Review by JJ

After HERinteractive released their last game, I really thought that they were heading in a great direction. Then this game came out to become one of my least favorites.

Story-You are visiting a friend of a friend who owns an inn/restaurant. She says that the reason she invited you over was for you to take some jewels back with you to put into your safe at home. Before you can take them, however, they are stolen. Whoo. Thrills and chills. This is the story. Finding stolen jewels. That’s it. And you never actually find them because during the game Nancy becomes distracted from her task to find another item which hasn’t even been stolen! This item is a will, by the way.

Graphics-They were okay. Thankfully, HERinteractive didn’t try to put this game in black-and-white, but the backgrounds actually seemed worse to me than the others have. Maybe because I just wasn’t enjoying anything else, this seemed bad. The characters look pretty good, though. Oh! But some of the locations you go (Phelps Print Shop, Tubby’s Telegram Office, etc.) are just black-and-white snapshots. Why didn’t HER make them good, real locations?!?!nnSound-This is, like, 40’s music. It’s not bad, and it definitely goes with the story.

Gameplay-There is one big change in gameplay. You get to drive around in your car. You can use the arrow keys or you can lead with the mouse, but you visit almost everywhere by car. Also, no cell phone (it’s 80 years ago, people!) so you have to give up money to use the pay phone to call your dad or Bess and George. That’s another thing. You have to earn money in this game because you have to pay for stuff. You have to get a job to earn money. It’s really not that bad, but I thought there were better ways to have let you make money. First Person and point-and-click features are the same, though.

Fun-No it’s not. It’s fun the first time through to figure out who the culprit is, but after that, the only replay value is to play mini golf. I do replay it sometimes but not to the extent of the other games.

Length-Playing it straight through takes about 9-10 hours. It took me about a week to finish this game the first time. It’s an OK length, but after the last game I was expecting more.

HERinteractive really regressed in this game. I have to admit, though, the older fans of Nancy Drew will like this game, and some might find it a good way to start the series, but I think that die-hard fans should get this game only for $10 or cheaper while others should just skip this game for now.