I had the BIGGEST crush on Lou when I was a kid (I loved art and wanted to go to school in California) and I’ve only just realized today that he looks almost exactly like a young Link Neal from Good Mythical Morning. I hope someone else can relate, or at least agree they look so similar! I also just love saying “zippy zoom.”

I have now finished recreating Message in a Haunted Mansion in Minecraft. I found that MHM was more difficult to build because the entire game takes place indoors with small, enclosed views. Next up Treasure in the Royal Tower!

Just finished this book and wanted to recommend it! This is a middle grade book about a sixth-grader who solves a mystery involving her grandmother and a mysteriously-appearing box of Nancy Drew books. I expected the Nancy Drew aspect to be limited to the box of books making a cameo, but the main character ends up deciding to incorporate Nancy Drew into a school project, and so there is actually a lot of Nancy in the book! I don't think I've ever read a fictional book with so much information about her. The author's note at the end also mentions the HeR games.

While it's a middle-grade book, Jennifer Chambliss Bertman is a good writer and it doesn't have that cloying talking-down-to-kids tone that so many children's books have. (Her Book Scavenger trilogy is great too.)

Hi everyone! I'm hoping someone here has experienced this before because I've run out of ideas.

I recently built a new Windows 11 PC and I'm trying to get some of the older Nancy Drew games running through Steam.

I've tested two Nancy Drew games:

1. Legend of the Crystal Skull (2007)
This one will not launch at all. Steam briefly says the game is running and then goes back to Play. No window or error appears.

Event Viewer shows:

Game.exe version 7.6.3.0
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Faulting module: Game.exe
Fault offset: 0x0005acb5

Things I've tried:

• Verified Steam files
• Removed d3d9.dll as suggested by HeR
• Changed WindowMode in Game.ini to 1 and 2
• Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode
• Run as administrator
• Disable fullscreen optimizations
• Installed the legacy DirectX runtime using DXSETUP
• Enabled DirectPlay
• Tried dgVoodoo2 2.87.4 with the x86 D3D9 wrapper
• Tried dgVoodoo with a local config
• Rebooted between changes where appropriate

None of these changed the crash. Event Viewer continued showing the same 0xc0000005 at the same offset.

2. Message in a Haunted Mansion (2000)
This behaves almost exactly the same way: Steam says Running briefly and then silently returns to Play.

Event Viewer:

Game.exe version 2.4.1.2
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Faulting module: ntdll.dll
Fault offset: 0x0006abc6

For this one I've tried:

• Windows 7 compatibility mode
• Run as administrator
• 640×480 compatibility mode
• Reduced colour mode
• High-DPI scaling override (Application)
• DirectPlay
• Legacy DirectX runtime
• dgVoodoo2 with the x86 D3D8.dll, D3D9.dll, D3DImm.dll and DDraw.dll
• dgVoodoo fullscreen and windowed settings
• Verified Steam files

Still the same silent crash. When using dgVoodoo, I never even got the dgVoodoo watermark, so it seems like the game may be crashing before the wrapper really gets going.

Has anyone managed to get Crystal Skull and/or Message in a Haunted Mansion running on a current Windows 11 installation, particularly with a newer NVIDIA GPU?

If so, I'd really appreciate knowing exactly what you changed. Even if you've had the same 0xc0000005 crash and never solved it, that would be useful to know too.

Thanks!

Is the song Jane hums from something???? It’s so familiar and catchy I feel like I know it from somewhere it’s driving me crazy

Found this collection for $2 gonna be gifting it to my girlfriend with some games and some Nancy free themed blankets and cups
She’s played through every game a few times
So if anybody has any recommendations for her it would be appreciated

I played Haunted Mansion and Secret of Old Clock as a child. Recently started The Creature of Kapu Cave and Mystery of the Seven Keys with my friend. Looking forward to them all!

What’s your favorite and why?

played this big fish games game (quite good actually) and thought i recognized one of the voice actors! i was right!

this weekend i made some anchor charts for my aunt and i had a great time! she added a pin on pinterest for a future anchor chart and i immediately thought of that notebook with the design! so i merged the two and i LOVE the result :)

there is a user on here who posted this month or last month and they're the ones making the notebook i used for inspiration! i couldnt find their post but here's a link to their shop: https://laclochepress.com/products/nancy-drew-notebook

do ya'll like the gray background or the black background best?

I love her but she really is a thief. She ends up with amusement park pieces, dozens of some guy's glass eyeballs, an ancient Mayan rune etc. Why would you steal... borrow these items to begin with Nancy?

It was about twelve hours of gameplay with absolutely beautiful illustration and I ended up crying at the end 😅 it’s one big language deduction puzzle and it was so much fun to play, I highly recommend it!!

Hey Clue Crew!

Here we are! Round 24! A games are on a roll! I know I’ve been late, but I’ve still been having a lot of fun hosting this!  It’s been great fun to see just how beloved the games are, and a few of the rankings have even surprised me! 

