joe, let it go.

elizabeth, usa. a side blog for nancy drew art, gifs & edits. despite my url, i am actually a joe stan.   |   main blog

[hardyfrank]

Just a reminder that if you’d like to see more of my art, check out my art Tumblr @elizabeshi and my art Instagram at elizabesh!

[ndconceptarchive]

Sea of Darkness - Deducing The Culprit Slightly Earlier (Spoilers!)

From the YouTube channel RoamerTummy.

[hrjafael]

Day 6 of the Her Vault series

[hardyfrank]

Favorite one-time faceless phone contact?

[thenancydrewtimes]

Back with another, but instead of “What it ALMOST looked like,” I changed today’s post to “What it WOULD have looked like.” Let’s talk about Ship of Shadows, which oddly, we’ve never discussed here. 🧐

Abbreviated as SOS, this was planned to be HeR’s 3rd installment of the Dossier games. It was announced to the fandom and already in the works, when suddenly, fans were notified through a forum post that the game would be delayed, only for the current CEO (Stuart Molder) to announce the discontinuation of the series in a press release. According to the press release, Molder stated that fans did not believe the games were up to the standards of their other work and that they wanted to continue to invest in their games that spoke well with fans. Blogposts would later confirm that HeR would not continue pursuing this series, but @story_retold did bless us with concept art of the box game. And I went pursing online to find several sites that had “lost media” from the game. These are concept art images that never made it to our computers 😭😭

Many fans speculated the game was much further in production than led to believe by HeR, as evidenced by the art that leaked. The characters had names, art drawn, environments created, and even a few puzzles already coded and developed, but apparently, “only the bones of it.”

So now, we sit here with a 2009 Dossier game that is a dream and only wondering thoughts of how far the game actually was put together. Happy Friday everyone! 🔍

[hrjafael]

Ship of Shadows artwork released from Day 20 of the Her Vault

[thankyouforholding]

Someone in the comments on Everything Wrong With Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon suggested that maybe "Chef's Choice" is Joe's order. Which makes it even funnier.

Poor Joe just trying to throw his brother a bone with an easy order. Then we come along like "Here you go Joe, here's your peanut butter and sardine burger with no cheese. Enjoy!"

[naancypants]

"I'm all unpacked!", Nancy says, with her suitcase packed

[nancydrewpcpolls]

Favorite location in Warnings at Waverly Academy

Rec room area and snack shop

Mel's room

Nancy and Corine's room

Izzy and Leela's room

Rachel's room

The secret room behind Rachel's wall

The library

The basement

The foyer

The hallways

Outside

Voting ended onAug 28, 2025

[thebeastofblackmoor]

Rose and Abby: we need to find someone to do these renovations

Charlie:

[thebeastofblackmoor]

Minette: okay, enjoy the secretly bugged dress for the First Lady, bye Russian spies!

Nancy:

[thebeastofblackmoor]

Corine:

Mel: YOU JUST ENTERED MY ROOM THROUGH THE WALL! I want an explanation!

[thebeastofblackmoor]

NOT YOUR AVERAGE KEVIN JAMES MEME!!

[thebeastofblackmoor]

Nancy: yippee I finally made it into this creepy crypt!

Harper:

You.

[that-one-fandom-girl]

Nancy: Hey, these symbols match! There must be something in this lighthouse!

Dagny, who was supposed to have been kidnapped:

[i-shouldnt-steal]

Dexter: I don’t understand why the library alarm went off when there’s no one here

Nancy:

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

Nancy: Time to vacuum!

The prairie dogs:

[up2youasnancydrew]

Nancy Drew and her Blue’s Clues 🩵💀

[hrjafael]

Distant Dimensions on Instagram posted this video in celebration of 30 years of HerInteractive and Nancy Drew’s 95th Anniversary

The account page:

https://www.instagram.com/distantdimensions?igsh=MXhlOHRtdWVtMG1ldw==

[hardyfrank]

I'm so behind lol, but I finally finished playing KEY a few days ago. What's the general Clue Crew consensus on this game?

I thought it was mid (but definitely better than MID! lol). I'm kind of just ambivalent about it. A lot of the triggers and puzzles don't seem intuitive, and the plot was a little convoluted and silly at points. Though granted, I didn't pay as much attention as I usually would to all of the dialogue and readings since I was playing with a friend and chatted a lot with her. Did not really enjoy the 3 plot/culprit twists lol (was way too much) + how dragged out the ending was. Some of the puzzles were fun though, and I think a lot of the character models looked pretty good. I wish the characters were a little more interesting/engaging? Though it's kind of hard to do that when you have as many characters as this one had, which I do commend it for.

I did like Radek though haha.

I feel that the charm of a lot of the classic Nancy Drew games is the atmosphere. KEY does have atmosphere, but it's not as consistent or distinct as a lot of the other games. I actually feel like KEY has atmospheric whiplash sometimes because the more intense scenes seem to come out of nowhere (CUR is a great example of balancing both fright and comedy because both are almost always present while in KEY, a lot of the game is just a very neutral, kind of chill atmosphere, but then there will be suddenly very intense scenes that come out of nowhere). And on that note, I felt that the ending sequence was weirdly campy when the rest of the game was nothing like that at all, so I was just weirded out by the culprit confrontations more than anything lol.

I also wish the phone contacts were better! I miss just being able to call characters and chat and not being restricted only to triggered/required phone convos.

