Nancy Drew®: Curse of Blackmoor Manor

Curse of Blackmoor Manor is the 11th Nancy Drew adventure game. In this entry, Nancy goes to help the newly married Linda Penvellyn. Since moving into her new husband's house, she's been behaving strangely and has the symptoms of a strange illness, and it's up to Nancy to figure out what's really going on. The setting and story take a lot of inspiration from gothic horror. Blackmoor Manor has a very strong spooky English mansion aesthetic, and I enjoyed exploring it. The game isn't very scary but there were a couple of moments that made me jump. I enjoyed uncovering the Penvellyn family lore and figuring out what was really behind Linda's illness. There are a couple of strong possible suspects and motives. The ending was genuinely surprising to me, although it wasn't totally satisfying. The puzzles here are definitely on the more difficult side, and probably the most complicated ones I've played in the series so far. Most of the puzzles were really enjoyable. They were difficult enough that you really had to think about them, but were pretty well-designed, so most of them felt fair. I needed some help from a walkthrough because there are some things that are easy to miss or that get mentioned early on and are easy to forget later. The puzzles get more complicated as the game goes on and some of them were pretty frustrating. Toward the end of the game you need to do a lot of backtracking through areas that are really difficult to navigate, and I got so frustrated with it that in a couple of places I just looked up the answer even if I already knew what to do, just so I wouldn't have to retread all that ground again. This is the most minigame-heavy of the ones I've played so far, and it was pretty annoying. You have to play through all of the minigames at least once. There are a few of them you have to figure out through trial and error and a couple you have to replay a few times to keep making progress. I really disliked the minigame you have to play the most, because it wasn't much fun and was easy to lose. During the game, you can order food for Nancy, and there are a couple of things you order which you can use to solve puzzles, one of which is required for the game to progress. Unfortunately, there's a bug where after the first time you order food, you can try to order food again and it just won't show up. If you spend enough time away from Nancy's room, it may show up later, but I never had any luck getting that to happen. Fortunately, I happened to have ordered the item I needed to move the story forward the first time, but there was an optional puzzle I missed out on because I was never able to order the other item I needed. I was on the fence about whether to recommend this one. I enjoyed the mystery, the spooky aesthetic, and the difficult but clever puzzles. However, the minigames and overly-complicated late-game puzzles were really annoying, and there is a bug that can get you totally stuck. Overall, I would say I do recommend the game if you like tough puzzles and have a lot of patience, but if you get frustrated easily, this might be one to skip. 5/10

As my list of eligible list of games to be played starts to dwindle, my thoughts turned to my as yet unfinished list of Nancy Drew mysteries I bought long ago. The clumsy navigation using arrows or heavy handed swings with the mouse at the screen edges came back to me in force and ultimately became the reason I didn't finish this game after 12 hours of play time. I got to the point where you spend a lot of time stumbling around in the dark and after a couple hours of claustrophobic fun, I decided to call it and make this a permanent member of my Do Not Like folder. I know that the barriers that separate the 00's to the 10's games is significant (playing Thornton Hall now) but that didn't stop me from finishing the Scarlet Hand episode. I just think this particular one was particularly bad.

british

This has always been my favorite Nancy Drew from childhood, just replayed with my daughter and it is just as fun as I remember it to be. It has many puzzles and the classic Nancy Drew feel that the originals had. Definitely recommend.

Puzzles are more annoying than interesting to solve

It's good. The puzzles are complex but not impossible. The game assumes that you're smart and persistent enough to get the premise but doesn't punish you for not immediately understanding. I filled two pages in irl my notebook with clues and solutions to puzzles, which fully paid off. I've never worked harder to keep track of things in a mystery game than this, but the game fully rewards you for putting in the effort. Also the story is actually pretty cool, and the devs even included some pretty intricate smaller character details and lore. My only gripe is the stiff animation, but the older Nancy Drew games are kind of charming in this way.

This one is close to a No. The overall theme is interesting, there are two interesting characters and two, who despite being in the same manor are largely ignored, which is an utter shame. It's A LOT of walking back and forth all while forcing you to repeat the same riddles to access parts of the Manor. The Manor is also super small. Still I wanted to finish it and really liked the voice actors in it. But its really a "Meh!".

one of the greatest of all time

Werewolf Gaslighting: The Game

Эта игра превратила мои мозги в лютый фарш, но это было приятно, спасибо