This feels like a Nancy Drew game I should hate, but I came away from this one pretty positively. There’s not much mystery happening here and not much to explore, but idk I enjoyed my time with it.
Location: Big empty sprawling farming town is probably the most at home I’m gonna feel in a Nancy Drew game tbh. I'm on the east coast so I can’t relate to the tornadoes and dust and shit, but driving around a big empty map filled with cows? Yeah that's pretty much what it’s like out here. It’d be more accurate if the ma and pa general store was a dollar general but I guess that wouldn’t have the same vibe.
But I did really like the cozy countryside feel of the locations. The farmhouse, the cluttered barn that’s half garage, the big empty fields. All very familiar. The music complemented the theme very well, big fan of that simple guitar track that plays in the house a lot.
Characters: I like the whole cast! I don’t love anyone in particular, but I enjoy everyone’s presence and all their short little storylines. If anything I think Debbie is probably the weakest character, she’s like the only one who doesn’t have a Thing going on. Mostly just tells you when it’s time to progress to the next day.
Loved being able to give everyone candy though.
Puzzles: well, I really enjoyed the mini games in this one! Yes, even the mouse trap one. I wish you can manually move the mice forward Instead of just waiting for them to cycle forward and we really didn’t need to play 4 different variations of this puzzle, but idk I kinda enjoy it. It’s relaxing.
I’m still not sure what I did correctly to solve the puzzle, but I gotta mention the prairie dog vacuum one because holy shit what a whimsical concept for a puzzle. I love you prairie dog vacuum. I can’t believe this is a real thing that exists in the real world and not a dumb made up video game invention.
Once I got the hang of the circuit board puzzle I enjoyed it, but ooh boy i hate timed puzzles. So land rush ended up being my go to money maker. Honestly Land Rush had no right being that fun
But the real issue is that none of the puzzles are actually related to solving a mystery. I'm a fan of chore puzzles, but that's like....all this game is. I still liked it, but it's not very Nancy Drew.
is driving a puzzle? maybe i'm just dumb, but realizing there was a gps and a map was certainly a puzzle. once I found that it made navigation much more tolerable. this is the best version of driving yet, but that doesn't mean it's good. well, driving full speed around a corner into another truck and causing a 5 car pile up is pretty good. i am glad they made driving faster though, but then they also added other vehicles as obstacles. but i can't really complain because the wild car crashes I can get into in this actual Nancy Drew game are amazing.
Story: where's the mystery :(
ok I liked the storm chasing concept and the initial idea of trying to figure out who's sabotaging everything, it's a grounded, realistic storyline. but it's not like you're actively uncovering that in the game. Nancy just does a bunch of fun little chores and accidentally reveals the culprit in the last 15 minutes of the game. There's very little snooping or interrogating, you don't get to unravel a big mystery or solve a 200 year old scavenger hunt. this is definitely the least grandiose Nancy Drew storyline yet. I don't hate it, it's just kinda bland.
Final Thoughts: These games go through a wildly short production cycle and this one might suffer the most from it. It's possible this game got the short end of the stick as the team might've been working on Shadow at the waters Edge, the Secrets Can Kill remaster, AND this game at roughly the same time. That's just speculation I saw on reddit, but it makes sense.
This is easily the buggiest one I've played yet. There's strange pauses in the dialogue, my camera turned red after taking a couple photos, characters sometimes mentioned things I hadn't done or discovered yet, and a couple of small graphical errors that popped up during puzzles.
But even with that and the lackluster mystery and chore heavy puzzles and lack of explorable locations, I still enjoyed my time with the game overall. Yeah, I would have liked to see a more fleshed out mystery in this location and it would have been nice to do more than just chores, but at least I still had fun. I'm just glad it wasn't another Ransom of the Seven Ships.
Location: Big empty sprawling farming town is probably the most at home I’m gonna feel in a Nancy Drew game tbh. I'm on the east coast so I can’t relate to the tornadoes and dust and shit, but driving around a big empty map filled with cows? Yeah that's pretty much what it’s like out here. It’d be more accurate if the ma and pa general store was a dollar general but I guess that wouldn’t have the same vibe.
But I did really like the cozy countryside feel of the locations. The farmhouse, the cluttered barn that’s half garage, the big empty fields. All very familiar. The music complemented the theme very well, big fan of that simple guitar track that plays in the house a lot.
Characters: I like the whole cast! I don’t love anyone in particular, but I enjoy everyone’s presence and all their short little storylines. If anything I think Debbie is probably the weakest character, she’s like the only one who doesn’t have a Thing going on. Mostly just tells you when it’s time to progress to the next day.
Loved being able to give everyone candy though.
Puzzles: well, I really enjoyed the mini games in this one! Yes, even the mouse trap one. I wish you can manually move the mice forward Instead of just waiting for them to cycle forward and we really didn’t need to play 4 different variations of this puzzle, but idk I kinda enjoy it. It’s relaxing.
I’m still not sure what I did correctly to solve the puzzle, but I gotta mention the prairie dog vacuum one because holy shit what a whimsical concept for a puzzle. I love you prairie dog vacuum. I can’t believe this is a real thing that exists in the real world and not a dumb made up video game invention.
Once I got the hang of the circuit board puzzle I enjoyed it, but ooh boy i hate timed puzzles. So land rush ended up being my go to money maker. Honestly Land Rush had no right being that fun
But the real issue is that none of the puzzles are actually related to solving a mystery. I'm a fan of chore puzzles, but that's like....all this game is. I still liked it, but it's not very Nancy Drew.
is driving a puzzle? maybe i'm just dumb, but realizing there was a gps and a map was certainly a puzzle. once I found that it made navigation much more tolerable. this is the best version of driving yet, but that doesn't mean it's good. well, driving full speed around a corner into another truck and causing a 5 car pile up is pretty good. i am glad they made driving faster though, but then they also added other vehicles as obstacles. but i can't really complain because the wild car crashes I can get into in this actual Nancy Drew game are amazing.
Story: where's the mystery :(
ok I liked the storm chasing concept and the initial idea of trying to figure out who's sabotaging everything, it's a grounded, realistic storyline. but it's not like you're actively uncovering that in the game. Nancy just does a bunch of fun little chores and accidentally reveals the culprit in the last 15 minutes of the game. There's very little snooping or interrogating, you don't get to unravel a big mystery or solve a 200 year old scavenger hunt. this is definitely the least grandiose Nancy Drew storyline yet. I don't hate it, it's just kinda bland.
Final Thoughts: These games go through a wildly short production cycle and this one might suffer the most from it. It's possible this game got the short end of the stick as the team might've been working on Shadow at the waters Edge, the Secrets Can Kill remaster, AND this game at roughly the same time. That's just speculation I saw on reddit, but it makes sense.
This is easily the buggiest one I've played yet. There's strange pauses in the dialogue, my camera turned red after taking a couple photos, characters sometimes mentioned things I hadn't done or discovered yet, and a couple of small graphical errors that popped up during puzzles.
But even with that and the lackluster mystery and chore heavy puzzles and lack of explorable locations, I still enjoyed my time with the game overall. Yeah, I would have liked to see a more fleshed out mystery in this location and it would have been nice to do more than just chores, but at least I still had fun. I'm just glad it wasn't another Ransom of the Seven Ships.