My mom instilled a love of reading in me as a young girl. One series she introduced me to was her old Nancy Drew books. I devoured her books and constantly asked for the rest of the series since she had not completed them. Unfortunately, I grew up, and she deemed me “too old” to get the rest.
I also had a Nintendo DS as a kid, and some of my favorite games on that were Nancy Drew cases. I remember I had a version of The Hidden Staircase and one called The Model Mysteries that was not part of the original book series. Those were fun, interesting to play, and a glorified find-the-hidden-object game.
So, what’s the deal with Nancy Drew on PC? How long has this been a thing?
HeR Interactive, A Quick History of the Nancy Drew Games
HeR Interactive is a video game company specializing in point-and-click, hidden object games (or HOGs, as I’ve heard them called on Twitch) and other similar games.
Point-and-click games are simple to play and easy to learn the system. You start with a screen like a home’s foyer, a courtyard outside a church, or anywhere Nancy needs to be. If you see something odd or mysterious, you click on the object, and the camera shifts to zoom over the area you want to look closer.
For Nancy Drew games, you play as the titular character, walk around the area, find clues, and snoop at people’s desks to find incriminating evidence.
Does She Think She’s The Flash or Something?
Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Seven Keys takes place in Prague with a twist. Instead of looking at a flat screen and a few models of the suspects, you can now move around in a 3-D environment and run from one place to another at the speed of light (or however fast your PC runs).
You can play the game as a traditional point-and-click, but as someone who is directionally challenged without landmarks, I prefer to “walk” around the city. You can run up to various exhibits in the museum, pick up interesting objects, or comedically run into a store screaming at the NPC what you need.
Differences Between the Old and New
There is some variation from the older games of the series. One of them is that Nancy’s voice actress has changed. Gab Smolders, a long-time player of the Nancy Drew games, commented that this woman was trying too hard to sound like the old one and that her voice was monotone in certain lines.
Along with other 3-D modeling, you can inspect interesting objects and interact with them like in the real world. This comes with the added challenge of thinking about how other things will move in a space. For example, if you change one direction of something, the entire part of a map or room will also change.
Lastly, there are more things that you might need to look up or write down so you can remember all the details. These games don’t always help you remember all the parts of a case. If you are lucky to have a notepad close by, I would use it to your advantage and write down as much as you can without it getting too confusing.
Where to Watch or Buy
Gab Smolders is my go-to YouTuber for watching all things Nancy. She is always very observant and gathers all the little details that even I miss. If you can catch her live on Twitch, she will stream games and interact with the chat to solve the mystery.
Here is the link from HeR Interactive, where you can buy the game yourself.
If you decide to take on this mystery for yourself, I wish you the best of luck! Remember, there are no such things as ghosts, and they can’t hurt you.
Most of the time.
