The Merits of Nancy Drew in TTRPGs

Fanatic

           ​I’m an absolute fanatic for the Nancy Drew (ND) video game series by HeR Interactive, and I have played every game they developed on their proprietary game engine before switching to the Unity engine (so everything before Midnight in Salem). I say I’m a fanatic because I will literally talk your ear off about the merits of these video games, whether you care or not (and most people, I think, don’t care).

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ND Games

           For those unfamiliar, the ND games are geared towards pre-teen girls (though any age can enjoy them and boys play the games, too) and are “point and click” style, but I find them so much more engaging than that. You play as Nancy Drew, renowned investigator, and sometimes her bevy of friends and contemporaries, cracking puzzles and solving mysteries.
            The games have so many good qualities for so many reasons (and here I go again). First of all, the stories are engaging. Are they always realistic? No, but neither was the original book series, to be honest. The mysteries are salient and invoke urgency while holding your attention captive. You get to interact with NPCs and, sometimes, there are repercussions for choosing one response over the other, which means your attention to social cues and the details of the case are required. Talking with NPCs is the primary way of driving the story forward after you discover clues, secrets, and various tidbits of information that all work in concert with each other to solve the mystery.

Clues, Secrets & Tidbits

           How do you get these clues, secrets, and tidbits? Primarily by solving puzzles. But these aren’t your average puzzles; they’re stimulating, logic based, and have an outside the box approach. Because they are logic based, all ages can participate because you don’t need in-depth knowledge of math, science, history, or any other learned knowledge base, you just need your brain and a desire to figure things out. Each puzzle is creative in its design and beautifully rendered and leaves you satisfied and wanting more. I would like to say the puzzles are the highlight of the game, but that would be a disservice to the wonderful story lines, nuanced characters, and theme immersion. Wait, theme immersion?
            That’s right, I have more wonderful things to say. I call it theme immersion because I feel that’s the best way to describe it. Each mystery has a guiding “theme” that informs every aspect of the games. For example, “Shadow at the Water’s Edge” is themed in Japanese culture, particularly focusing on the ryokan (a type of inn). The puzzles aren’t just skinned to look and feel Japanese, and it’s more than just having Japanese NPCs, the game designers did their best to submerge you in that culture, as much as they can in a short video game.
            Because that’s one of two related downsides to the franchise (*gasp*, something negative?), the games are short. When I was a pre-teen, these games took me forever. The older I got, the more neural pathways I developed for logic puzzles, so I solved them faster and faster. As an adult, I can easily finish one if I play all day, though I normally only play a few hours at a time, so maybe 3-4 days. With an online retail price of $20, for 3-4 days of gameplay, it’s hard to justify the cost. Yet, justify I do.

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connection between the ND games & TTRPGs

           I no longer play the Nancy Drew video games by HeR Interactive, and won’t be likely to in the future. The company went through some dramatic changes (you know, the bad kind) and the games just… aren’t what they used to be. They also haven’t come out with a new game in over two years, when previous management was cranking out two a year. Who knows, things could change.
            But what does this have to do with TTRPGs? Well, if you made it this far, the reason I draw a connection between the ND games and TTRPGs is because I have been deeply inspired by their creative take on logic puzzles and their style of mystery solving. It’s akin to Monkey Island, another seminal game that has inspired my TTRPG adventures on how to create engaging stories, mysteries, and puzzles and introduce them to my players in interactive ways.
            Media draws inspiration from media in an infinite cycle, and for me, logic games like Nancy Drew, Monkey Island, and Myst show how a game can be more than just “point and click”. Your tabletop campaign can be more than just rote roleplay; it’s how you approach it, the attention to detail and creativity that inspires your game, that gives it that timeless and memorable quality. I encourage you, whether it’s your type of game or not, to play a couple (or all) of the ND games (you can get them for cheaper prices on STEAM and if you can find the little cassettes in stores), or the Monkey Island games if they’re more your speed, heck even Myst, to add a little twist to your creative approach to game mastering.