that belches red ascii phalli).
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
After All
Two common things I see that people complain about from this game are the launcher issues and the amount of effort placed in making this game. To solve the launcher issues you simply need to open the local files of the game and locate the game.exe. To run the game.exe you are going to need the Run Time Packages (RTP) found here: on the RPG Maker site:
http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/download/additional/run-time-packages
Obviously the game feels like it was made in haste and the developer utilized the original stock tilesets and images from RPG Maker VX Ace. He seemed to glaze the avatars and battlepacks to give it a slightly tinted look. If you can get past these feelings, you’ll find that the game doesn’t really have that bad of a storyline. It’s original and it has several twists and is full of a lot of cheesy jokes and metagame concepts that really isn’t common.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mouse only 2D Games.
As stated by the other reviews that are several months older than this one, the game doesn’t install correctly. Pretty unbelievable.
The game is short (about an hour long), but I don’t count that against it. I actually rather like short games. The content within is what I take issue with. I also don’t mind the use of stock RPG Maker assets. The game is a mere dollar at full price, so that’s fine.
But it’s clear everything was done in a slapdash manner. That Photoshop filter used to give the game a more unique look? Clearly done via some kind of batch processing without individually inspecting each asset to make sure they crop and animate cleanly. Every ability and monster in the game has received seemingly zero touch-ups to make any kind of unique encounters or combat. I mean, I get the point that the main character is super OP, but why have him still gain levels and acquire skills? Why leave all those abilities left in the game? All I needed was Cleave and basic attack. And why can I remove the limiter multiple times and get a temporary buff for doing so? It makes no narrative sense. The obvious explanation as that all these things unchanged once they were found to be basically functional.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
10,000,000
10,000,000. An RPGish, Bejeweled-like game. Well… ok…
While the game does have an interesting concept it annoyingly relies on luck and what tiles the game decides to generate more than anything else, much like Bejeweled or similar puzzle games. If a monster is in your path, you’ll have to quickly match sword or staff tiles to do damage. A locked chest requires matching key tiles. And as tiles are random, one might find oneself stuck, matching any tiles at all, hoping to match enough of what is needed before time is up.
– Real player with 31.8 hrs in game
Picked this up in a sale in a sale a while back. Looked like a nice casual match-3 with a retro twist. Well, the second part is certainly true, but I’m no longer so sure about the casual part.
In 10,000,000 the player character is controlled by matching 3 or more of the same tiles as he runs through dungeons. The actions range from attacking encountered monsters to collecting resources to opening doors and chests. So far it sounds simple, and perhaps still qualifies as a casual game. Now add to the whole mix some serious time pressure – the time limits for the dungeons are very tight, and the only way to add time is to keep matching large sets of tiles and scoring combos; on the other hand just about anything in the dungeon is hell-bent on reducing your remaining time! Enemy attacks drain your time, doors and chests block your way until opened, and all you have to rely on is a randomly-populated board of tiles. Yeah, not so casual anymore.
– Real player with 18.7 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
Pop’n’splat
Connect 3+/bubble shooter game for casual gaming, but challenging nevertheless. Contains modifiers which make the game more interesting and fun. Requires precision and quick decision making in some modes. Spent a few hours of playing without topping the scoreboard in any of the 4 modes available. I blame my mouse!
– Real player with 15.3 hrs in game
I originally bought this game for my mother who is a Panda Pop addict. When I asked her to describe what she thought of Pop’N’Splat, she used words that I never knew existed. Apparently she never made it through the menus and couldn’t figure out how exit the game because every action within the menu requires you to select an option and then confirm through a separate button. The developer has yet to discover the double-click.
