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xyzzysqrlWhen last we left Nancy Drew, she was huddled in a phone booth after a car crash and failing to reach anyone she knew. ... Hey, let's go to a pub!
Well, an inn, really. Inns occupy a weird place in modern society, don't they? We don't really need them. We have hotels, we have motels, we have places to eat everywhere, and we don't really need to press along the highways until we come to a resting house anymore. Travel is different than it used to be. I guess inns are great as public meeting houses, but I never leave the apartment or interact with society in any meaningful way, so uh... Moving along!
Inside the Screaming Banshee, est. 1605, there's chintzy fiddle music in the background and absolutely no one in sight. A voice calls "Be with ya in a minute, miss!" from offscreen... but after a few minutes of fidgeting and fingertapping, I elect to explore the inn instead. Over in one corner, I find a Darts machine, an arcade game called "Difference Detective" (hm, must be a romhack), and a bunch of posters and whatnot. A few of them look like actual photographs of people in Venetian masks, and I assume this is probably a reference to an earlier game in the series, or maybe some people from the game forum screwing around.
... I mean, uh... this is... totally a part of Irish culture, having people in Italian masks... on their walls. For no reason. EEEGAH, MY IMMERSION.
Idly I poke my fingers into the coin return of each arcade game. Hey, a couple tokens! I promptly play Darts for NO REASON other than that I can. It's really not hard to win a game of darts played against yourself, and I collect... another creepy little doll, out of the prize slot. Oh good. Now I have two. What the hell are these things? After a moment of thought, I try out Difference Detective as well. I don't know if you guys know this game. It's pretty indie. There are two pictures, and they look the same! But they're not! There are DIFFERENCES. You have to somehow DETECT these differences using the mystic sense known as SIGHT. I am pretty hardcore at visual processing of information so it only takes me like three reloaded saved games to figure this out.
I was going to get a screenshot of the Difference Detective game screen and put it here so you could play along at home, but I forgot. So... pretend there was a picture with twelve differences in it, and you found them all and it was easy because you're -awesome-. You are, you know.
Winning this one gets Nancy a whistle out of the prize machine.
This all still doesn't get me any fucking service, though, and even though I stand right outside the door to the kitchen (which Nancy isn't allowed to enter) and play the whistle like a passive-aggressive jerk, I still don't get the attention of the server. Eventually I go "oh screw this" and turn around and leave. As I'm leaving, Nancy stops to look at the sign next to the door. NO VACANCIES. No service, either. I'LL BE GIVING THIS PLACE A SHITTY REVIEW ON YELP, YOU BASTARDS.
With no real idea where to go, Nancy trudges back up to the castle again. This time there's a clickable hotspot in the castle yard. I click it, and Nancy hefts up a bunch of rocks and looks upward towards a window. Oh Nancy, no. Vandalism is not the ans-- oh wait this is where that OLD JERK lives. Yeah, let's break stuff.
Pictured: Nancy prepares to break stuff.
In all honesty, I was actually expecting to plink those little ones off the windowglass to get attention. So I huck those, mostly. Then when I ran out, I threw a big one. *WHOOSH CRASH* "Uh-oh." Nancy mumbles, in a quiet little "Ohcrap" voice. But it's cool. Her friend appears at the window, squints out, then beams and waves happily at Nancy the Vandal. She then points towards the door downstairs. So... I guess throwing a softball-sized rock through a window is cool with this lady. THIS IS GONNA BE A GREAT VACATION.
GO AWAY is revealed to be named "Donal", and lets Nancy in now that someone's awake to vouch for her. Meanwhile, Kyler explains that her groom is KINDA SORTA MISSING. But she imagines it's probably a practical joke, because he's a wacky prankster. Nancy is less than convinced. There's also someone named "Kit Foley" staying in the great hall, and he's Matt's (the runaway groom's) best friend. I'll have to go CHECK HIM OUT. For... suspiciousness. Meanwhile, there's some information about Donal, who hates British people. Kyler's groom is British, so Donal is all like "IT'S AN AFFRONT AND WILL PISS OFF THE FAIRIES". Fairies are racist bastards, you know.
Anyway, Kyler explains that she's been hearing her husband-to-be's voice, muffled and creeping through the walls, so he can't be too far away. Nancy should ruin his stupid vanishing act. Consider it a MYSTERY. And I will! I totally will. Let's do this thing. First I probe Kyler about family history (she didn't even know she WAS irish until she got the inheritance), the castle (it exploded during WW2, the fault of a suspected double-agent her grandfather was related to) and various other tidbits. "Whichever side my Grandpapa's brother was on during the war, he was quite an inventor, I know that. Everything in the castle has been tinkered with, it seems. Even the dollhouse in the nursery, if you can believe that."
