I loved having my best friend and perfect human being George Fayne with me to solve this mystery, but there are just so many missteps in this one, for example:

- Only one suspect
- The coconut-throwing minigame is mandatory
- Blackface
- The pattern minigame is mandatory
- TIMED UNDERWATER SUDOKU
- A lot of driving
- Blackface in 2009
- A lot of sailing against the wind
- A huge book of writing with no markers that you have to constantly refer to for information
- A white man donning skin-darkening makeup and a dreadlocks wig to impersonate a black Jamaican man as a major plot point in 2009.

Okay, so. I finally reached the bad one. I tried not to go into it with the expectation that it would be bad, and I did truly enjoy it for a bit! Unfortunately, the charm wore off very quickly.

Setting: I wouldn't have chosen an island setting since we already had the Hawaii based Creature of Kapu Cave only a couple of games ago, but it's alright I'll allow it. The locations are all rather small with not much to explore or interact with, but at least they all look nice. These games usually lean very hard into whatever theme they've chosen for each game, but it wasn't very prevalent here, for better or worse. It made the game feel pretty plain and boring in comparison to a lot of the prior entries.

I might have enjoyed the island better if I didn't have to manually drive (or even worse, sail) to every single location. I hated it in Secret of the Old Clock and I hate it even more here. The island map is confusing and messy even though there's only like four locations you can drive to, it could have been a bit smaller to make navigation less tedious. The ocean map is even more confusing due to the lack of landmarks and the annoying wind direction gimmick. It felt like every time I set sail the wind was blowing the opposite direction of where i needed to go, so I had to awkwardly shimmy the boat so I could catch a bit of wind and inch closer towards my destination. It's awful. I Have No Patience And I Must Sail.
(oh btw the sailing instructions are in the boat, which you only see once you’ve sailed to a diving spot. you can’t read about how to sail the boat until after you’ve already sailed at least once. not that they’re very helpful instructions but cmon really)
Characters: characters? what characters lol. Okay, George is here and that's cool. Something about how her face is modeled looks a bit off to me but idk what it is exactly. There isn't a whole lot of interaction with her and the two segments where you need to play as her to solve a puzzle felt a bit forced, but it's neat to actually see her and Bess.
There's also CouCou, the descendant of the equally obnoxious LouLou from Blackmoor Manor. CouCou is loud, annoying, never shuts up, sports an absolutely grating voice, and sends you off on an unnecessary fetch quest puzzle in a game full of bad puzzles. But I still like CouCou. I love both of those awful parrots, unfortunately.
oh there's also another guy on the island, enoughs already been said about him by others so i'll just gloss over That for now

Puzzles: The game won me over with that cryptogram puzzle in the journal! Unfortunately, most of the content after that sullied any good will I had towards this entry. There's backtracking puzzles, random puzzles, and upsettingly difficult puzzles; the three horsemen of bad Nancy Drew puzzles. I mean, this game has a timed sudoku puzzle where every four minutes you need to swim to the boat, sail the boat back to resort (sailing sucks ass btw), refill the air tank, sail back into the ocean, swim around and then find the damn puzzle again. And then when I was almost done I reset the fucking thing by accident so I just cheated.

And that's not to mention the very slow random chance monkey board game. And the hourglass puzzle. And the key puzzle. And the rock climbing you gotta do over and over to reach certain areas. that's not really a puzzle but i'm still upset about it. Probably more, but it's been like three hours since I finished and I'm already forgetting what I did.

Story: The premise is fine. The setup is fine. Nancy and her gal pals win an island getaway and it ends up being a trap to trick Nancy into solving a treasure hunt. The kidnapping brings some interesting stakes to the table, but that's about it for the positives. There's literally only one actual suspect in the entire game. The possibility of it being the strangely absent resort owners or a mysterious group of idk...pirates? is floated for a bit, but it's not given much attention so there's not really any red herrings. Yeah, obviously the only dude on the island is the culprit. But the worst thing about it (besides the, yknow, blackface and whatnot. that's probably worse than my personal gripe) is that the end reveal spoiled the one prior game I haven't played yet

Stay Tuned for Danger gives me audio problems every time I try to run it, I tried a couple of fixes, none worked, I planned to get back to it eventually either with no audio or by trying some other fixes. oh but of course THAT'S the villain they bring back. The ONE DUDE i don't know. oh i am so bitter about this. this game is so bad it retroactively ruined another game for me wtf

Final Thoughts: yeah everyone's right. this one sucks. you'd think with the time and money they saved by only having two interactable characters they could have funneled that effort into making the locations or puzzles or the mystery or the story really good. but, uh, no. idk where it went but it sure as shit wasn't in this game. at least i had fun with the cryptogram puzzle in the beginning tho