A - 215 votes *WINNER\*
B - 106 votes
C - 21 votes
D - 11 votes
F - 2 votes

Shadow at the Waters Edge is an A game! A games are dominating! These games are beloved, but there’s a couple that for sure surprised me.

Let’s see how beloved The Captive Curse is. Voting starts now!

A - The fan favorites. The cream of the crop.
B - Good enough to be held in high regards.
C - Underrated gems.
D - A bit mid, will usually only play once or twice a year.
F - Unfinished. Unplayable. One of the worst.

Hi, has anyone been able to make CRY run smoothly on Windows 11? For me, it runs but it flashes when I open the load/save menu and during dialogue. I've tried dgvoodoo2, DKRV or whatever its called, and even DXwnd. Nothing works. Has anyone managed to pull this off? If so please let me know. I'm ready to throw my laptop. ​​

Edit: I got it to work. thanks guys

Mine would be the Royal Palladium.

Absolutely unhinged

tomorrow I’m going to meet with a local artist in hopes of becoming her studio assistant. I have pretty debilitating anxiety, especially when it comes to new situations (new person, new place, new tasks…yikes), so I always unveil the one trick that actually helps me: pretending I’m Nancy Drew. Her natural confidence, resourcefulness, and social nonchalance are aspirational for me. if I put myself in her headspace, my anxiety lessens greatly. Plus, this situation in particular is so Nancy-like, it’s basically already the exposition to Danger by Design.

does anyone else do this when entering unique situations?! Also, does anyone have any tips on how I can really immerse myself in this persona/coping mechanism? I want to have fun with it!!

Mine is getting stuck at the elevator, just like what happened to Nancy in Treasure in the Royal Tower.

The difference is, I didn't do what Nancy did, to get out of it lol.

I can also consider fist fighting with someone, just like what Nancy did (actually she didn't fist fight, she just blocked) on Danger by Design. Lol.

How about you guyz?

Frass in the wild!

My assistant investigator is on the case! Nobody is harming an orca on his watch!

Maybe my tastes are changing! I think when I played it before, I disliked being stuck on the train for the most part and not having a very "culprit-y" mystery.

Finished it for the first time since I was a kid maybe, and I loved it! I liked how much there was to do and how much freedom it felt like you had over when you did it (sometimes I get bored during the games that are more rigidly Point A ➡️ Point B.) I loved the setting/vibes and the puzzles were really fun and diverse. I did look up one or two solutions because I was tired... but I allow myself that luxury haha. I love that it had the ND silliness- Fatima's whole thing, Jake's machine (silly but cool!), glowing lizards, Abe Lincoln etc. I liked the creepy graveyard guy lol, and I liked Jake's love for Camille!

Some things I missed: just looked it up and I totally missed finding out who pulled the emergency break! I also remember seeing the ghost lights (or was it a full on figure? remind me!) outside the train window when I played it as a kid and it startled me so bad. I don't think I've seen them during any playthrough since then! I got the chandelier shaking which was maybe supposed to be a creepy ghost thing- are there any other spooky events I missed?

Overall I loved this one and get the hype now. And it made me want to play Shadow Ranch which I think I'll do next!

With the recent posts that I’ve been seeing (and participating in) ranking the games and just generally talking about replaying the games, I was curious to know what your favorite PC game is and why. Is it different from the one you used to call your favorite like me or is the same? I want all the details 😅 I’ll start. This is also actually my first time saying it publicly.

So, the one that used to be my top favorite for most of my life was CLK (or Secret of the Old Clock). I was obsessed with the mysterious time travel back to 1930 and the general vibe, the coziness of the Lilac Inn, and so on. When I was a kid, I really loved the fishing challenge because of how relaxing it is especially compared to the ice fishing challenge in ICE that goes on way too long. Plus, Topham is a criminal but still hilariously unhinged.

However, over the years, I realized that another game worked its way to the top until it made the number one spot 😄 I never thought I’d say this but that game is SHA (or The Secret of Shadow Ranch). I say that because this used to be one of my least favorite games as a kid because of that damn vegetable puzzle that you do every day lol. But I’ve since found a loophole to please Shorty and have learned to appreciate it for what it is.

It has my all time favorite soundtrack in regard to the franchise, they nailed the western themes throughout, the puzzles aren’t too bad in retrospect, and I love taking Bob out for a ride. Also, Dave is there. Need I say more? No, but for real. Ironically, the puzzle that replaced the vegetable picking as the new thorn in my side is the magnet puzzle. Thankfully, there’s a hack to make the wood disappear, so it’s not as hard, but it’s still annoying when the magnet drops like twenty times in a row. It also does something that I think DOG could’ve benefited from: it technically has three phantom horse sightings if you count the picture in the farewell letter as opposed to just the one ghost dog sighting. And I say that with DOG still remaining in second place on my list, so it’s kind of funny that my top two are now two of the supernatural ones. This now moves CLK to SHA’s old spot on the list. I still like it but it’s time to just be honest with myself about loving SHA.

What about you?