Nancy Drew - Message in a Haunted Mansion

              Played by Peter Clark on a P.C.

Nancy Drew is an American Detective. She has been asked by her
friend Hannah to stay with Rose Green in an old Victorian Mansion
in San Francisco. This building is being converted into a bed and
breakfast hotel but the renovations are being plagued by a series
of unexplained accidents.

The game can be played in one of two modes, either as a junior
detective or as a senior one. I chose to play as a senior
detective and I presume that the hint system that can be used
during the game gave me less assistance than it would have in the
junior detective mode. This hint system involves the use of a
telephone in one of the rooms where you are able to "phone a
friend" for help.

The whole game takes place in the mansion and consists of going
from room to room questioning the other occupants. One of these is
the "baddie" that you will have to confront at the conclusion of
the game. You do not know who this is, of course, at the start of
the adventure. Being an old Victorian building there has to be a
secret passage and part of your task is to discover this. An old
attic is hidden from view to start with and unearthing the way to
access this will lead you to many valuable clues.

There are a few mathematical type puzzles involving piano notes,
floor tiles, the seeking out of several Chinese symbols. I found
that I got completely stuck several times in the game having
missed out on meeting a character before they disappeared. Luckily
there is a way around this without resorting to too many saved
games. In Nancy's bedroom there is an alarm clock and this can be
set back in time. Having set the alarm, you will hear several
beeps and wake up at the time that you set. A very useful time
machine!

This game was quite good fun. It is not very long and not very
difficult. It was loaned to me and I therefore do not know the
supplier but I believe that it was acquired over the Internet from
America. The company is "Dreamcatcher" and their website is
www.dreamcatchergames.com.

Minimum specification is: -
Windows 95 or above, Pentium 166 processor, 16 Mb Ram,
135 Mb Hard Disk space, 16 Bit colour video card, 8x CD Rom
drive, 16 Bit Windows compatible stereo sound card, Mouse
and speakers.











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