Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island Review

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            Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island

Review by ScoutOctober 2003

Danger on Deception Island is the ninth Nancy Drew offering from Her Interactive since the release of Secrets Can Kill in 1998. Nine games in five years in the same series might just be a record for graphical adventure games.  (Zork managed ten if you count Wishbringer but roughly half of those were text games.) The King’s Quest line made it to eight. In the children’s game market, The Famous Five series, based on Enid Blyton’s children’s books, turned out five. Nine games is impressive and would be considered a major accomplishment were it any franchise other than Nancy Drew. In the land of Nancy, nine is little more than a good start, more a child’s first bike ride to the end of the block and back than a trip to the moon. Nancy Drew, pardon the insinuation, has got very long legs. Ever since the intrepid girl detective arrived on the kid lit scene in 1930 she’s been solving mysteries for fun and profit. Fun for the readers and profit, of course, for the publishers.

Before I get into the review I must confess my only previous exposure to Nancy Drew came from a dog-eared paperback I found in the backseat of the neighbor girl’s car while on a road trip to the local college campus. Though I had just turned 10 at the time, it took me all of two hours to finish the book, a fact that seemed to elicit equal parts respect and pity from the older women (16 and 17) in the front seat. So here it is, many, many, many (ahem) years later and we meet again. I’ve changed. Nancy, for the most part, is still the sweet, proper, curious girl I met all those many years ago.

An Old Curmudgeon Plays Nancy Drew

Danger on Deception Island is rated “for Mystery Fans 10 and up.” That’s a big demographic and I would guess that a portion of those mystery fans who fall within the “up” category, say, those who enjoy the edgy musing of mystery novelists such as George P. Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane, aren’t going to find themselves fully engaged here. The Nancy Drew series is sold in the children’s section at most stores, and rightly so. As much as this series is praised by adult adventure gamers, they are very much kids’ games.

For one, the guiding hand of the concerned adult is all over Danger on Deception Island, admonishing the player to take care and think twice, to always wear a helmet when bicycling, to never get in a kayak without a life jacket. Oh? But it’s a game and not real life, you say? Fine. Go ahead. Pedal off on your bicycle without a proper helmet. Go ahead. Guess who’s going to find himself featured in the next day’s victim headlines? Ditto on leaving your life jacket on the dock or paddling out past the warning buoys to that cool looking break just beyond. (Yes, you can die or get a game-stopping injury in Danger on Deception Island, so consider yourself warned.) Apparently the developers view the world as a scary place eager to hurt the inquisitive girl detective. Now reasonable caution is only common sense and something any responsible adult would impart to a child, but its being such a prominent a feature of the gameplay quickly came to oppress this player. By the time I finished this game (and I played it on Senior Detective setting) I had taken to checking my jacket when I left the house in the morning for fear someone from Her Interactive had tiptoed in in the middle of the night and pinned a pair of mittens to my lapel.

What Did You Expect? Silent Hill?

For all the annoying potty training this game indulges in, Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island is a good game. It is not a great game, and it is not a bad game. It’s certainly not a game I’ll remember a couple of months from now, nothing like Secret of the Lost Rainforest or Search for Cetus or Pepper’s Adventures in Time, but if you need a break from the more adult fare you’re playing, Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island might be just the ticket.

As Nancy Drew, you set off on a mini vacation to the beautiful San Juan Islands off the west coast of Washington State. Destination?  The village of Snake Horse Harbor on Deception Island and specifically the back berth on your friend Katie Firestone’s tour boat. Unfortunately someone has vandalized Katie’s boat, strewing her belongings above deck and below and damaging her engine.

As soon as you set foot on board, Katie tells you that the island residents are bitterly divided over the presence of an orphaned orca whale that has recently moved into the waters off Snake Horse Harbor. The authorities, at Katie’s request, have investigated and decided to harshly fine anyone who comes within three hundred feet of the wayward whale. Since the orca can move around freely and surface at any time, anywhere, the local fishermen are forced to detour around the island, costing precious fuel and time. Several blame Katie, and she has made matters worse by mouthing off at the local town meeting. As a result of the vandalism, Katie’s boat is inoperable, and as she’s too busy trying to repair the engine to entertain you, you’re on your own. Since you are Nancy Drew, that is absolutely, positively not a problem. You set out to find the those responsible and bring them to justice, and you start at Katie’s galley sink. You put the plumbing back together and in doing so you get a clue. Upstairs, you replace all Katie’s books in their drawer and get another clue. In the world according to Nancy, cleanliness is apparently next to sleuthliness.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

It will hardly come as a surprise that Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island is a traditional point-and-click adventure game. Movement is via arrows forward, backward, left and right.  Your cursor changes to a glowing magnifying glass when you move it over a hotspot; otherwise it’s just a plain old nonglowing magnifying glass. Inventory is always visible in the rather large interface frame. A menu button in the upper left corner of the frame provides access to the save, load, exit functions. Actual gameplay takes place in a window in the middle of your screen. When I first saw the interface layout I was a little dismayed but honestly I forgot all about it after the first hour or so. You have a laptop set up on Katie’s boat (sorry, you can’t take it with you), which gives you access to incoming e-mail, a search engine, an anagram buster and a journal. You also have a cell phone, which turns out to be one of your most vital tools. With the phone you can dial friends for general clues or call specific characters about specific puzzles, and more importantly they can call you.