HMMMM. A REFERENCE TO A SPECIFIC ITEM IN THE CASTLE. IT MUST BE A CLUE.
Nancy innocently works in the admission that she kinda crashed her car across the street because a screaming green thing leapt across her field of vision, and presents the doll. Gasp! Those are Matt's clothes it's made out of! And it's wearing his signet ring around its neck! Donal is all like "FAERIES!", Mr. Crocker style. Kyler just sighs and ups the elaborateness of this "practical joke". Me? Man, at this point I have no suspects.
Or should I say, I have ALL THE SUSPECTS.
As soon as Kyler is done talking, Nancy lunges at the bookshelves behind her and steals a book on the Zodiac. This of course is my fault, but Nancy's the one who put it straight into her pocket, so ... uh... SO THERE. Also on the bookshelf is a helmet on a stick. I play with it for a while, and a drawer at the bottom pops open, revealing a mass of pegholes and gears.
I could start playing with it right away, but let's mark it as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #1 and go explore some of the rest of the castle first. Close to that on the bookshelf, I find a motherfucking Towers of Hanoi puzzle. I hate these things too. Wow, it's like this game dipped straight into the well of ways to kick adventure gamers in the soft delicate parts! After ramming my face into the desk a couple of times, I mark this as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #2 and continue moving on. STILL IN THE SAME ROOM I find a desk, with these beauties all lined up.
WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE ROOM THAT KYLER'S IN YET. We haven't even walked ten feet away from her! Holy shit this place is OOZING WITH PUZZLES. They are coming out of my goddamn ears! But you know what? Let's KEEP MOVING and see if we can find some more character interaction first, or something. I leave Kyler's room and walk down the hall to the next door. This looks like the nursery! But before I can do anything, a bird flies in the window, rips a little gem out of a socket in the wall, spits it on the floor, and flies away! I pick the gem up and put it back in, but it looks like THIS puzzle deals with the colors of the goddamn rainbow, and this is missing another piece! I BET THE BIRDS HAVE IT. My to-do list gets updated: STEAL RAINBOW JEWEL FROM THE THIEF BIRDS. Hahahaha I'm not crazy.
I pick up a book in the nursery. It says "LA LAPIN BLEU", except above LAPIN ... well, it looks like
ixncl
LAPIN
ncqlp
Okay, so that makes sense. Then I turn my head TWO FEET to the left and there's THIS crap!
Clearly I can't solve that due to a shortage of dolls right now, but you know what that is? IT'S ANOTHER PUZZLE. This game is just fountaining puzzles now! Holy hell! Ireland is Puzzle Mecca! You can't walk ten feet without falling into a pile of sliding blocks and cryptology! Needless to say I flee the nursery. Down the hall again is a set of stairs to a tower, but there's a huge gap in the stairs. I decide to try NOT jumping it, because I remember how eager this series is to kill off Nancy. Instead I try going downstairs, and that works. Oh thank goodness, there may be something in this game that isn't a puzzle.
Downstairs, wandering around, I find a fortune-telling hint machine that demands three tokens. Hahaha, no. I am a SENIOR DETECTIVE. I will solve all these puzzles my damn self. Give me time. On a table being used as a paperweight I find the Brass ...little weighty thingie... for that one puzzle. That's good. Might need that. I also find an old CYMK ("Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, blacK") printing press, which Nancy muses over and elects not to futz with without permission. Fine by me! Left carelessly on the floor next to a roaring fireplace I find a picture of the two lovebirds... hm, odd place for a romantic photo to be, unless someone wanted to BURN IT...
I also find KIT FOLEY. Who is nursing a black eye. "I walked into a door." he claims. "That is so old it has MOSS on it." I do not retort, but I don't believe this dude for a second. Anyway, Kit's version of things isn't "Matt has been kidnapped by faeries", or "This is a joke". He claims Matt has cold feet and walked out to get them warm. I don't really know why he'd do that with a fire right there, but whatever! Kit claims that Matt's backpack and suitcase are missing, clear proof that he's trying to just walk out on the wedding. But he doesn't really have the nerve to tell Kyler. (I think he may have tried and that's where the black eye came from.) I ask him about the pad of paper he's idly sketching on, and his face lights up. He's a real-estate developer, and man a set of houses on a tract of land like the one this castle's on would sell like lightning.
Uh-huh.
Sigh. I miss Bess and George. I slip out the door while Kit's ranting about "graveling in the bog" or whatever and head back to the oasis-like phone booth down by the inn. C'mon, Bess. Pick up...
