objectively another game that makes no sense at all
BUT i love learning about nancy's mom.
moira was in love with her for SUREEEE
most of the stars are bc of zoe. my spy wife.

ok im on a replay and took this game down a star bc i realized i gave it way too many just for zoe. the writing in this game makes NO sense whatsoever. the npcs are not introduced well and it makes no sense why nancy talks to any of them but moira tbh

Unlike prior entries, I went into Silent Spy with very little previous knowledge or bias. I knew it was about Nancy’s mom who just happened to be a secret international spy, but that’s really about it. But that alone was enough to make me a bit hesitant. I like that these games have relatively short, contained stories, I’m not here for extensive Nancy Lore. Alibi in Ashes was like, 3 games ago, i don’t want another nancy story guys

Setting: I always love when we get to leave the country, it usually results in much more interesting locations and Nancy is just so clueless in foreign countries it’s great. i wasn’t exactly expecting Scotland and now having finished the game, i’m not exactly sure why they chose Scotland. Maybe I’m missing a reference or perhaps a book plot but it just feels kinda random. This could have taken place in Australia and you’d only need to change a couple cultural references and like three puzzle solutions (btw herinteractive if you’re reading this I’d love a Nancy Drew goes to Australia game, idk just feels like a lot of untapped potential there)

Nancy Drew games tend to lean really hard into their locations but it felt dialed back here. A lot of it was vaguely Scottish, with a couple nods to the culture thrown in like the bagpipes puzzle and the cookie making. I’m really not sure what was up with those cookies tho, am I uncultured? Are those really what Scottish cookies are?? I personally like it when they saturate the game with whatever relevant culture Nancy is visiting, but maybe this approach is a bit more tasteful, especially if you are from said relevant culture.

The locations themselves were fine. Not the most interesting to explore and each section felt very condensed, but at least that made navigation pretty straightforward. Visually and graphically speaking, everything looked nice at least.

The lake area was underwhelming, I expected to at least see some nature beyond just the still background image. The restaurant was needed for exactly one optional quest and beyond that went completely unused. This leaves you with the hotel, which has 3 rooms, Moira’s small house, the lake, which has only the cabin and the gym, and then the train station, which is largely just used as a hub area. So really I guess most of the map was underwhelming.

Characters: While there’s the usual 4 suspects you can chat with, the characters getting the most attention this time are Nancy herself and her dead mom. And also Carson, Nancy’s dad. He gets a lot more character development here than any other game and it’s done quite well for the most part. He does change his mind about Nancy going to Scotland very abruptly in one scene, but besides that I liked how he was handled. There’s some nice phone conversations with him.

Nancy’s mom, Kate, is fleshed out pretty well for a character who’s been dead for like 15 years at the start of the game. The choice to make her a spy was…a choice. You gotta have some suspension of disbelief with Nancy Drew plots, but this one’s rough even outside of the whole mom spy thing. But I liked how she was written, she’s clearly not an entirely good person and you can easily argue she’s a bad mother, but hey I like when mother characters get to be characters outside of just being a mom. I don’t like the direction with her being an international spy and I don’t exactly care for Nancy lore in general, but despite that I really enjoyed her inclusion in the story.

And the other characters? Like, the actual suspects? eh. I liked Moira’s character and how her history with Kate was revealed. And it’s fun to talk with someone who knew Nancy as a kid. But Moira isn’t actually in the game that much, after things get going in the first like 30 minutes, she’s gone for a good chunk of the game. I wish she was more involved, but I liked what we did see from her.

Dude who hangs out in the train station? He’s okay, he’s there. Well, sometimes he’s there, he’s another one who goes missing pretty frequently throughout the game. The other spy lady is annoying at worst and forgettable at best. Oh and the computer spy guy is also there.

Puzzles: The puzzles weren’t especially memorable in this game. Even going through my notes I can’t remember any that stood out. The tartan puzzle was interesting, I like these weird layering puzzles that pop up occasionally, even if this one was timed and I hate timed puzzles with a passion. The puzzle on the bench was a good mix of frustrating and satisfying to complete.