So yeah, to be honest, I didn't find the game actually super fun to play? Because of both how easy it was to get stuck + how complicated the plot was. But it's still definitely an improvement from MID.

[hotchkiss-and-tell]

Super ultra linear gameplay. Not a fan. The great thing about most of the older games is you can mix up your playing style. I didn't like that KEY would suggest what to do next but then make you have to do an action to trigger that objective.

Example: Nancy needs a laptop. Okay, I know where to get one. It won't let me into that shop location or start a convo with the vendor. Go back to the café and talk to a character and say "where can I get a laptop?" and they tell me directions. THEN it lets me into the location and start a convo with the vendor.

It didn't reward players for being intuitive in objectives but loved to make puzzles extra difficult! Tell me how a 12 year old is supposed to crack the gemologist's vault?! Or find their way out of the tunnels that only sometimes let you through certain gates and have an adversary chasing you through new environments before you've even learned them at a relaxed exploring opportunity and never let you return to familiarize yourself for the next time you play.

I agree about the phone contacts. We used to just be able to call friends whenever we were stuck - maybe only to discover convo options were tapped out - but we could still get story beats out of them like painting George's room, Ned letting Joe take apart his car, Bess trying to cook. All of that whimsy is stripped away in a rigid texting format in KEY. And we can't access it whenever we want; we're locked into when the game prompts us. If you want hints, now you have to use the little hint app. Do people honestly prefer that? I certainly don't.

And secret endings? Sure not every playthrough unlocks each conversation option or cutscene or clue, but to withhold resolution on a case if you don't get enough achievements or play the "right" way? I hate that!

The new style of ND games is improving but we know what we've lost after the beautiful achievements of Sea of Darkness. And these new games certainly don't seem worth the wait of how long they take to make and release as well as the price being charged for them.

And to make physical copies a limited release of preorders only and never offer them to customers whose orders were mistakenly cancelled or people out of the loop and missed their opportunity to preorder is a shitty deal. This fanbase grew up with physical copies; let us get a chance to have a physical box for our collections! To not release the physical copies on the same date as the digital downloads is also shitty. Not just a matter of days but MONTHS! For a detective game where spoilers definitely make a difference! What a way to make sure fans who want to avoid spoilers have to buy a digital copy, too, to feel included, or be excluded from the release hype as they await their disc in the mail. I feel like we didn't get a big influx of content even though there's a new game now because fans are trying to be spoiler free or we all played at different times throughout the past year and the hype train had left the station.

[hardyfrank]

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! You make such good points, and I totally agree with your review of the game.

SEA really was such a great game. I wasn't really a fan of games 26 to 31 (haven't played any of those in many years though so maybe my mind would change on a replay). So when I played SEA for the first time, I was so happy because I think it's a great game (I replayed it not too long ago, and it still holds up), and I was happy thinking that finally the games were starting to get good again (in my opinion). But alas... 😅

[hrjafael]

Here’s the full Frosty video where he whips it like it’s nothing

[hrjafael]

Dance party on the train

[mrs-xenia-and-dagny]

Mel Corbalis has MAJOR performance anxiety issues. Every time Nancy walks in to her room she stops playing whatever it is she was playing to fiddle with the tuning. Nancy the Observant somehow manages to stand and stare at her while she pretends (and FAILS) to tune her (already in tune) instrument bc she’s so stressed from being watched. Poor girl plays an open C-string (bottom string on the cello) and then fiddles with the A-string (highest string) tuning peg. Girl is making her A-string more and more out of tune bc she’s forgotten how tuning works. Next time she picks up the Bach she’s gonna be playing with an A-string that’s sharper than a double edged sword. Give her a break Nancy she’s panicking

[hardyfrank]

I'm so behind lol, but I finally finished playing KEY a few days ago. What's the general Clue Crew consensus on this game?

I thought it was mid (but definitely better than MID! lol). I'm kind of just ambivalent about it. A lot of the triggers and puzzles don't seem intuitive, and the plot was a little convoluted and silly at points. Though granted, I didn't pay as much attention as I usually would to all of the dialogue and readings since I was playing with a friend and chatted a lot with her. Did not really enjoy the 3 plot/culprit twists lol (was way too much) + how dragged out the ending was. Some of the puzzles were fun though, and I think a lot of the character models looked pretty good. I wish the characters were a little more interesting/engaging? Though it's kind of hard to do that when you have as many characters as this one had, which I do commend it for.

I did like Radek though haha.

I feel that the charm of a lot of the classic Nancy Drew games is the atmosphere. KEY does have atmosphere, but it's not as consistent or distinct as a lot of the other games. I actually feel like KEY has atmospheric whiplash sometimes because the more intense scenes seem to come out of nowhere (CUR is a great example of balancing both fright and comedy because both are almost always present while in KEY, a lot of the game is just a very neutral, kind of chill atmosphere, but then there will be suddenly very intense scenes that come out of nowhere). And on that note, I felt that the ending sequence was weirdly campy when the rest of the game was nothing like that at all, so I was just weirded out by the culprit confrontations more than anything lol.

I also wish the phone contacts were better! I miss just being able to call characters and chat and not being restricted only to triggered/required phone convos.

So yeah, to be honest, I didn't find the game actually super fun to play? Because of both how easy it was to get stuck + how complicated the plot was. But it's still definitely an improvement from MID.