*ring ring*
Bess: "Is this a sales call? Because I have an airhorn here that would kill the dinosaurs..."
Nancy: "B-bess? I'm not a sales call. I'm calling from a phone in Ireland!"
Bess: "Nancy! George. GEORGE. Get over here, it's Nancy! Oh, Nancy, you are missing the best party ever!"
George: "The Dunhills have all the best pool toys."
Bess: "Speaking of pool toys, everywhere you look there's a guy in tight shorts grilling something. This is incredible."
Nancy: "That sounds great. Uh, is Ned there?"
Bess: "You know, he said he would be, but we haven't seen him."
Nancy: "Huh. Well... Anyway! Here's what's happened!"
*time passes*
Nancy: "And the bookshelf had THREE puzzles, and the kitchen table had a puzzle, and the dollhouse was a giant puzzle..."
George: "Wait, you got in a car crash, saw a ghost, and now you're in a mysterious foggy land full of puzzles."
Bess: "Nancy, are you in Detective Heaven?"
Nancy: "I don't think so. It may be th-- the other place."
Bess: "Well, what you probably ought to d-- George."
George: "I see it, Bess."
Bess: "It's coming this way, George."
...
...
Nancy: "Hello? ... Bess? George? ... HEY."
Bess: "...Sorry, Nancy. We have to go be heterosexual for a while. You enjoy Ireland!"
*click*
...I feel BETRAYED, you guys. But what about Ned? Where is Ned?
*ring ring*
Ned: "Hello?"
Nancy: "Hi Ned. Uh, you were right about not driving and using my phone at the same time..."
*time passes*
Ned: "You're in Ireland TWO HOURS and you get run off the road by an alleged ghost."
Nancy: "Also the groom is missing."
Ned: "Uh-huh."
Nancy: "And the groom's best friend has a giant black eye, which he says is because he walked into a door."
Ned: "Nancy, that's guy-speak for "rammed my head into another guy's fist"."
Nancy: "Well... anyway, Ned, Bess and George say you're not at the party?"
Ned: "Uh... that's interesting. Well, gotta go!"
*click*
Sigh.
Join me next time, when I attempt to SOLVE EVERY FUCKING PUZZLE ON EARTH.
Well, an inn, really. Inns occupy a weird place in modern society, don't they? We don't really need them. We have hotels, we have motels, we have places to eat everywhere, and we don't really need to press along the highways until we come to a resting house anymore. Travel is different than it used to be. I guess inns are great as public meeting houses, but I never leave the apartment or interact with society in any meaningful way, so uh... Moving along!
Inside the Screaming Banshee, est. 1605, there's chintzy fiddle music in the background and absolutely no one in sight. A voice calls "Be with ya in a minute, miss!" from offscreen... but after a few minutes of fidgeting and fingertapping, I elect to explore the inn instead. Over in one corner, I find a Darts machine, an arcade game called "Difference Detective" (hm, must be a romhack), and a bunch of posters and whatnot. A few of them look like actual photographs of people in Venetian masks, and I assume this is probably a reference to an earlier game in the series, or maybe some people from the game forum screwing around.
... I mean, uh... this is... totally a part of Irish culture, having people in Italian masks... on their walls. For no reason. EEEGAH, MY IMMERSION.
Idly I poke my fingers into the coin return of each arcade game. Hey, a couple tokens! I promptly play Darts for NO REASON other than that I can. It's really not hard to win a game of darts played against yourself, and I collect... another creepy little doll, out of the prize slot. Oh good. Now I have two. What the hell are these things? After a moment of thought, I try out Difference Detective as well. I don't know if you guys know this game. It's pretty indie. There are two pictures, and they look the same! But they're not! There are DIFFERENCES. You have to somehow DETECT these differences using the mystic sense known as SIGHT. I am pretty hardcore at visual processing of information so it only takes me like three reloaded saved games to figure this out.
I was going to get a screenshot of the Difference Detective game screen and put it here so you could play along at home, but I forgot. So... pretend there was a picture with twelve differences in it, and you found them all and it was easy because you're -awesome-. You are, you know.
Winning this one gets Nancy a whistle out of the prize machine.
This all still doesn't get me any fucking service, though, and even though I stand right outside the door to the kitchen (which Nancy isn't allowed to enter) and play the whistle like a passive-aggressive jerk, I still don't get the attention of the server. Eventually I go "oh screw this" and turn around and leave. As I'm leaving, Nancy stops to look at the sign next to the door. NO VACANCIES. No service, either. I'LL BE GIVING THIS PLACE A SHITTY REVIEW ON YELP, YOU BASTARDS.