I completely skipped the giant cylinder logic puzzle because I just can’t do logic puzzles. If it was on a smaller scale I’d probably brute force my brain into solving it, but I know my limits. And apparently a puzzle in a children’s game is part of my limits. I definitely also skipped the USB puzzle too, from what I remember it was a timed sudoku-like and that’s another type of puzzle I will never enjoy.

I’ve seen more than one complaint about the bagpipe puzzle and I was sure I was going to hate it, because yeah music puzzles are another one of my weaknesses. idk what’s different about bagpipes but I solved this one first try. That archery minigame in the same location was also surprisingly fun. Speaking of minigames, cookie making may be the best Nancy Drew Cooking Minigame so far.

Also there was straight up an unfinished puzzle in the game. You’re given a clue on how to solve the Jabberwocky poem and when you go to examine it, the game jumps straight into a standard cryptogram. The whole bit about the colors is completely ignored and never referenced again, despite it being given as a very obvious clue. It just feels very strange, but I do enjoy a good cryptogram.

Story: Like most Nancy Drew Games, there are two storylines going on. This time we have the Dead Mom Story and the…Bioterrorism Story?? The storyline that follows Kate’s hidden past as a spy and what her final trip to Scotland entailed was easily the much more interesting and well written one. Nancy’s personal involvement here was more engaging for me than it was in Alibi in Ashes and I enjoyed the various flashbacks involving Nancy and Kate, even if they felt a little out of place for these games.

Unraveling Kate’s involvement with the spy agency, learning how she stopped the terrorist attack 15 years ago, her friendship with Moira and why she left Nancy and her Dad for the last time, all of that is the real meat of this story. Enough is explained through dialogue and notes, but a lot is also left unresolved and that feels fitting. Nancy doesn’t actually learn anything about how or why her mother died, but that makes sense. The letters at the end, the one Kate wrote before she died and the one Nancy writes at the end, those felt like the perfect conclusion to this storyline. both of those letters were lovely and unexpectedly heartwarming for a Nancy Drew game, excellent work writers (maybe just writer? I’m not sure exactly how barebones the staff is at this point)

However. There’s also the other half of the story. Where Nancy gets involved with a little terrorism and helps save Glasgow by becoming a spy. This side of the game is not quite on the same level as the Dead Mom stuff. It was already fairly ridiculous that Nancy gets recruited as a spy in Phantom of Venice, but it just feels so much more baffling here. This Scottish terrorist group that’s been inactive for 15 or so years is just suddenly back and then there’s the government spy agency that kinda knows what’s happening but they don’t actually do anything it’s all up to the 18 year old (she can’t still be 18 right??) American detective to actually stop them.

All the big spy stuff going on is completely ridiculous. I don’t really care for spy stories that much, so it wasn’t off to a great start already. But then you get a pair of spy glasses and you fucking zipline from your hotel room across the courtyard into another hotel room by shooting a crossbow instead of picking the lock like a normal human. And the computer hacking and wiretapping and the high tech spy computer station that emerges from the cabin out of no where and all the other spy gadgets and it’s just so very out of place. I usually love when Nancy Drew games get weird and ridiculous, but it just doesn’t work here. Especially when juxtaposed with the more serious and somber Dead Mom story and all the, y’know, terrorism stuff.

Anyway, the big terrorism the terrorists are gonna do is…unleash a virus that’s meant to be non-lethal but will still incapacitate a large portion of the population so that the bad guys can take control of the local government amidst all the panic. yeah. i guess it hits a bit different after 2020 huh. So the interesting thing is that Nancy is actually helping out the terrorist group by solving a bunch of puzzles that were hiding away the formula for this disease. There’s even like…side quests you can do for the clearly evil terrorists that like…hack your phone to give you missions. You can ignore them, but you still end up giving them way too much information either way.

Or maybe not? Maybe they already had a lot of this info? The plot gets very convoluted when you aren’t focused on Kate lore. The villain isn’t given any motivation at all beyond ‘i did it because i could’ and then suddenly everyone else comes together to help you stop the bombs. The disease bombs that were planted around the city i guess.

Overall? A perfectly fine Nancy Drew game. The story could have been something special if they just cut all the current day plot stuff. Maybe replace it with something a bit more inconsequential? I love a story with stakes, but my god this is so much. Nancy Drew does not need to thwart a bio-terrorism attack, she needs to solve museum thefts and ghost horses and idk, murder mysteries.