At the end of my last review I was wondering what these games might look like in a post-9/11 world, what their political ambitions might be, whether the steadily increasing fire that had been building in the belly of this series for four games in a row would continue to grow or be stifled by the sudden weight of America in those months and years of cultural transformation following the event. If you’re new to my Nancy Drew project I promise that this makes sense to ask about these games, but it won’t seem like it based on everything we’re about to talk about because the answer is no this game is Not About Anything so hard that at first I was thinking wow this is kind of nice, kind of refreshing to just have a chill cozy mystery, but by the end I think I have settled on this being firmly at the bottom of the barrel.

Nancy’s got a friend named Sally who bought a remote cabin that used to be owned by Fake Al Capone on a lake on the edge of a nature preserve, with nobody around for several miles except the local ranger, a weird old man obsessed with bird watching, and the woman who runs the small store on the other side of the lake. Unfortunately for Sally, who was really looking forward to fixing up this old rotting lake house and doing photography there or something, it’s haunted by the ghosts of Malone’s four dogs who attack her every night! Well, they kind of run around in her yard and then get up by the window and bark a little bit and then leave every night, but that’s scary enough for Sally to freak out and leave AFTER calling Nancy in to help her look into it, so it’s up to Nancy to figure this shit out on her own, of course.

Sounds like a cool setup for a creepy campfire sort of mystery, right? But the reality of the game is anything but frightening. This game, like most of the prior ones, heavily features a day/night cycle that you control by adjusting the time of day in your bedroom, but despite the premise of the game involving near-nightly attacks by the titular ghost dogs, they only make one, comically unthreatening appearance on Nancy’s first or second night there and never again, no matter how many times you find yourself needing to swap the times because x character only shows up at night or y bird you need a picture of will only appear on this particular branch between 4 and 6 AM.

There’s a feeling that this game was an attempt by Her Interactive to give the impression of stretching their legs a bit after pretty much only setting their games in relatively restrictive urban and domestic environments. This is easily the largest map in the series to date and the Great Outdoorsiness of the main chunk of it is deceptively impressive at first glance, until you realize that it’s mostly taken up by very long paths to and from an actually smaller number of areas than is usual for these games plus a large forest maze that you will return too TOO MANY TIMES over the course of SEVERAL quests in search of MULTIPLE different species of animals. During this game you will track down dogs, bugs, and birds almost entirely in place of clues, which mostly just kind of fall into Nancy’s lap by chance right at the end of the game where the bulk of the actual puzzle solving is done, after two hours of rote busywork and fetch questing.

These puzzles are, to their credit, related to this game’s historical curiosity, What If We Made Up A Fake Al Capone But He Was Obsessed With Dogs And Also Obtuse Puzzles which is actually a great character idea that goes sorely underutilized, and I think once you do literally get his 100-year-old ex-girlfriend to mail you the key to his secret speakeasy so you can start actually working on the plot of the game IMMEDIATELY before the game ends things really pick up, and the climax is good and fun! It’s a very stimulating 15 minutes, and the villain of this one is pretty fun. Terrible game that I hate, nothing interesting happening, but it goes out on a high note, I’ll give it that.

At some point they started putting teasers at the end of these games for the next release and in a bold move they are doing two Haunted Whatever ones in a row so HOPEFULLY “haunted amusement park” will turn out better than “haunted secret lakeside basement gambling den and also the ghosts are dogs” which is something that fucking sucks to have to say, but, it almost couldn’t be worse!

PREVIOUSLY: SECRET OF THE SCARLET HAND
NEXT TIME: THE HAUNTED CAROUSEL

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES

I don't know what to say about this one. I didn't finish the game because it can get super frustrating. The game is old, I'll give it that, and it's extremely confusing at local rotations. I couldn't understand where to go simply because the game's system was confusing.
I love hidden objects games and I'll admit that this was the oldest I've tried - I wasn't expecting it to be so odd since the images look quite neat and Nancy Drew is very famous in these type of games but meh...

Also, the dub was weird. Too theatrical

I'm just going start by saying that outside of the books series which I have never read, I don't know much about Nancy Drew other than the fact she is a young female detective that solves various mysteries. I didn't even know they made Nancy Drew video games until I saw the Game Grumps Animated: Shot and Missed by Oryozema on Youtube. After laugh crying through the entire skit, I had to know what this was and if this game really existed, so I went to Arin and Dan's (The Game Grumps) channel to watch them play Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek. After watching an episode, I was sold on the game's cheesy lines and bad graphics. So, it was an easy buy when I found a bundle that went on sale on Steam.

Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake is a point-and-click game much like the Artifex games where you point at objects to interact with them or to pick up the objects for later to be able to progress in the game like for instance a water bottle or pile boards. The game also has puzzles for the player to solve to be able to progress with the game and story, but unlike the Artifex games there is no skip option, so you have to solve them either by yourself or with a guide. I found some puzzles enjoyable and others very annoying. Of course, it didn't help that some of the puzzles reset like a puzzle that unlocks a secret door meaning you have to solve it every time you need to go through which is a very poor design choice. The game does provide you with ways to get hints by either calling some of Nancy's friends or by using an item that looks like a tablet which is kind of strange because I didn't think they made tablets back then. I found the tablet more useful than calling by phone because you always had it in your inventory, rather than going back to the cabin to use the rotary phone.

You also explore the world in the same way as other point and clicks; by moving the cursor on certain parts of the screen to either move closer to inspect an object closer, or to move to the next area. I thought controls in this game felt like tank controls which felt out of place in a point and click game. The controls are very hard to get use to and it made moving through the woods especially bad because that area in itself is already confusing without having to deal with bad controls on top of it.

I guess since I brought it up, the woods are probably the worst thing about this game because of how hard it is to navigate in that particular area. They give you a shitty map and some poorly placed landmarks but believe me it doesn't help. I have to wonder if they had testers when they designed that part because who in their right mind would play that and be like "Yeah, this is fun!". What's worse is the game constantly has you go through the woods over and over again sometimes for the stupidest things like collecting bugs because Nancy, this amazing detective, wasn't smart enough to bring her wallet even though she can solve a mystery about a bunch ghost dogs.

The story in the game is pretty decent though, but nothing mind blowing. I did enjoy solving the mystery, though I felt that the reveal and confrontation with the criminal was a bit anti-climactic. I also didn't find the story to be that suspenseful, except for a couple of times in the game. I think it's because I never felt like Nancy was ever in danger. The game lets you switch the game from day to night, by having Nancy go upstairs to bed and by being able to switch between the time of day, you can actively avoid ever encountering the dogs which only appear at night as mentioned in the game. Outside of bug hunting in the forest and talking to one specific character, there really is no reason to ever explore at night making it almost seem pointless.

Overall:

Even though Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake definitely shows it age, it isn't a terrible point and click game. However, I don't think most modern gamers will have the patience for the cheesy dialogue, outdated graphics, or terrible controls. I do think that if you're someone who likes old PC games and/or is a fan of Nancy Drew than you'll probably like this game.

Pro:
+ decent characters
+ good story
+ game offers hints through phone calls and tablet.

Cons:
-world exploration is confusing
-the layout of the forest is terrible
-frustrating controls