With no real idea where to go, Nancy trudges back up to the castle again. This time there's a clickable hotspot in the castle yard. I click it, and Nancy hefts up a bunch of rocks and looks upward towards a window. Oh Nancy, no. Vandalism is not the ans-- oh wait this is where that OLD JERK lives. Yeah, let's break stuff.
Pictured: Nancy prepares to break stuff.
In all honesty, I was actually expecting to plink those little ones off the windowglass to get attention. So I huck those, mostly. Then when I ran out, I threw a big one. *WHOOSH CRASH* "Uh-oh." Nancy mumbles, in a quiet little "Ohcrap" voice. But it's cool. Her friend appears at the window, squints out, then beams and waves happily at Nancy the Vandal. She then points towards the door downstairs. So... I guess throwing a softball-sized rock through a window is cool with this lady. THIS IS GONNA BE A GREAT VACATION.
GO AWAY is revealed to be named "Donal", and lets Nancy in now that someone's awake to vouch for her. Meanwhile, Kyler explains that her groom is KINDA SORTA MISSING. But she imagines it's probably a practical joke, because he's a wacky prankster. Nancy is less than convinced. There's also someone named "Kit Foley" staying in the great hall, and he's Matt's (the runaway groom's) best friend. I'll have to go CHECK HIM OUT. For... suspiciousness. Meanwhile, there's some information about Donal, who hates British people. Kyler's groom is British, so Donal is all like "IT'S AN AFFRONT AND WILL PISS OFF THE FAIRIES". Fairies are racist bastards, you know.
Anyway, Kyler explains that she's been hearing her husband-to-be's voice, muffled and creeping through the walls, so he can't be too far away. Nancy should ruin his stupid vanishing act. Consider it a MYSTERY. And I will! I totally will. Let's do this thing. First I probe Kyler about family history (she didn't even know she WAS irish until she got the inheritance), the castle (it exploded during WW2, the fault of a suspected double-agent her grandfather was related to) and various other tidbits. "Whichever side my Grandpapa's brother was on during the war, he was quite an inventor, I know that. Everything in the castle has been tinkered with, it seems. Even the dollhouse in the nursery, if you can believe that."
HMMMM. A REFERENCE TO A SPECIFIC ITEM IN THE CASTLE. IT MUST BE A CLUE.
Nancy innocently works in the admission that she kinda crashed her car across the street because a screaming green thing leapt across her field of vision, and presents the doll. Gasp! Those are Matt's clothes it's made out of! And it's wearing his signet ring around its neck! Donal is all like "FAERIES!", Mr. Crocker style. Kyler just sighs and ups the elaborateness of this "practical joke". Me? Man, at this point I have no suspects.
Or should I say, I have ALL THE SUSPECTS.
As soon as Kyler is done talking, Nancy lunges at the bookshelves behind her and steals a book on the Zodiac. This of course is my fault, but Nancy's the one who put it straight into her pocket, so ... uh... SO THERE. Also on the bookshelf is a helmet on a stick. I play with it for a while, and a drawer at the bottom pops open, revealing a mass of pegholes and gears.
I could start playing with it right away, but let's mark it as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #1 and go explore some of the rest of the castle first. Close to that on the bookshelf, I find a motherfucking Towers of Hanoi puzzle. I hate these things too. Wow, it's like this game dipped straight into the well of ways to kick adventure gamers in the soft delicate parts! After ramming my face into the desk a couple of times, I mark this as OBVIOUS PUZZLE #2 and continue moving on. STILL IN THE SAME ROOM I find a desk, with these beauties all lined up.
WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE ROOM THAT KYLER'S IN YET. We haven't even walked ten feet away from her! Holy shit this place is OOZING WITH PUZZLES. They are coming out of my goddamn ears! But you know what? Let's KEEP MOVING and see if we can find some more character interaction first, or something. I leave Kyler's room and walk down the hall to the next door. This looks like the nursery! But before I can do anything, a bird flies in the window, rips a little gem out of a socket in the wall, spits it on the floor, and flies away! I pick the gem up and put it back in, but it looks like THIS puzzle deals with the colors of the goddamn rainbow, and this is missing another piece! I BET THE BIRDS HAVE IT. My to-do list gets updated: STEAL RAINBOW JEWEL FROM THE THIEF BIRDS. Hahahaha I'm not crazy.
I pick up a book in the nursery. It says "LA LAPIN BLEU", except above LAPIN ... well, it looks like
ixncl
LAPIN
ncqlp
Okay, so that makes sense. Then I turn my head TWO FEET to the left and there's THIS crap!
