The main issue with the new games is that they tried to make them better. When HeR attempted to improve their graphics -- to video-gamify the Nancy Drew saga -- they expanded on the world and made it so that Nancy wasn't so restricted in exploring her environment. The newer Nancy Drew games tap into mainstream video game styles at the cost of storylines, memorable characters, and fun mystery plots. Was anyone actually complaining about world expansion? Did any of us actually want to explore our environment in these Nancy Drew games? Did anyone have a problem with this clicker game being too restrictive?
In reality, most of us Nancy Drew game apologists loved the stories and the characters. As adults -- if we ever return to these games -- we return to them for their old timey vibes and NOT to get good graphics or to explore a digital worldscape. The puzzles that, obviously, make up a large portion of the Nancy Drew games were embedded into the storylines so as not to appear as puzzles whatsoever. We weren't playing for the technical aspects of these games. We were playing for the unconventional format: we never see Nancy's face, we recognize canonized aspects over the course of different games, we encounter the same characters, and we can suspend our disbelief at the absurdity of a police chief teen daughter becoming a world-renowned private sleuth. By improving on the graphics and bringing the games up to contemporary video-game standards -- (and, frankly, this is debatable) -- the HeR developers actually sacrificed the integral qualities most fans were seeking from the games to begin with.
As a little girl, Nancy Drew time was synonymous with family time, as I would spend hours playing it with my mom and dad. Sometimes, my friend would come over and we could play together. This was different, because during those playdates we would be left alone, controlling Nancy. This made the game scarier for 9 year-old girls. We would have to turn off the soundtrack because my friend was afraid of the music:
"It makes me think something bad is going to happen."
This disappointed me, only because I knew nothing bad would happen. It was just music. But we would still turn the music down, leaving just the special effects and dialogues. We would discuss Nancy's conversations and psycho-analyze these characters as if they were real people. That's because they were written to be believable people. These were well-written characters whose motivations and actions reflected their physical voices and conversational choices. The complex characters were prototypes of real people. Unfortunately, I encountered many a Tino Balducci in real life. (Also, it's fun to pretend you're Nancy Drew when you're stuck in a boring conversation.)
The old Nancy Drew games also taught us as children that we weren't as stupid as maybe they made us feel in school. And if we struggled with the puzzles, we could always reach out to our communal boyfriend Ned and he would drop a hint. The games also taught us reciprocity, a concept -- I'm afraid --eludes many, to their personal detriment. If you want a favor done for you, you will need to do a favor back.
Ollie's dinner order from Nancy Drew #16: "White Wolf of Icicle Creek" |
Then I went to college and became homesick. Playing Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse was a self-soothing gesture. I was shocked to find that nobody around me in college had heard of, let alone played, these games. It was just me, Nancy, and the cursed medallion against the world -- until I had to update my laptop, and The Captive Curse was forever lost to technological advancement and final exams.
In college, I met someone who became my best friend for a while. It would be an overstatement to claim that I distanced myself from that friendship because this friend refused to give Nancy a chance. An overstatement, but not a complete lie. I showed this friend a Nancy Drew game one day, after I had given all of their hobbies and likes a fair chance, and all I got was scoffing negativity: the graphics were bad, the music was cheesy, the storyline was boring (granted, we played for, maybe, four minutes total), and the world was restrictive and unexpansive. How could he possibly not like this game? I've thought about this, maybe for too long. I realized that none of the people I knew who liked these Nancy Drew games played for any of these supreme video game qualities. People who didn't have the same experience with these games sought to recreate in Nancy Drew the video game qualities that they associated with their personal childhood. For me, and for many others, Nancy Drew set that standard.
This may be a "no, duh" moment, as this is simply how nostalgia work. Specific experiences generate the value we ascribe to them, often completely misrepresenting the "truth" of the matter in our mind. What often happens, is that we find appeal in something only until we can access it at a later point in life. Once we see it for what it is, our nostalgic world-view is shattered. Similarly, things we found spooky in childhood stop being spooky once we revisit them as adults. This, of course, excludes Henry Selick's 2009 film Coraline, which is spooky no matter when, where, or how you watch it.
 |
Instagram post in question October 20, 2025 |
I remembered about Nancy Drew a couple days ago when I was frying salmon steaks. These triggered a memory of playing The White Wolf of Icicle Creek; so I, as is to be expected, took a picture and posted it on my instagram story. I received an appalling amount of responses, but, more shocking, was that only one of these identified the reference and shared in the mutual nostalgia.
The only other person I knew who played Nancy Drew Games independently of meeting me was a friend in high school. For her, Nancy Drew was a feminist icon.
"She's, like, so guuurl power coded."
Of course, she is. Is this another appealing quality? For me, I never identified with Nancy Drew because, well, she obviously did not look like me at all. Nor was she representative of the life I lived (or wanted to live). But that wasn't the point. The point was that it didn't matter whether or not you identified with Nancy. The point was that you were role-playing while boosting your self-esteem, appreciating a very poignant graphic aesthetic, learning about the specific concepts framing the storyline, and, well, solving a crime. In the meantime, you were maintaining a sappy long-distance relationship with Ned. There's a reason we never see Nancy's face.
This post is pointless. I hope people agree (or disagree), but I don't recognize this to be a radical or relevant topic for anyone outside a small group of people. Unfortunately, HeR Interactive has dropped the ball and a new, good, and historically-informed Nancy Drew mystery game is an unlikely development. If I can will myself to do it, my next post will talk about why the music in the early Nancy Drew games was SO fundamental to the appealing, cozy qualities of those early games that is lacking in the recent games. Thank you for being niche and reading this!
Comments
Post a Comment