After her assignment at Beech Hill is complete, Nancy receives a panicked letter from a friend begging for help! Sally MacDonald has recently purchased a cabin previously belonging to a notorious gangster of prohibition time and, since then, she’s been terrorised by a pack of dogs with glowing eyes. They throw themselves against the walls, scratching at the door, barking all through the night and Sally just can’t take it a moment longer. Now Nancy has to find out who or what is behind this, if there’s a flesh and bone person doing this or if these are the ghosts of the gangster’s dogs!
Something that I will forever regret forgetting to mention in my previous review is that, at the end of the last game, we got our very first preview for this very game. If I had watched it when I was younger, there’s a very good chance that i would have been so terrified, I would have never played it. But by the time I got my hands on this game, I was obsessed with all things Nancy and this game was just another one for me to sink my teeth into. Big. Mistake. Being young and dumb, I leapt right into it and almost immediately got the shock of my life! Nothing prepares you for how absolutely terrifying the first night you spend at the house is.
First, there’s the customary letter from Nancy to her boyfriend Ned. She talks about the house and some of it’s history, receiving Sally’s message, about her car getting trapped by a fallen tree and Sally’s strange absence! But almost soon as you’re finished with the intro, you are greeted with a frantic phone call from Sally, warning you about the dogs. You follow a strange call outside to see a gorgeous full moon shining over a lake and talk with Red Knott, a perpetually ornery birdwatcher you can only speak to at night. He warns you of the hauntings, explaining how Sally got scared off and how these things have terrified everyone who has lived in the house even before her.
The howling begins. Nancy runs back inside the house and the dogs appear! At this point, tiny me is promptly scared senseless! I don’t know if I unearthed some bravery from deep within my soul or what, but though my knees were knocking like crazy and my heart was pounding, I carried on. Thankfully, aside from that first terrifying haunting, you don’t see those four-legged terrors again. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that I was ready to pass out from fright! I had already had a few had turns with dogs before and though I liked them, I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of getting close to a dog that looked like it wanted me dead and gone!
As soon as dawn breaks, Nancy can explore Moon Lake and I have to say, this is one of the prettiest environments in these games. Day or night, this game is rife with atmosphere and if not for the obvious reason, I could see myself taking a good long vacation here. What’s more, there are tons to explore. There’s a whole forest that you will get to know very well as you search for insects as part of an errand, you hear bird calls every which way, which comes in very handy, and you get a splendid view of the lake from a bird’s eye view when you travel around. But the best parts are when you start to discover the mysteries of the house, going underground in search of a treasure the infamous gangster Mickey Malone hid away.
As for the rest of the characters, there’s only two which is noticeably less than the previous games. For one, you have the always upbeat Em of Em’s Emporium, the one stop shop for supplies, gossip and, unsurprisingly, tasks. On the other side, there’s Ranger Akers, a stickler for all things rule-related. Both of these characters are very fun to talk to and they can offer a surprising amount of insight into the history of the place.
As for the puzzles and tasks, you get a myriad of them, though the majority of them are more like chores or fetch quests. The first task, the one that gets you started, is from Red and has you hunting here, there and everywhere for birds. But, mild spoiler here, just as you are getting the last one, you not only discover a strange speaker on top of the house, some stranger knocks you out! When you wake up, it becomes a race against time to free yourself and get out of the burning shed you’ve been locked in!
Things only get stranger when you escape, if you escape. But that goes into spoilers so I’ll let some of the mystery remain.
The last thing I want to talk about is the soundtrack. It’s pretty simple and very relaxing, with a lot of wind and woodwind instruments playing a light and breezy tune most of the time. At night, things can get especially creepy but assuming you’re not a giant chicken like me, I suggest just sitting back to enjoy it.
Though I don’t recommend this as someone’s first game, because of the aforementioned scares, I insist that this is one that has to be played. The setting is delightful and the character’s are all unique in their own way, the puzzles are tricky in a way that is very satisfying to complete and there’s a lot of history to discover. Once you aren’t getting the ever loving sense scared out of you, there’s a very interesting game with a lot to discover and I can guarantee it’ll bring out the dog lover in everyone.
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