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xyzzysqrlOkay, detectives, let's get detecting! I'm going to start by exploring the MYSTERIOUS CABIN IN THE SPOOKY WOODS where Nancy has ended up.
Next to the phone, to start, is a note about a squeaking sound and how Sally wanted to check it out. "MICE??" it asks. POSSIBLY! I reply. Or it could be tiny people burrowing in through the basement and their voices are so high-pitched they sound like mice. But then, it might not be. This house is full of weird noises, as I discover when I back away from the phone and start to look around. "WOOOOO. WOOOOOO." says a high-pitched voice. "What is THAT?" deadpans Nancy, sounding like she gives not a damn for this oddity. Me, I just want the voices to stop.
Anyway, the first thing Nancy does when I get control of her again is leap onto the couch next to the phone and check the cabinet above it. There are little statues of dogs in there! All turned away from the camera, labeled "VITUS", "IGGY", "LUCY" and "XANDER". Clicking on them rotates the direction they're facing. Let's file that as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #1 and come back later.
The second thing I home in on is a clock on the wall. This has hands you can twist around to various times. When you do this, four little doors on the clock pop open and out pop little carved dogs, who bark at you. Only one or two pop out at a time, though, which leads me to believe this is OBVIOUS PUZZLE #2. Also, someone seriously had a THING for dogs holy crap seriously.
The next thing I click on is a note on the wall. "Rotten Floorboards. Watch yo--" and Nancy suddenly plunges into the basement and the screen goes black. It sits there a minute, and then takes me back to the menu, so I'm... I'm pretty sure I just killed Nancy Drew, guys. That is some SIERRA level bullshit, you know? It's okay, though! Nancy uses her Dagger of Time to rewind back to the point before she walked over to the note. So now I'm not KILLED BY STUPID CURIOSITY. It's fine! Nancy's okay! Ahahaha oh god this is gonna be one of those kinds of games.
Routing well AROUND the decayed part of the floor this time, I check the kitchen. There's a pair of enormous bright yellow rubber gardening gloves, which I snag in case Nancy has to work with electronics or plants or give someone a prostate exam. There's also a note about getting the water tested before drinking any, and above the sink I find a flashlight and a map, which looks so important I grabbed a screenshot and replicated it below to show you folk, along with a poem on the wall close to the side door.
This sort of methodolgy, by the way, is a major advantage when you're trying to puzzle-solve in an adventure game. You can't always walk back to where you saw that CRYPTIC RIDDLE, so it's a good idea to get real friendly with your local screenshot key. It's also a good idea to start thinking of things that may match up. For example, this poem makes references to the four seasons. I know already from looking around that there's a running motif of four dogs. I'm naturally thinking that each of these dogs is associated with a season, or were born at a particular time of year, and that'll come into play somewhere.
For now, though, I've exhausted all the poking around downstairs that my hotspots will allow. I can either head out of one of the doors, or head upstairs, and I choose upstairs because going out at night is OBVIOUSLY BAAAD, but I make it up the steps to discover that once you get there you get a pop-up menu asking if you want to sleep. Well, of course I don't! MYSTERY is afoot! Let's seek it out, outside! And try not to get killed again.
Stepping out the door, Nancy muses it's so bright she doesn't need a flashlight. WELL I PICKED ONE UP ANYWAY. Admittedly that's standard operating procedure. Grab everything. Out the side door is a pump (Nancy muses about waiting until it's morning) and a basement (locked). There's also a huge tarp covering something! I fling the tarp back to find... some wood and trash and stuff. Meh. Nancy grabs a big wood plank, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. So that's the side door. Back through the house to the front door, I get confirmation in the form of loud "WOO WOOO"-ing that "Something's out there!".
Yes, Nancy. It's one of the Three Stooges, by the sound of it.
As it turns out, I'm not far off. A SUSPICIOUS LOOKING MAN leaps out of the bushes... and starts accusing me of having scared off some sort of "Strix Varia". He's dressed all in camoflauge and waving binoculars and... oh god. He's a birdwatcher. The craziest of crazy people. He chews me out for a while more, and Nancy sulks at him for claiming she makes "more noise than a jumbo jet", and eventually the dude asks about where she's staying. Why, NOT the old MALONE place! Haven't you heard about his dogs? Apparently, he kept four of them. And when he was arrested, they ran away and died. And then kept howling anyway, scaring off anyone who tried to live in the Malone Cabin. "Obviously she must have called the police." Nancy suggests. Noooo. All that's out in the woods is a park ranger. And he, Jeff Akers, mostly sits around trying to figure out how to get transferred to a bigger park.
