Publisher: Her Interactive
Developer: Her Interactive
System requirements: 1 GHz or greater Pentium or equivalent class CPU; 256 MB of RAM; 1 GB or more of hard drive space; 32 MB DirectX 9.0 compatible video card; 16 bit DirectX compatible sound card; 24X CD-ROM drive
Genre: Adventure
Release date: August 24, 2010
Review by: Lieren Teeling

Secrets Can Kill is Her Interactive’s latest point and click adventure starring iconic girl detective Nancy Drew. A remastered version of the first Nancy Drew game, the title celebrates the 80th anniversary of Nancy’s book debut in 1930.

Secrets places players again in the role of Nancy Drew, when a simple visit to her Aunt Eloise turns into another case that the local police need help solving. Nancy must go undercover at the local highschool to investigate the murder of one of its students. Posing as a transfer student, Nancy must decipher and follow the, convoluted series of clues left behind by the victim and keep from becoming one herself.

As a point and click adventure, Secrets is controlled mainly by mouse, and interacting with objects or talking to people is accomplished by clicking on them. A bar across the bottom of the screen holds shortcuts to Nancy’s auto-updated journal, backpack, to do list, cell phone and the save, load, quit and options buttons. The cell phone features a customizable interface and offers both a phone function and a camera.

Secrets Can Kill has been beautifully remastered from the original game’s 2D sprites and backgrounds to 3D characters and completely redone environments. The characters not only look great, they’re well voiced and the dialogue is all well written. With puzzles featuring heavily into the game’s story, they’re found everywhere and require some serious thinking as well as meticulous searching. Fortunately, Nancy’s journal auto updates with her observations and the camera is handy for snapping a picture of a clue to refer to later.

While the game is rated for ages 10+, I doubt that anyone that young would be able to handle the sheer amount of critical thinking needed to solve the large number of puzzles. While there are simpler clues like a note written backwards, there are others that are much harder to read or decipher when written in code, scrambled or oddly spaced. I found I had to use a notebook to write down and unscramble some, as well as reorder clues from Nancy’s journal to make some sense out of them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely a bit of an issue for younger children trying to play it.

All in all, Secrets Can Kill is a very good game with an interesting storyline that requires a lot of thinking. Still, it’s only likely to be picked up by those who are already fans of Nancy Drew, and that’s a shame. A lot of folks will be missing out on an enjoyable adventure game.

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