After the tour boat is shipshape you leave Katie to sweat over the engine repair while you hop on her bike (don’t forget that helmet …) to explore Deception Island. This takes all of about 30 minutes.  The game world in Danger on Deception Island is extremely limited. In fact, there are only four locations and only four nonplayer characters with whom to interact. A fifth character emerges later, but in the interest of preserving suspense I hesitate to describe her fully. Suffice it to say you should keep your cell phone charged and at the ready. Though the gamescape is limited the developers did a good job of utilizing available space to maximum effect, and there is a lot to do in and around Snake Horse Harbor.

The puzzles are nicely interlaced and there’s just enough nonlinearity so that you can move around if you get stuck. I hit one roadblock with a puzzle requiring me to enter a series of words. I knew which words to enter and what they meant but was stumped as to what exactly to do with them. As proper placement was crucial to trigger the next phase of the game, I was stuck for a while. Other than this one instance, the puzzles were straightforward.

There’s some light arcade action in the marina location that requires a bit of hand-eye coordination, specifically the Feeding Frenzy game where you are required to click on fish that pop up and down through holes, much like a benign version of the Whack-a-Rat game in Sam and Max. The Senior gamers will have more trouble here than the Juniors, but if all else fails the game will automatically advance you after five failed attempts. I won it fair and square by picking an area near the center of the board and clicking on all of the fish in that zone. Try and chase the little fishies around and you’ll more likely than not lose every time.

This is a game that likes you. It wants you to win. For instance, there are several puzzles where you must fill in the blanks with numbers or letters you have found elsewhere. If you are wrong, Nancy tells you so with her “unhappy voice” and the game erases your entries. If you are right, Nancy rewards you with her “happy voice.” I confess I took shameless delight in hearing Nancy’s encouraging vocal stylings. Never underestimate the power of positive reinforcement.

There were some decent characterizations, with just enough true-to-life stuff to keep the game from bogging down in saccharine sweetness.  Like life in any confined piece of real estate, tensions run high between the opposing camps. Nancy, much to her credit, does a good job of remaining the objective observer, even when Katie herself is implicated late in the game. All of the adult voices were excellent, but the quality varied drastically with the younger actors. The actor playing Nancy had a nice tone and timbre, but her delivery was wooden. She seemed so concerned with proper diction and correct enunciation that at times she came off as more robot than teenage girl.

Something’s Fishy on Deception Island

As the island gives up its secrets, Nancy Drew finds herself hot on the trail of a mystery that includes a loony old lady living offshore on her own island (which, sadly, we never get to visit), an orphaned orca whale, an abandoned lighthouse and a series of tunnels dug by shanghai-happy locals from the turn of the century.  There’s a maze down in those tunnels but by then you’ll have a crib sheet in your inventory to help you along. I didn’t have to resort to it, as the maze was easily navigated by trial and error. Clues are everywhere and prominently displayed. You’ll have to take notes if you don’t want to constantly retrace your steps but as the locations are limited this never gets too burdensome. Near the end the pace picks up—a few new locations become available and Nancy comes face to face with the real Danger on Deception Island. One of the characters here was truly creepy and I experienced a few real shudders, a rarity for me. I expect it was due as much to the sudden shift in tone as anything really frightening. Many of the plot points are addressed in this climax and several are farfetched and overly convenient. There is a distinct aroma of rotten red herring in the wrap-up.

Nancy Drew Danger on Deception Island is a solid kids’ game with straight-ahead puzzles and pleasant graphics. You can buy this game for your child without giving a second thought to age-appropriate material. I suspect the adult fans of this game will like it a lot.  Nonfans take heed. As I mentioned above, I haven’t played any of the prior eight games so I’ll leave the compare and contrast to others. For me it was a nice interlude from my more adult fare and did exactly what it was supposed to do, the way a freezer should make ice cubes or a battery should power a radio. Nothing extra special, not great, not terrible. Just Nancy Drew doing what Nancy Drew do. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Her Interactive Publisher: Her Interactive Release Date: October 2003

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 200 MHz Pentium 16 MB RAM 160 MB free hard drive space 16-bit color graphics video card 16-bit Window-compatible stereo sound card 8X CD-ROM drive Mouse and speakers

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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