Eventually, Nancy asks him about getting the well water tested and he points her to the ranger station. Then creepy dogs start howling and he books it, so Nancy heads back on inside.
LET'S REVIEW:
Creepy guy sits in woods, makes bird noises. Visibly freaked out by the dogs... but still hanging around OUTSIDE THE CABIN when that's the only place they frequent. Suspicious? YES/YES.
I turn to call Bess, and the door starts slamming noisily behind Nancy. When she turns around, the lights start to flash, stuff falls off the walls, and a huge glowing-eyed dog head slams against the window and howls at her.
... I call Bess anyway.
Nancy: "BESS! GHOST DOGS, BESS! GHOST DOGS!"
Bess: "...it's like 3 AM, Nancy. What are you..."
Nancy: "GHOST DOGS, BESS! GET GEORGE. I WANNA TELL HER ABOUT THE GHOST DOGS!"
George: "I'm right here, Nancy."
...
Nancy: "George, were you actually IN Bess's bedroom? Hmm. Must take a note... Bess Marvin, sleeping with her own cousin..."
Bess: "Nancy, I can hear you pretending to write in your PDA. Look, just tell us the whole story."
*time passes*
George: "That is kinda screwed up, Miss Drew. Sounds like you have a case."
Nancy: "YES. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Ghost dogs tried to kill me! This is wonderful! I can solve this."
Bess: "Well, it's good to hear that you're..."
Nancy: "Obviously I was drugged by that bird-watcher. I may have to eliminate him. Bess, I need you to go to the video store and rent all the movies about ninjas you can carry."
Bess: "...Nancy, it is -4- AM. I'm going to bed. Why don't you do the same?"
Nancy: "Oh, all right. But in the morn--"
*dial tone*
So I send Nancy on up to sleep. Big day tomorrow! Well water treatment, getting in touch with that one woman to get the tree cut out of the way, some obvious puzzles to solve, and Nancy Drew has to learn the mystical ways of ninjitsu and kill a man.
Join us next time, won't you?
Next to the phone, to start, is a note about a squeaking sound and how Sally wanted to check it out. "MICE??" it asks. POSSIBLY! I reply. Or it could be tiny people burrowing in through the basement and their voices are so high-pitched they sound like mice. But then, it might not be. This house is full of weird noises, as I discover when I back away from the phone and start to look around. "WOOOOO. WOOOOOO." says a high-pitched voice. "What is THAT?" deadpans Nancy, sounding like she gives not a damn for this oddity. Me, I just want the voices to stop.
Anyway, the first thing Nancy does when I get control of her again is leap onto the couch next to the phone and check the cabinet above it. There are little statues of dogs in there! All turned away from the camera, labeled "VITUS", "IGGY", "LUCY" and "XANDER". Clicking on them rotates the direction they're facing. Let's file that as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #1 and come back later.
The second thing I home in on is a clock on the wall. This has hands you can twist around to various times. When you do this, four little doors on the clock pop open and out pop little carved dogs, who bark at you. Only one or two pop out at a time, though, which leads me to believe this is OBVIOUS PUZZLE #2. Also, someone seriously had a THING for dogs holy crap seriously.
The next thing I click on is a note on the wall. "Rotten Floorboards. Watch yo--" and Nancy suddenly plunges into the basement and the screen goes black. It sits there a minute, and then takes me back to the menu, so I'm... I'm pretty sure I just killed Nancy Drew, guys. That is some SIERRA level bullshit, you know? It's okay, though! Nancy uses her Dagger of Time to rewind back to the point before she walked over to the note. So now I'm not KILLED BY STUPID CURIOSITY. It's fine! Nancy's okay! Ahahaha oh god this is gonna be one of those kinds of games.
Routing well AROUND the decayed part of the floor this time, I check the kitchen. There's a pair of enormous bright yellow rubber gardening gloves, which I snag in case Nancy has to work with electronics or plants or give someone a prostate exam. There's also a note about getting the water tested before drinking any, and above the sink I find a flashlight and a map, which looks so important I grabbed a screenshot and replicated it below to show you folk, along with a poem on the wall close to the side door.
This sort of methodolgy, by the way, is a major advantage when you're trying to puzzle-solve in an adventure game. You can't always walk back to where you saw that CRYPTIC RIDDLE, so it's a good idea to get real friendly with your local screenshot key. It's also a good idea to start thinking of things that may match up. For example, this poem makes references to the four seasons. I know already from looking around that there's a running motif of four dogs. I'm naturally thinking that each of these dogs is associated with a season, or were born at a particular time of year, and that'll come into play somewhere.
