Nancy Drew: Treasure in the
Royal Tower
I usually play the Nancy Drew games with a certain attitude of levity and
acceptance. The series isn't really supposed to be heavy on the deep,
dark, drama nor too difficult for a 13 year old. Treasure in a Royal Tower
was not an exception.
The story reveals an interesting take on the life of Marie Antoinette and
a question concerning the validity of her reputed attitude toward the
people of impoverished France during her reign; "Let them eat cake." How
Marie's infamous prison tower gets transported from historical France to
modern day Wickford Castle Resort is almost as interesting as the story of
Dexter's life and the riddle of the missing tiara. A snowbound and ever
intrepid Nancy embarks on a journey that has logic, mystery and suspense.
However, (you knew that was coming, right?) the story is somewhat stunted
early on by what I thought was the too-early revelation of just who the
dastardly culprit was that was busily ransacking the library, conking
Nancy over the head, locking her outside in subzero weather, and making a
lot of noise in the middle of the night. The back story is richer and
deeper than Nancy's exploration, encounters and final victory in the name
of right and justice.
I played TRT without use of a walkthrough and found the progression of the
game to be fairly logical and straight forward. I used the alarm in
Nancy's room frequently to expedite matters.
There are some dead ends in the game if you don't choose the correct
conversation path and this can be frustrating with a minimum number of
save game slots. I lucked out on that score apparently.
I think the Chess Puzzle and the Gold Leaf Puzzle were too easily solved
by someone who has considerable adventure gaming experience, at least in
the Senior Detective mode.
The game's graphics, coloration, and animation are beautifully rendered as
is the interior of Wickford Castle. The castle never ceases to be a bit of
a challenge to navigate. The play interface is acceptable if not exactly
free-flowing.
I thought the game could have provided more chills, by way of production
design and a few more surprises. The castle isn't the least bit scary,
(even for a ten year old) let alone "chilling." Inevitably, though, I'd
give it about a 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Chalk up another great success for HerInteractive with this latest in the
series of Nancy Drew mysteries. They've got a good thing going here and
I'm looking forward to the next release!
System Specs:
Mouse driven point and click
Windows 95, 98, ME and XP
166MHz
16MB RAM
150MB available HD space
16 bit color graphics card
8X CD ROM drive
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GameBoomers
