by: Maddie Rowley
Will the real Carolyn Keene please stand up?! Because she (they?) wrote some amazing Nancy Drew mysteries over the years that sparked my love for the mystery genre and eventually lead to a slight obsession with all things true crime/ murder mystery.
Off the top of my head, some of my favorite Nancy Drew titles were:
The Hidden Staircase
The Mystery of the Tolling Bell
The Crooked Banister
The Secret of the Old Clock
The Secret of Shadow Ranch
The Mystery at Lilac Inn
Password to Larkspur Lane
I’m sure I’m forgetting a few but those seven titles came to mind first.
So naturally once our team at Hunt A Killer inked a partnership with Simon & Schuster to create an all-in-one Nancy Drew-branded mystery experience, we had to decide which book we should base the game off of. This was much easier said than done!
Should we create it around one of the above classic storylines? Should we build it based on one of the least favorite or more obscure storylines and put a new twist on it? How do you decide between over 174 volumes, 4 movies, 3 tv shows (including one currently running on the CW) and countless comic books and games?
We asked the lead writer on our Nancy Drew game, Elinor Haney, some questions about how they chose a storyline and more. Here’s what she had to say:
1). How did you land on the Mystery at Magnolia Gardens storyline? Did you base it off the Mystery at Magnolia Mansion book?
We wanted to create a game that felt very at home in the world of Nancy Drew and that would allow the player to feel as though they were really working with Nancy to solve a case as a team. To do that, we looked through all of the Nancy Drew books and games that had already been published so that we could come up with a setting and plotline that hadn't already been done (Nancy has solved a whole lot of cases over the years, after all), but that would feel at home alongside the existing series.
Over the course of our research, we decided that a botanical garden full of poisonous plants would be a great new setting for Nancy to explore; a place full of beauty, but with a constant element of danger. The rest of the story blossomed (hah) out of that premise.
The plot isn't directly related to the book Mystery at Magnolia Mansion; we wanted the game's title to be evocative of the original book series, so we picked a name that had a similar cadence to the original books. The use of Magnolia in both titles is a bit of a coincidence - we originally had a few different names for the botanical garden in mind, but it was decided that Magnolia Gardens sounded the best out of all of them.
2). What was your favorite part about creating a game around the iconic Nancy Drew brand?
It was an honor for the team to get to work with Moxie and Simon & Schuster and contribute to the Nancy Drew universe - and it was very cool for me personally because I've always loved the books and games! In terms of specific favorite parts, we were able to playtest the game with a bunch of really passionate, longtime Nancy Drew fans to make sure that what we made stayed true to the spirit of Nancy Drew. Getting their feedback was a really valuable part of the process, and hearing their approval was incredibly satisfying.
3). What's one fun fact you can tell us about the Nancy Drew game?
I'll say that one fun fact is that the game itself is full of fun facts! The team was really inspired by the way that a lot of the Nancy Drew computer games by HeR Interactive have the player learn real world information as part of helping Nancy solve cases (like learning about Mayan culture in Secret of the Scarlet Hand or learning the names of the different parts of a ship in Sea of Darkness), so we did a lot of research into different types of poisonous plants and included some of the most interesting stuff we found in the game.
We’re excited to announce that Nancy Drew: Mystery at Magnolia Gardens will be sold exclusively on Amazon starting October 15th!
Here’s a synopsis of the game:
When Nancy Drew begins to investigate a potential poisoning at the botanical garden known as Magnolia Gardens, Nancy herself comes down with the same mysterious illness as the victim. It soon becomes clear to an ailing Nancy that someone at Magnolia Gardens has been using the facility’s dangerous plants for nefarious purposes, the guilty party is still on the loose, and Nancy needs your help to solve the case before the culprit strikes again.
A poisoning at the botanical gardens?! Sounds pretty suspicious to me. But don’t worry, Nancy Drew (and you!) are on the case!