Nancy Drew Computer Game

Review: German mystery propels new 'Nancy Drew'

In Her Interactive 's 24th Nancy Drew computer mystery game, The Captive Curse takes gaming sleuths to Germany to stay at and explore a Bavarian Castle. The owner of Castle Finster has hired Nancy to look into rumors of a monsterlike creature lurking in the surrounding woods. Legend has it that a monster periodically appears to steal a girl wearing a jeweled necklace.

You play the game as Nancy Drew and wander around the castle seeing it from Nancy's eyes. In this point-and-click adventure, you walk around looking for clues, talk to people to gain information (including choosing your own questions from a drop-down menu), find and collect dropped Euros, and phone others for help and support.

While sleuthing about the monster-sightings, you will also encounter a series of puzzles. Some revolve around finding things in the environment to complete gadgets or devices. Others involve using logic to solve more traditional puzzle such as rotating hexagonal tiles to align symbols. One challenging puzzle involves arranging colored glass pieces so that some overlap to create the right shades of color. There are also two board games that you will need to play with two of the characters.

A Captive Curse is another good mystery game from Her Interactive. This game creates a spooky vibe without terrifying you. You will get called into the castle's courtyard to put out a fire. You must find and navigate dark secret passageways and hidden rooms. You have to wander alone in the woods at night, and are frequently on alert for things happening. One of the fun things you can do is to plug into the Castle's security cameras.

The characters you meet are interesting to talk to and very different from each other. There is an old woman who is a master storyteller, a friendly young woman who runs the castle's household and gift shop, the mayor of the castle community who dislikes tourists and a young mischievous kid.

The game can be played on two levels of difficulty: Senior or Junior Detective. When playing on the easier Junior level, the game does a good job of managing the information you collect by creating tasks lists. It also gives you a second chance if you make a fatal mistake.

There are a few things that didn't work so well. You will have to wander around, mostly lost, through both the castle and the woods because everything looks so similar. Also, with so few characters to talk to and a limited number of environments to explore, the mystery feels smaller in scale than some of the other Her Interactive games. Plus one of the two board games requires you to "kill" cows as a play mechanic, something some kids might find disconcerting.

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