Nancy Drew (video game)/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Ryokans are great to stay at... right? This screenshot isn't even the scariest part of the game, this is just the trailer.

Nancy Drew is a great mystery game for children and adults alike... Too bad there are some moments that makes the audience uneasy.

Going by each game:

#2 Stay Tuned for Danger

  • The ending of this game DEFINITELY needs a mention. The villain locks you in a TV studio, gives you a really long rant about how life is a soap opera, and then murders you. With his bare hands. Laughing. With red lights and random screaming in the background from his other victim.

#3 Message in a Haunted Mansion

  • The mirror in the hallway. You walk past it a few times, nothing happens. Then... floating ghost girl!
  • Don't forget the painting that whispers "I see you" when you walk past it and the screech when you go into your room the second time and the creepy voice on the telephone!
  • So much other things to count. We also have...
    • The rare occurrence in the dining room where the lights dim, the candles light on their own, and you hear very creepy whispering. Then everything goes back to normal.
    • The woman crying in the hallway.
    • The phoenix flicking its head in the parlor.
    • The noise coming from behind the windows in the parlor.
    • The random ghostly howl in the hallway.
    • The seance.
    • The shadow in the back of the hallway.
    • The note that says "LEAVE THE MANSION, NOW!!!". It's written in such a way that it appears to be somebody screaming at you up close. Yes, the game somehow made it possible to make it look like a note screams at you.
    • The random shadow walking past the stained glass door...right into the wall.
  • However, if you scour the game enough, you realize most of these are faked.

#06 Secret of the Scarlet Hand

  • The entire endgame sequence wherein you are trapped inside an airtight monolith with a corpse. And you only have a limited time to figure out how to get out, because if you don't, you'll suffocate (a fact Nancy helpfully reminds you of fairly often). Oh, and it's pitch black, so you have to use a tiny green glowstick to see. Have fun!

#07 Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake

  • Five minutes into the game, after you're confirmed to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere in an old house (sans locks) the house gets attacked by the eponymous dogs.

#10 Secret of Shadow Ranch

  • At the end, when Shorty, who turns out to be the culprit, is chasing you. You have to lead him down the wrong path so he'll fall into a hole. But if he catches you, you see him enter the room you're in and say, "Heeeeeeeerre's SHORTY!".
    • It's even worse when you play the game through a second time, since Shorty starts to seem a lot less friendly and a lot more like a Stepford Smiler Type C waiting for you to let your guard down.

#11 Curse Of Blackmoor Manor

  • The entire atmosphere of the game is just... freaky. The music, the (first) nightmare, the castle at night, the secret passageways...
  • It's scary half a minute in! You walk up to the front door and see a pair of glowing red eyes! "Nancy..."
  • Blinking. Monkey. The monkey above Jane's door sometimes rolls its eyes and blinks.

#13 Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon

  • Dolls. Rows and rows of dolls. One says 'Mama' in a creepy voice when you pick it up. One has literally two left feet. Another has a cracked face that even the husband of the doll collector thought was creepy.
  • The singing, coming from nowhere. Also the glowing yellow lights that fly alongside the train.

#19 The Haunting of Castle Malloy

  • The opening cinematic, when Nancy is driving, a glowing, shambled figure flies across the windshield. Right afterward, when you have to explore the castle's grounds, you hear a screech.
  • The BGM ranges from pretty Irish music to outright disturbing music.
  • The entire nursery was freaking creepy. The morbid little nursery rhymes on the chalkboard... Bleh...
    • Not to mention when the banshee pops up in front of the window!

#21 Warnings at Waverly Academy

  • In the climax of the game, you find out that the "Black Cat" is none other than Corine. She was after one of the founders' treasure. Her reaction to the exposure? She traps you in the room, and sets a giant pendulum guillotine to slowly descend to slice you.

#23 Shadow at the Water's Edge

  • The trailer has a nice little preview of things to come. The picture above shows the end of the trailer, a ghost girl who haunts the ryokan that is the main setting of the game.
  • The first freaky moment happens when Nancy goes to sleep the first night. She wakes up early in the morning, and sees a floating shadow of a girl going across her window. When Nancy opens the door, she sees nothing...
    • The second freaky moment involving "the ghost" is when Nancy is about to take a bath at the ryokan. She then walks to the mirror, and sees a girl facing down in the reflection. Scared, Nancy turns around and sees nothing, but turns around to see the ghost holding her arms up, mouth gaping open and wide eyes, crawl as fast as if she was teleporting, crash her hands into the mirror and shatter it.
    • Third freaky moment is when Nancy is heading down a hall, to see the nights and doors in the hallways flickering and slamming.
    • During the mandatory moment in the series when Nancy is trapped and has to escape for her life in this game, the ghost traps Nancy in one of the bedrooms, and she has to decipher the puzzle before getting a large wooden support slammed on her head.
    • You're staying alone in Yumi's apartment for the night. It's pink and full of adorable critters, should be okay, right? Sure, until you wake up to glowing green letters slowly spelling out a message in the window next to your bed. "I know your secret. I can't wait to see you again."
    • The fourth and last freaky moment is the end, when discovering the puzzle in the hidden bath where Kasumi died. After solving the puzzle, Nancy opens the safe, reads the letter, and finds a sword...only to turn around and see the ghost face to face, still wide-eyed and gaping-mouthed as the ghost pins Nancy in the water and attempts to drown her. After solving the puzzle though, it's discovered she was a robot.
  • So you're walking around the pond looking for clues and you see a shadow near the water's edge that you can click on. You look into the water and OHMYGODTHEREISAFACEINTHEWATERAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!. After it fades and you restart your heart, you look in again. There's nothing there.
    • It's in the pond under the tree on the right, if you've exited from the ryokan lobby. Mind you, it doesn't appear every time. Look for Kasumi's face
  • The soundtrack of the game is most likely the most unsettling of the series. There is only a handful of the BGM that are nice, the rest? Unsettling BGM of distorted traditional shamisen music, a BGM that almost sounds like metal grinding against metal and more.
  • The creators have admitted that their goal was to make the scariest Nancy Drew game so far.
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