Clearly I can't solve that due to a shortage of dolls right now, but you know what that is? IT'S ANOTHER PUZZLE. This game is just fountaining puzzles now! Holy hell! Ireland is Puzzle Mecca! You can't walk ten feet without falling into a pile of sliding blocks and cryptology! Needless to say I flee the nursery. Down the hall again is a set of stairs to a tower, but there's a huge gap in the stairs. I decide to try NOT jumping it, because I remember how eager this series is to kill off Nancy. Instead I try going downstairs, and that works. Oh thank goodness, there may be something in this game that isn't a puzzle.
Downstairs, wandering around, I find a fortune-telling hint machine that demands three tokens. Hahaha, no. I am a SENIOR DETECTIVE. I will solve all these puzzles my damn self. Give me time. On a table being used as a paperweight I find the Brass ...little weighty thingie... for that one puzzle. That's good. Might need that. I also find an old CYMK ("Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, blacK") printing press, which Nancy muses over and elects not to futz with without permission. Fine by me! Left carelessly on the floor next to a roaring fireplace I find a picture of the two lovebirds... hm, odd place for a romantic photo to be, unless someone wanted to BURN IT...
I also find KIT FOLEY. Who is nursing a black eye. "I walked into a door." he claims. "That is so old it has MOSS on it." I do not retort, but I don't believe this dude for a second. Anyway, Kit's version of things isn't "Matt has been kidnapped by faeries", or "This is a joke". He claims Matt has cold feet and walked out to get them warm. I don't really know why he'd do that with a fire right there, but whatever! Kit claims that Matt's backpack and suitcase are missing, clear proof that he's trying to just walk out on the wedding. But he doesn't really have the nerve to tell Kyler. (I think he may have tried and that's where the black eye came from.) I ask him about the pad of paper he's idly sketching on, and his face lights up. He's a real-estate developer, and man a set of houses on a tract of land like the one this castle's on would sell like lightning.
Uh-huh.
Sigh. I miss Bess and George. I slip out the door while Kit's ranting about "graveling in the bog" or whatever and head back to the oasis-like phone booth down by the inn. C'mon, Bess. Pick up...
*ring ring*
Bess: "Is this a sales call? Because I have an airhorn here that would kill the dinosaurs..."
Nancy: "B-bess? I'm not a sales call. I'm calling from a phone in Ireland!"
Bess: "Nancy! George. GEORGE. Get over here, it's Nancy! Oh, Nancy, you are missing the best party ever!"
George: "The Dunhills have all the best pool toys."
Bess: "Speaking of pool toys, everywhere you look there's a guy in tight shorts grilling something. This is incredible."
Nancy: "That sounds great. Uh, is Ned there?"
Bess: "You know, he said he would be, but we haven't seen him."
Nancy: "Huh. Well... Anyway! Here's what's happened!"
*time passes*
Nancy: "And the bookshelf had THREE puzzles, and the kitchen table had a puzzle, and the dollhouse was a giant puzzle..."
George: "Wait, you got in a car crash, saw a ghost, and now you're in a mysterious foggy land full of puzzles."
Bess: "Nancy, are you in Detective Heaven?"
Nancy: "I don't think so. It may be th-- the other place."
Bess: "Well, what you probably ought to d-- George."
George: "I see it, Bess."
Bess: "It's coming this way, George."
...
...
Nancy: "Hello? ... Bess? George? ... HEY."
Bess: "...Sorry, Nancy. We have to go be heterosexual for a while. You enjoy Ireland!"
*click*
...I feel BETRAYED, you guys. But what about Ned? Where is Ned?
*ring ring*
Ned: "Hello?"
Nancy: "Hi Ned. Uh, you were right about not driving and using my phone at the same time..."
*time passes*
Ned: "You're in Ireland TWO HOURS and you get run off the road by an alleged ghost."
Nancy: "Also the groom is missing."
Ned: "Uh-huh."
Nancy: "And the groom's best friend has a giant black eye, which he says is because he walked into a door."
Ned: "Nancy, that's guy-speak for "rammed my head into another guy's fist"."
Nancy: "Well... anyway, Ned, Bess and George say you're not at the party?"
Ned: "Uh... that's interesting. Well, gotta go!"
*click*
Sigh.
Join me next time, when I attempt to SOLVE EVERY FUCKING PUZZLE ON EARTH.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-27 02:35 pm (UTC)So wait, the solution to Kyler's jerk butler not letting you in is to do the old window rock toss thing a little too hard to let Kyler know you're here, at which point she calls him off? Were there no, like, "oh by the way I invited my friend Nancy to the castle, she should be here sometime tonight" type instructions left beforehand? Communication, people.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-27 09:01 pm (UTC)He may have known she was coming and just NOT CARED.