Aside from the redundant menu system, the game has a huge pointer that’s more of a nuisance than a benefit. Some of the pop effects obscure targets so you have to wait for them to clear before shooting. This is especially annoying during the time-based modes. Other issues include random ball colors appearing in the machine which aren’t on the game board and accidentally shooting a ball while clicking on the “plunger” when trying to access the menu to save a game. There’s very little variety in terms power-ups. The visuals are nice but that’s about it. The game brings new definition to boring. What happened? Pass it unless it’s on sale for pennies.
– Real player with 11.0 hrs in game
Bing Bong XL
The game is 80 eurocents or your regional equivalent, point being that it costs nearly nothing, while delivering similar quality Nickervision’s earlier games have.
The game isn’t meant to be much, just a simple score attack game that you might play for a little bit and never touch again. It does this well, and manages to stay fun despite the repetitive gameplay, and I feel like I’ve already gotten my money’s worth at 1,6 hours. In this time, I managed to get almost all the achievements, and I’ll probably play it a bunch more considering the other games Nickervision has made.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
This game is fun, with the game mechanics and the music working very well together. It’s easy to find yourself lost trying to keep putting your personal best score. I recommend picking up this game if you like simplistic, minimalist games that challenge you to incrementally improve your read and react response to the game environment.
I’m stealing a conclusion paragraph from user tautegory: “Overall, I would say that Bing Bong is the distillation of the quintessential Nickervision mechanics. Everything works well together and creates a fun time waster. To be honest I was expecting a shallow and empty design like most abstract arcade games on mobile. I was pleasantly surprised and glad I picked up these games.”
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Castle Break
Its a great hardcore oldschool arcaniod-style game with no mercy to slowpoke players.
Did not expected i’ve spend all the evening, kicking virtual bombs around the screen :D
Controlling your own robot, you have to break through the enemy walls, protecting your troops from being destroyed by the enemy. Each new level brings new powerfull enemies on the battlefield, opens new tools and weapons to upgrade your robot.
Pros:
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funny pixel-style graphics
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hardcore gameplay
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levels variety
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different gamestyles by using different tools
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
Very nice game, I caught nostalgia when I was a child playing this game on the football field, instead of bombs we had a ball, and instead of a castle and minions, a grid/wall
Convenient one-mouse operation that allows you to take a breath while working.
I liked the idea, with construction, in this game you can even shoot))
A simple game that I figured out in the first minutes of the game.
Retro-style graphics are very suitable for it, it feels like you moved to the 90’s, and you play this game on a slot machine, and there are a lot of spectators behind you
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Mike & Tyler
Take control of Mike and Tyler in their effort to investigate a mysterious murder case in an adventure packed with puzzles, beautiful locations, and dangerous characters, all provided in a retro fashion.
Mike & Tyler is a point & click - police adventure game that is heavily focused on puzzle-solving.
The game skips text dialogs altogether, in favor of simple comic bubbles. No lengthy dialogs, here. This game is not an interactive story.
Check out our other titles
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106150/Yet_Another_Hero_Story/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447540/Enypnion/
Nancy Drew®: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek
At this point i guess i am making my way thru all the ND games. I play on JR level and this was my 9th game so far. Honestly this was a favorite of mine. IT had all the right stuff:
-multiple locations
-a few mini games, including one of my favorite food making mini games
-multiple suspects
-several changes in the plot that kept it interesting
Fox and Geese wasn’t as bad as everyone says, i found it interestingly challenging, and probably one of the more fun games that had been thoroughly game tested for inaccuracies. There is a trick to it, however, and just a quick youtube video and you get the trick of it. Honestly, it makes me love it more now knowing there is an entire set up to follow - its like the odd cousin of checkers and chess.
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Once again, I have played a Nancy Drew game that has left me dissatisfied and wondering why I bothered purchasing HER interactive games.
The White Wolf of Icicle Creek is a very fun game to play, like most of the titles of Nancy Drew, however, there is one glaring problem and I have found it in almost every single Nancy Drew game. There is always a story element; side quest or puzzle that seems either near impossible to pass or takes so much of your time, energy and mental state that you simply - give up.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game