For now, though, I've exhausted all the poking around downstairs that my hotspots will allow. I can either head out of one of the doors, or head upstairs, and I choose upstairs because going out at night is OBVIOUSLY BAAAD, but I make it up the steps to discover that once you get there you get a pop-up menu asking if you want to sleep. Well, of course I don't! MYSTERY is afoot! Let's seek it out, outside! And try not to get killed again.
Stepping out the door, Nancy muses it's so bright she doesn't need a flashlight. WELL I PICKED ONE UP ANYWAY. Admittedly that's standard operating procedure. Grab everything. Out the side door is a pump (Nancy muses about waiting until it's morning) and a basement (locked). There's also a huge tarp covering something! I fling the tarp back to find... some wood and trash and stuff. Meh. Nancy grabs a big wood plank, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. So that's the side door. Back through the house to the front door, I get confirmation in the form of loud "WOO WOOO"-ing that "Something's out there!".
Yes, Nancy. It's one of the Three Stooges, by the sound of it.
As it turns out, I'm not far off. A SUSPICIOUS LOOKING MAN leaps out of the bushes... and starts accusing me of having scared off some sort of "Strix Varia". He's dressed all in camoflauge and waving binoculars and... oh god. He's a birdwatcher. The craziest of crazy people. He chews me out for a while more, and Nancy sulks at him for claiming she makes "more noise than a jumbo jet", and eventually the dude asks about where she's staying. Why, NOT the old MALONE place! Haven't you heard about his dogs? Apparently, he kept four of them. And when he was arrested, they ran away and died. And then kept howling anyway, scaring off anyone who tried to live in the Malone Cabin. "Obviously she must have called the police." Nancy suggests. Noooo. All that's out in the woods is a park ranger. And he, Jeff Akers, mostly sits around trying to figure out how to get transferred to a bigger park.
Eventually, Nancy asks him about getting the well water tested and he points her to the ranger station. Then creepy dogs start howling and he books it, so Nancy heads back on inside.
LET'S REVIEW:
Creepy guy sits in woods, makes bird noises. Visibly freaked out by the dogs... but still hanging around OUTSIDE THE CABIN when that's the only place they frequent. Suspicious? YES/YES.
I turn to call Bess, and the door starts slamming noisily behind Nancy. When she turns around, the lights start to flash, stuff falls off the walls, and a huge glowing-eyed dog head slams against the window and howls at her.
... I call Bess anyway.
Nancy: "BESS! GHOST DOGS, BESS! GHOST DOGS!"
Bess: "...it's like 3 AM, Nancy. What are you..."
Nancy: "GHOST DOGS, BESS! GET GEORGE. I WANNA TELL HER ABOUT THE GHOST DOGS!"
George: "I'm right here, Nancy."
...
Nancy: "George, were you actually IN Bess's bedroom? Hmm. Must take a note... Bess Marvin, sleeping with her own cousin..."
Bess: "Nancy, I can hear you pretending to write in your PDA. Look, just tell us the whole story."
*time passes*
George: "That is kinda screwed up, Miss Drew. Sounds like you have a case."
Nancy: "YES. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Ghost dogs tried to kill me! This is wonderful! I can solve this."
Bess: "Well, it's good to hear that you're..."
Nancy: "Obviously I was drugged by that bird-watcher. I may have to eliminate him. Bess, I need you to go to the video store and rent all the movies about ninjas you can carry."
Bess: "...Nancy, it is -4- AM. I'm going to bed. Why don't you do the same?"
Nancy: "Oh, all right. But in the morn--"
*dial tone*
So I send Nancy on up to sleep. Big day tomorrow! Well water treatment, getting in touch with that one woman to get the tree cut out of the way, some obvious puzzles to solve, and Nancy Drew has to learn the mystical ways of ninjitsu and kill a man.
Join us next time, won't you?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-08-08 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-05 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-05 11:03 pm (UTC)Also the dogs have glowing eyes. You can't fake that! They MUST be ghosts.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-06 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-06 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-06 08:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 04:11 am (UTC)Nancy: "George, were you actually IN Bess's bedroom? Hmm. Must take a note... Bess Marvin, sleeping with her own cousin..."
Nancy: "Obviously I was drugged by that bird-watcher. I may have to eliminate him. Bess, I need you to go to the video store and rent all the movies about ninjas you can carry."
wait
okay hold on. This is one of your older entries. This... perhaps your writing style used to include making up silly off-the-rails conversations like this one? She didn't... oh you referenced this line again later, oh God you're serious. She actually said that. I... I think I need to lie down.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 05:31 am (UTC)I told you the older playblogs were WEIRD and OFF.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 05:35 am (UTC)