Well this is just about exactly what you like to see, huh?

Perhaps fittingly for a tenth entry, which feels like something of a milestone, Secret of Shadow Ranch is without a doubt the most perfect game in the Nancy Drew Cyber Mystery series to this point. Which is not to say it’s a perfect game in general because it sure isn’t, just that it’s the most representative of everything that makes these Nancy Drew games recognizably themselves, for good and for ill (mostly good though!).

I will be identifying the bad guy in this rundown, if you care!

Nancy’s two best friends, cousins Bess and George, are taking a trip to visit their aunt and uncle at the titulat ranch they own in Arizona to have a week’s worth of horse girl adventures in the desolate southwestern desert I guess, but unfortunately for the two of them they’ve also invited Nancy Drew on the expedition. At this point in the series we the audience all know that Nancy is cursed specifically to not be allowed to take vacations, so naturally Bess n George’s flights get held up for the entire length of the game in Nebraska AND their uncle gets bitten by a rattlesnake (in a funny twist this does turn out to be a complete coincidence and not a part of the villain’s scheme) and is hospitalized, accompanied by his wife, in the distant city for several days, which leaves Nancy alone at the ranch with no one around for miles but one store owner and the three ranch employees whom I can only describe as a group of nasty little freaks.

There’s DAVE who seems like the most normal guy but is so fucking horny it’s obscene, you gotta beat this dude away with a stick until Nancy tells him she has a boyfriend (dubious, hasn’t even mentioned Ned this game). There’s TEX, who should not be allowed to be named that if he lives in Arizona and who is in charge of all the horse stuff at the ranch. He is very funny because he’s supposed to be like the gruff cranky asshole character with a hidden dad-ish heart of gold who only talks in a hoarse, Eastwood-esque snarl, but he’s also the conduit through which almost all of the game’s SUBSTANTIAL edutainment content is channeled so he’s doing this terse tough guy act but he’s ALSO like “okay before you can take this horse out riding around you have to answer my ten randomized horse trivia questions that are mostly not practical riding information and also would you like to learn how to lasso.” Love this guy he rules. Then there’s SHORTY, the chef, who definitely has the most overt nasty little guy energy but whom I also hate with every fiber in my being for giving me like 10,000 game overs. We will return to this later.

At first Nancy thinks it’s fishy that Mr Uncle was attacked in his bedroom by a rattlesnake and starts poking around about that, but quickly the game’s historical plot, about the star-crossed love between a cowboy robber and the county sheriff’s daughter and the scavenger hunt he left her for the stock on his hidden treasure before he died, takes center stage. OH and also every night a spectral horse runs by the ranch and destroys something essential to life in the desert; a water pump, power lines, etc. That’s a big deal. Clearly something strange is going on, and Nancy, despite insisting that she’s an amateur (presumably because the number of crimes she’s thwarted while on vacation outnumber the crimes she’s actually been hired to solve like four to one, so, fair I guess) is the only person who immediately realizes this is a Scooby Doo scheme to scare everyone off the land and that this needs to be investigated.

Here’s where we come back to fuckin Shorty and how if I ever see this dude on the street it’s on sight, motherfucker. Without the two owners at the ranch and with an ever-increasing number of important facilities being incapacitated, Mrs Aunt and Mr Uncle (I forgot their names I’m sorry I usually take better notes) ask Nancy to help out with chores that might need doing around the ranch. And you do! It’s another Nancy Drew Does Chores game! Surprise! I said every defining aspect of the series was here and I meant it. They’re really bad in this one too, extremely tedious, easy to fail, they trigger game overs, AND almost all of them have to be REPEATED during all three full days that you play in-game. Shorty is the most annoying chore-giver and the one most likely to give you extra work (which is weird considering he turns out to be the bad guy who is relying on Nancy to solve the treasure hunt so presumably he would not want to waste her time but he’s deep undercover I guess). At the end of the game I thought Nancy was gonna leave him to die of dehydration or heat stroke in the desert but unfortunately she’s not cool enough to do this and I guess also he didn’t really commit any crimes severe enough to warrant such a harsh punishment except try to kill her right at the end of the game, but Nancy is too square to go eye for an eye on that shit.

Anyway these chores aren’t a death knell to the game like they have been to past Chore Games because this isn’t really a Chore Game, it’s just a game that Has Chores? Part of this is just scope; Secret of Shadow Ranch is BIGGER than any previous game by a wide margin. I’ve never really gone over two and a half hours playing one of these, but here my time was bumping up against 4, and it feels like that’s precisely because this is the Nancy Drew that really has it all. Every kind of puzzle you see in these games is here. Lots of fun characters to hang out with and chat with, even if none of them are particularly interesting, well-written, or performed. The hunt for the treasure is sprawling and every stage of it is fun and interesting to work through. Just after I was complaining about it a game or two ago, I think this one finally hit the perfect sweet spot of spotlighting the historical story with the modern day plot of the game, in terms of both the mystery and the thematic parallels (the former more gracefully than the latter but it’s cute anyway). It would be cooler if that happened in one of the Nancy Drew games that was actually About Something, but these games don’t need to be issues games to be likeable.

Being an entertaining and pleasant mystery puzzler is enough, and Secret of Shadow Ranch is that to a T. Far from perfect but honestly after the last one, just doing everything I want the minimum amount I consider acceptable with the most friction I’ll tolerate feels like ecstasy. I love it when I like these.

PREVIOUSLY: DANGER ON DECEPTION ISLAND
NEXT TIME: CURSE OF BLACKMOOR MANOR

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES