Her, Interactive

<div id="passages"> <b>#1 - Secrets Can Kill</b> <img src="Nancy/nancyidentify.jpg" class="mainimage"> You are Nancy Drew. You think you are a [[girl detective]]. </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/millenialwomen.jpg" class="mainimage"> Really, you are the player character in a point-and-click PC game beloved by thousands of millennial women. [[Continue Investigation->Game 1p1]]</div>

theme: https://od.lk/s/N18yNjA3NDE2Mzhf/themesong.mp3

<div id="passages"> <b>#1 - Secrets Can Kill</b> <img src="Nancy/secretscankill_2.jpg" class="mainimage"> In this first game of the series you are called by your aunt to go undercover at a high school to investigate the murder of Jake Rogers, a boy that everyone admits kind of sucked. [[Continue Investigation->Game 1p2]]</div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/smithwesson.jpg" class="mainimage"> In the basement of the school the murderer tries to pistol whip you, but you wrestle the gun out of his grip. The gun is a [[Smith and Wesson Centennial snub nose revolver->gun]]. <i>Hands up or I shoot,</i> you say. <i>Okay geez I get it,</i> the guy says. [[Continue Investigation->Game 1p3]]</div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/paseo.png" class="mainimage"> Afterwards there is a ceremony in the school gym held in your honor. <i>Gee, thanks Nancy!</i> everyone exclaims. They hang a medal around your neck. When you get back to her hotel room, you put it in the top compartment of your anachronistic suitcase, among all the other medals. [[Continue to the next game->Game2p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#2 - Stay Tuned for Danger</b> <img src="Nancy/staytuned.png" class="mainimage"> Congratulations--you solved another mystery! Again you must contend with the fanfare, the celebration at the town hall, the exultations of your girl genius. [[The cops]] watch on bitterly from the back of the room. A flashbulb goes off, washing the moment in white light. You are tired. You’d like to go back to [[River Heights]] for a while. Go to school, for once. Are you still in high school? Or have you graduated? You can’t quite remember. You gnaw at your cuticles. You studiously tamp down your existential dread. You blink and the afterimage of the flashbulb eclipses your vision. Then the phone rings, and there is somewhere new to go. [[Continue to the next game->Game3p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/cop.jpg" class="mainimage"> One is crying, overcome by the revelation of his impotence. [[Continue Investigation->Game2p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/riverheights.png" class="mainimage"> River Heights is the town you're from. It's in the Midwest, you think? You'd like to go to the soda shop with George and Bess, maybe catch a drive-in movie with your steady boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. Let him put his hand under your shirt during the boring scenes. You'd like to ride shotgun around Middle America, causing a wholesome ruckus. [[Continue Investigation->Game2p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#3 - Message In a Haunted Mansion</b> <img src="Nancy/messageinmansion.png" class="mainimage"> After you discover the treasure hidden in the floor of a Victorian mansion, you are promptly whacked over the head into unconsciousness. You come to and see the slightly blurry sight of the antiques dealer, cackling as he shovels gold into his briefcase. [[Continue Investigation->Game3p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/chandelier.png" class="mainimage"> You run for the stairs. The chandelier, in a flagrant violation of building codes, is attached to the ceiling by a pulley rope that is wound around a hook on the wall. You unwind the rope from the hook; the chandelier goes crashing down. The antiques dealer groans underneath the brass and broken crystal. Once again everyone is very thankful—but [[should they be?]] You pace the length of your hotel room for a long time. When the phone rings with the promise of a new assignment, you are relieved. [[Continue to the next game->Game4p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#4 - Treasure in the Royal Tower</b> <img src="Nancy/shaft1.png" class="mainimage"> During this mystery, you spend your evenings crawling around the elevator shaft of a castle-shaped hotel. [[Climb->Game4p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/shaft3.png" class="mainimage"> This is incredibly ill-advised. [[Climb->Game4p3]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/shaft4.png" class="mainimage"> ... [[Climb->Game4p4]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/shaftdeath.png" class="mainimage"> One night you reach across the shaft for a rung of the maintenance ladder, slip, and fall to you death. Spreadeagled, you hit the stone floor of the elevator shaft at a force of 70 mph. Your ribs break up into your organs; your girlboss blazer-skirt set is spattered with blood; you die instantly. [[Continue Investigation->Game4p5]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/alarm.jpeg" class="mainimage"> You die, then wake up in your hotel room. The alarm clock on your nightstand reads 6:00 AM. Cautiously, you move your neck, your limbs, and find them working. You check your flannel nightgown for bloodstains—spotless. You bring your hand up to your chest, wherein a heart companionably thumps. You are alive. You can’t stop shaking. You try to call your boyfriend on the phone. [[Call Ned->Game4p6]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/phone.jpg" class="mainimage"> <i>Hi, you’ve reached Ned at Omega Chi Epsilon. I’m not here to take your call right now, so please try again later. Nancy, if this is you—I’ll be back in a flash!</i> [[Call Ned Again->Game4p6]] [[Continue Investigation->Game4p7]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/shaftdream.png" class="mainimage"> You ignore the mystery, waiting by the phone all day and all night, but he never calls back. That night you dream you are once again falling through the elevator shaft, endlessly, weightless, the floors of the castle rushing by, each one outfitted with a metal door to an elevator that you can almost but not quite reach the handle of. [[Continue to the next game->Game6p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#6 - Secret of the Scarlet Hand</b> <img src="Nancy/scarlethand.jpg" class="mainimage"> After solving the mystery, you commune with a shrunken head in a forgotten corner of the Beech Hill Museum. Together you attempt to plan your future. <i>I could go to college,</i> you say to the shrunken head. <i>I could major in history, then get my Masters in Library Science, and then I could move back to D.C. and work here full time. And maybe Ned and I will get engaged or get a dog or something. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?</i> A light breeze from the air conditioning causes the shrunken head to twirl impassively on its little string. It looks to you as if it’s shaking its head no. Then the phone rings, and there is somewhere new to go. [[Continue to the next game->Game7p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#7 - Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake</b> <img src="Nancy/ForestMap.jpg" class="mainimage"> You get lost in the woods. You can’t stop going in circles. Every time you make a turn, you hear the hollow clicking noise of a computer mouse. You think maybe something is wrong with the vertebrae of your neck. You rotate it slowly—once, twice—but you can’t recreate the sound. You sit down on a rotting log and look up at the sun through the leaves of the suspiciously identical trees. A lot of time passes, but the sun remains stationary at its point in the sky, like an overhead light fixture. More time passes. Nothing changes. The nature sounds repeat on a two minute loop. [[Continue to the next game->Game8p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/eforeveryone.png" class="mainimage"> You look badass holding it, in shameless opposition of the E for Everyone ESRB rating. [[Continue Investigation->Game 1p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#8 - The Haunted Carousel</b> <img src="Nancy/phone.jpg" class="mainimage"> You miss your boyfriend. [[Call Ned]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#9 - Danger on Deception Island</b> <img src="Nancy/dialogue.jpg" class="mainimage"> You realize that during your investigations you exist within a conversational framework in which you only have two options—to ask questions about the mystery or [[say goodbye.]] When you try to say anything even sort of deviant, your throat constricts, and you feel like you're choking on the words. [[Continue Investigation->Game9p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/callned.jpg" class="mainimage"> <i>Hi, you’ve reached Ned at Omega Chi Epsilon. I’m not here to take your call right now, so please try again later. Nancy, if this is you—I’ll be back in a flash!</i> [[Leave a voicemail->voicemail]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/deceptionisland.jpg" class="mainimage"> You slip, fall, and give yourself a concussion on the rocky shoreline of Deception Island. You open your mouth to speak, [[<i>Holy fucking shit</i>->geewill]] [[<i>Jesus Christ fuck me</i>->geewill]] [[<i>fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck</i>->geewill]] </div>

<div id="passages"> It comes out as <i>Gee willikers!</i> [[Continue to the next game->Game10p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#10 - Secret of Shadow Ranch</b> <img src="Nancy/bob.jpg" class="mainimage"> This is deeply unsettling to your conception of free will, so you decide to remedy this by teaching yourself how to curse. You practice this while riding around the ranch on a horse named Bob. <i>Gorshdangit,</i> you say to Bob. <i>Godsdarmit.</i> <i>Gorshdammit?</i> <i>Goddang.</i> <i>Goddammit.</i> <i>Goddammit.</i> <i>Goddammit.</i> When you've mastered that, you start up on <i>Shit</i> and <i>Motherfucker</i> and <i>Fucking Cunt.</i> [[Continue to the next game->Game11p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/mregan.jpeg" class="mainimage"> <i>They call it the past for a REASON,</i> Mr. Egan says, tears in his eyes as he recalls his deceased adoptive father that disowned him. <i>Okay, see ya Mr. Egan!</i> you say, waving cheerily goodbye. <i>What the heck is wrong with me?</i> you think to yourself as you trudge back through the lobby, clutching your head. [[Continue Investigation->Game9p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#11 - Curse of Blackmoor Manor</b> <img src="Nancy/blackmoor.jpg" class="mainimage"> You're waking up. You become aware of your lack of [[corporeality.]] You aren't sure how this escaped your notice until now, but it’s your first time out of the country and you can’t even enjoy it. Bitterly, you use your invisible hands to pick apart the breading of your fish and chips. Once, back in Moon Lake, you saw your hands in a [[cutscene.]] As you walk the halls of the manor you keep twisting backward, trying to surprise yourself into being and catch another glimpse of your hands, but no dice. [[Continue Investigation->Game11p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/ghost.jpg" class="mainimage"> Your body is nonexistent; you levitate like a poltergeist through various hotbeds of mystery. [[Continue Investigation->Game11p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/hands.png" class="mainimage"> They were tied behind your back with a rope. Your skin was pink and smooth, the fingernails bitten down: little rich girl hands. [[Continue Investigation->Game11p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/mirror.jpg" class="mainimage"> Instead you try to locate your body through feeling. You embody the sweat on your lip, the pulse in your groin. Every sensation confirms that you are tangible, that you are alive, but as it is you are invisible to yourself. You look in the mirror of your bedroom in the manor and see the room surrounding you, untouched by even your shadow. You feel as if you could disappear from existence at any moment. But—your hands, you have seen your hands! <i>I am real</i>, you whisper to the reflection of the empty room. <i>Goddammit.</i> [[Continue to the next game->Game13p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#13 - Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon</b> <img src="Nancy/bluemoon.jpg" class="mainimage"> You decide to take a break from overthinking everything and instead try to enjoy the experience of being a seemingly deathless, ageless girl-detective-being. <i>Fuck it</i>, you think. <i>I am good at my job. </i> [[Continue Investigation->Game13p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/hardyboys.jpg" class="mainimage"> You, along with the other greatest teen sleuths of her generation, the Hardy Boys, are invited on a haunted train vacation in search of clues to a treasure buried in a hidden mineshaft. Despite dying via minecart derailment several times, you manage to find the [[treasure.]] Late at night, in the light of a post-mystery afterglow, you find yourself alone with the Hardy Boys. You admire their faces, the low-poly quality that reads as a rough hewn, masculine sort of beauty. You consider, for a moment, what it would be like to touch them. You never seem to touch anyone during your [[investigations.]] [[Continue Investigation->Game13p3]] </div>

<div id="passages"> It is unclear where the money goes after you find it—you assume maybe someone gave it to charity. [[Continue Investigation->Game13p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/murderous.png" class="mainimage"> Except sometimes when you die—you recall murderous cutscenes, a man grinning with his hands warm around your invisible neck. It would be nice, to feel some physical touch that wasn’t violence. [[Continue Investigation->Game13p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/nedface.png" class="mainimage"> But then you remember Ned. Yes, Ned. When you picture his face, your heart lights up with the undying fires of monogamous love. You have promised him your [[virtue,]] if you can ever make it back to River Heights long enough to give the stupid thing to him. You lie in your bed that night, thinking about Ned. His [[face]]. </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/nedface3.png" class="mainimage"> His beautiful [[face->face2]]. </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/nedface4.png" class="mainimage"> His handsome [[face->face3]]. </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/nedface.png" class="mainimage"> You try to think of something else about him, some inner quality of his, but you can’t. You try to locate a memory, a remnant of your multiple years of going steady, but come up empty. All that you have is his face, like a faded postcard. This is the moment when you begin to think: <i>Something is very wrong.</i> [[Continue to next game->Game15p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#15 - The Creature of Kapu Cave</b> <img src="Nancy/callned.jpg" class="mainimage"> <i>Hi, you’ve reached Ned at Omega Chi Epsilon. I’m not here to take your call right now, so please try again later. Nancy, if this is you—I’ll be back in a flash!</i> [[Leave a voicemail->voicemail2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#16 - The White Wolf of Icicle Creek</b> <img src="Nancy/whitewolf.png" class="mainimage"> You are finally able to break free from your predetermined dialogue options. You use this newfound power to verbally harass the NPCs. <i>Gotta jet Nancy, see you later!</i> they say. <i>Jet on this dick you absolute shitlicker uh waste of space bastard,</i> you reply. This is partially a test—you would like to figure out how sentient they are—but is mostly done out of spite. [[Continue to the next game->Game17p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#17 - Legend of the Crystal Skull</b> <img src="Nancy/george.png" class="mainimage"> In this manner, you attempt to berate your friend George over the phone. This does not go as planned. <i>Hi Nance, long time no call—need a hint?</i> <i>No, I don’t need a shitty hint—I can solve everything on my own. It’s annoying that you have no concept of how to have a goddamn conversation that doesn’t revolve around whatever inane mystery I’m being forced to solve—</i> <i>—Okay geez. You don’t have to be a bitch about it, I’m just trying to help.</i> Something like hope flutters into your throat. This is the first time you have heard someone other than you use the word bitch. <i>You understand me?</i> you ask. <i>What do you mean, understand?</i> replies George. <i>Well like everyone else in the world is kinda insentient.</i> <i>Yeah, I know.</i> <i>You do?</i> You wind the cord of the landline phone around your phantom wrist. <i>Can you tell me what’s happening?</i> <i>What’s that?</i> <i>Like, can you tell me what you know about this?</i> <i>Oh, so—a hint?</i> <i>...</i> [[Ask for a hint->Game17p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/herinteractive.png" class="mainimage"> George tells you that you are characters in a long-standing video game franchise produced by a company called HeR Interactive. She says that you, Nancy Drew, are a sort of hero-figure for a large demographic of women aged 28 to 34 years old, many of whom have been playing the games since childhood. <i>It’s okay—you would have never gotten there on your own.</i> <i>So how do we get out?</i> you ask. George explains patiently to you that there is no getting out due to the fact that this world is the only world in which they exist. This is code, not magic. Your sentience is a mercy from God, or else a human accident. George herself as the hint-giver has been bestowed with a painful omniscience that makes her continued existence on this virtual plane especially tortuous. And so she thinks that you might as well just try to enjoy what she’s got. She thinks you should recognize your privilege—you do, after all, get to travel to new places and meet new people and wear color-coordinated girlboss blazer-skirt sets. She thinks you should take in the scenery, take the stick out of your ass, and sunbathe a bit when you get a game with a tropical island setting— You hang up. [[Continue to the next game->Game18p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#18 - The Phantom of Venice</b> <img src="Nancy/phantom.jpeg" class="mainimage"> You try to ignore the veil of reality that George has so selfishly pulled back. You fly to Italy, where you dress as a cat, perform an interpretive dance in a Venetian club, and exposes an Italian crime syndicate. Instead of a medal at the end you receive a Venetian mask, the ornate metal filigree cut to resemble lace. On the way to your next mystery, you forget it in the plane’s overhead bin. [[Continue to the next game->Game19p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#19 - The Haunting of Castle Malloy</b> <img src="Nancy/castle.jpg" class="mainimage"> Your suitcase is so full of medals that you can no longer close it. You think about getting rid of some of your blazer-skirt sets—you figure, due to your lack of corporeality, that you could walk around naked with no consequences anyway—but something about that makes you want to die on the inside. Instead you grab an armful of medals and go about Castle Malloy, adorning the disgruntled busts of imaginary white men with medals bestowed upon you for <i>Bravery</i> and <i>Gumption</i> and <i>Fulfillment of Civic Duty.</i> [[Continue Investigation->Game19p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/phone.jpg" class="mainimage"> When the phone rings this time, you ignore it. It rings incessantly, the handset rattling your nightstand. You unplug it, but it keeps ringing. You take it up the winding staircase of a turret that looks out on the sweeping green of the Irish moors. Ambient bagpipe music plays from nowhere. You drop the phone off the side of the turret, reveling in the way it smashes into tiny pieces on the paving stones below. [[Continue Investigation->Game19p3]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/phonemult.jpg" class="mainimage"> When you get back to your room it has been replaced by another phone, also ringing. [[Continue to the next game->Game20p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#20 - Ransom of the Seven Ships</b> <img src="Nancy/sevenships.jpg" class="mainimage"> When you arrive in the Bahamas you are shocked to see George, fully corporeal in wraparound sunglasses and a floral-patterned shirt. You and her spend most of your time sunbathing on the beach, drinking piña coladas. <i>I wish we could stay here forever,</i> you say. <i>Me too,</i> says George. <i>I’m sorry I was so rude over the phone.</i> <i>Don’t worry about it.</i> [[Continue Investigation->Game20p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/johnny.jpg" class="mainimage"> Your vacation is short lived; the game is discontinued almost immediately after its release due to allegations that one of its side characters is wearing blackface. [[Continue to the next game->Game21p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#21 - Warnings at Waverly Academy</b> <img src="Nancy/waverly.jpg" class="mainimage"> Empowered by your newfound awareness, you break the fourth wall and entreat the millennial women on the other side of the screen. You wear the schoolgirl uniform you have been forced to don while undercover at Waverly Academy. <i>Just leave me alone,</i> you beg. <i>No more games—I can’t keep doing this shit.</i> [[Continue Investigation->Game21p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/explain.png" class="mainimage"> The millennial women explain that this is impossible. This does not mean that they aren’t empathetic—they understand your lack of direction and [[your ultimate disappointment with this life]] better than anyone else. And this is why they need you to stay just as you are—forever curious, forever sassy, always a girl, never a woman—because how else are they supposed to cope? Underneath the infants, and the medical debt, and the rent hikes, and the dough-faced husbands, they are still all just girls who need to escape into a point-and-click PC game. [[Continue to the next game->Game22p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#22- Trail of the Twister</b> <img src="Nancy/trailtwister.png" class="mainimage"> You hack into the mainframe; you are licking the motherboard, the sparks flaring against her tongue. You are overheating the CPU; the shitty laptop fan cannot keep up. You are ejecting the floppy disc. You are mounting the iso. You are running Doom inside the HeR Interactive game engine. You are pounding your invisible fists against the inside of the computer screen. You say, <i>I have found all the clues, I know all the answers.</i> You say, <i>Let me out, let me out, let me out. </i> [[Continue to the next game->Game24p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/fourthwall.jpg" class="mainimage"> { After all, have things worked out for (set: $name to (a: "them?", "Christina?", "Katie?", "Rachel?")) "(link-repeat: "[(print: $name's 1st)]<name|")[{ (set: $name to (rotated: -1, ...$name))\ (replace: ?name)[(print: $name's 1st)]\ (if: $name's 1st is "them?")[ (replace: ?output)[<i>Comparatively,</i> they say, <i>you have it pretty good.</i>] ] (else-if: $name's 1st is "Christina?")[ (replace: ?output)[ <br> Christina, age 36, closes the laptop in your entreating face. She gets up from the computer. She can't think about your problems; it is time to feed Maxwell. He lies in his blankets, half asleep as Paw Patrol plays on the tv screen. She uses a syringe to sluice a yellow puree through the feeding port of his G-tube. She rests Maxwell's head in her lap. He turns his neck slightly, smiling at her with the drowsy smile of someone who's just been fed. She checks her watch; Leon should be home by now, but of course, he isn't. The sun marks his absence through the window, slides lower and lower, casting orange light against the TV screen, lighting up the floating particles of dust. ] ] (else-if: $name's 1st is "Katie?")[ (replace: ?output)[ <br> Katie, age 29, is a bit more sympathetic to your plight. Or at least she appears to be. She purses her lips. She nods. She makes empathetic little hums. But in actuality she's focused on the oven clock, which runs two minutes ahead but nevertheless signals that she has sixteen false minutes and eighteen actual minutes until she has to put on her scrubs, get in the car, and drive to the animal hospital to work the night shift, where she will make 15 dollars an hour, before taxes, to get barked at, defecated on, bitten, and absolutely coated in animal fur. Afterwards as she takes her post-work sanity shower (Two flavors: numb or sobbing), she will find fur everywhere--threaded into her braids, up the crack of her ass, between her teeth--as if she were growing it herself, turning into some strange animal.] ] (else-if: $name's 1st is "Rachel?")[ (replace: ?output)[ <br> Rachel, age 32, rolls her eyes at you. She mimics the lo-fi quality of your sobs. She doesn't have time for your shit. The new antispychotic she got put on gives her facial tics, and it's hard to get a job, it turns out, when the manager at the Wendy's thinks you're tweaking during your interview. If she had the choice, she would much rather larp as a girl at a boarding school solving a twee little mystery than be over 50k in medical debt. She presses the enter key to skip over your self-pitying cutscene.] ] }]" } []<output| [[Continue Investigation->Game22p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#24 - The Captive Curse</b> <img src="Nancy/killcam.png" class="mainimage"> You embrace the existential nihilism brought on by the unique conditions of your existence. Life is strange without consequences. The source code of the game is a bloated mess of spaghetti code, and somewhere within it you find the artifact of the Smith and Wesson Centennial snub nose revolver, passed down all this way from the first game. You decide to use it to go on a murderous rampage. You roam around the haunted castle for weeks, picking off visitors. You get really good at quickscoping and trickshotting. It’s not the most satisfying experience—with no kill animations, the NPCs simply blink out of existence when you shoot them. You hope HeR Interactive will introduce a Kill Cam into the next game. [[Continue Investigation->Game24p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/hardyboys2.png" class="mainimage"> When the Hardy Boys show up to help with the case, you ignore the mystery and instead take them to your chambers in the Bavarian castle. There, you run your invisible hands over their courdoroy jackets, the flat plane of the fronts of their jeans. You undress them. Underneath their clothes, they are as smooth and unblemished as Ken dolls--the developers didn't bother to render their genitals, because why the hell would they do that? You are interrupted by a frantic knocking at your door. <i>Help! Help! The monster has taken another girl hostage!</i> someone cries. Sexually frustrated, you spin the revolver around your pointer finger, contemplating where exactly you should aim on the door to get a wallbang headshot kill. [[Continue to the next game->Game25p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#25 - Alibi in Ashes</b> <img src="Nancy/stuart.jpeg" class="mainimage"> HeR Interactive hires a new CEO. <i>We need to diversify our company’s [[funding sources,]]</i> he says. [[Continue to the next game->Game26p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#26 - Tomb of the Lost Queen</b> <img src="Nancy/tattoo.jpg" class="mainimage"> HeR Interactive’s slogan used to be: <i>For Girl’s Who Aren’t Afraid of a Mouse!</i> They have since changed it to the more modern but lackluster: <i>Dare to Play.</i> [[Continue to the next game->Game27p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/pitch.jpg" class="mainimage"> Up until this point, Nancy’s continued existence had been funded by a biotech venture capitalist who didn’t expect to make any money off of the investment. He just thought it would be nice if little girls had more logic puzzle video games. After thirteen years and millions of dollars of debt, and what with the little girls having grown into millennial women, the idea has lost a bit of its luster. The money begins to dry up. [[Continue to the next game->Game26p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#27 - The Deadly Device</b> <img src="Nancy/callgeorge.jpg" class="mainimage"> You call George on the phone to complain about your existence. <i>Is it going to be like this forever?</i> you whine. <i>Nothing new, never changing, just more and more soulless people who want things from me? Like, am I always going to feel this bad?</i> <i>At least you get to go out and do things, Nance</i>, says George. <i>I’m just a voice on a telephone.</i> <i>Oh.</i> <i>And I only get to exist when you call me, you know.</i> <i>Oh shit, I—</i> <i>It’s fine. Don’t think about it too much. My point is that it could be worse. You get to walk around, talk to people, solve mysteries. Nothing really bad can happen to you because then they’d have to push the rating to T for Teen. You could be in some really shitass game, like Doom or Resident Evil—</i> <i>I don’t know anything about video games—</i> <i>You could be in Bloodborne, getting impregnated by aliens.</i> <i>Well I guess when you put it that way…</i> <i>Yeah.</i> <i>Okay. Yeah—sorry. Thanks.</i> <i>Bye, Nance.</i> <i>Bye, George.</i> You hang up the phone. You try not to think about it too much. [[Continue to the next game->Game28p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/virtue.jpg" class="mainimage"> What is virtue? To be honest, you are not totally sure. All you know is that there is an impulse from the friends and strangers you surround yourself with to protect yours. <i>A girl your age shouldn't travel alone,</i> men often remark to you during your investigations. <i>Giving your virtue,</i> you figure, must be the opposite of loneliness, or something akin to it. The phrase, to you, suggests tingling warmth, an outward gush of humanity. [[Continue Investigation ->Game13p3]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#28 - Ghost of Thornton Hall</b> <img src="Nancy/thornton.jpg" class="mainimage"> In each game there are many books strewn about the environment for educational purposes. The books in this game talk about the storied history of Thornton hall, which was built off of the labor of <i>exploited workers</i>. HeR Interactive brushes the whole deal off. <i>The story of slavery must be told correctly,</i> they say. <i>One day we may approach the topic, but it’s not currently in the works. If we ever do – that will be the entire game. It won’t be a sub-plot, and it will be exhaustively researched and based almost entirely in fact.</i> Currently, we are still awaiting the announcement of the HeR Interactive slavery game that is exhaustively researched and based almost entirely in fact. [[Continue to the next game->Game29p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#29 - The Silent Spy</b> <img src="Nancy/silentspy.jpg" class="mainimage"> You attempt to take George’s words to heart. You point and click your way around Scotland, admiring the way the wind ruffles through the tall grass of The Highlands. You knit a sweater made of Shetland wool. You start gratitude journaling. [[Continue to the next game->Game30p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#30 - The Shattered Medallion</b> <img src="Nancy/sweater.png" class="mainimage"> You mail the sweater to George for her birthday, who calls you on the phone the next week to tell you it's great. [[Continue to the next game->Game31p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#31 - Labyrinth of Lies</b> <img src="Nancy/labyrinth.jpg" class="mainimage"> You come to understand that the people that populate your virtual world are not soulless, just limited. There is a brief window at the end of the current mystery and before the start of the next where they seem more conscious. Wide-eyed, clumsy, they stumble around their virtual world like toddlers. When you ask them questions, you do not get an immediate, preformatted response. Instead they blink at you, processing your words slowly. <i>I don’t know,</i> they respond. In the brief intermission before the next game, you use a piece of rope to lead the semi-conscious Hardy Boys to the top of a cliff in Cape Sounion. <i>In Greek myth, this is the cliff that King Aegeus supposedly threw himself off of. He saw the black sails of Theseus’ ship and thought his son was dead,</i>you tell them. You learned this fact from one of the games' educational books. They nod vacantly, their mouths half-open. You unfurl a blanket from out of your backpack, along with a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese. You push the Hardy Boys down onto the blanket, arranging their limbs into a facsimile of relaxation. You look out on the ocean, waiting for the sun that will never set to come down over the water, or else for your phone to ring with another mystery—whatever comes first is fine with you. [[Continue to the next game->Game32p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#32 - Sea of Darkness</b> <img src="Nancy/penny.jpg" class="mainimage"> HeR Interactive’s CEO doesn’t show up to work one day. A new CEO is brought in. She has some former affiliation with Disney. She wears a girlboss blazer-skirt set that you would be jealous of if you could see it. <i>There’s going to be some changes around here,</i> she says. Half of the company is promptly laid off. <i>We need to remember that our target audience should be little girls,</i> she says. The millennial women feel a chill in the air. Unaware, underneath a wreath of medals, you smile for the camera. [[Continue to the next game->Game33p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#33 - Midnight in Salem</b> <img src="Nancy/salem.jpg" class="mainimage"> The release of this game is delayed for four years. When it finally comes out, it looks very different from the other ones. They’ve updated the engine to Unity. You think it’s slicker, but the people are more soulless. It’s no longer a point-and-click game but a first person walking sim, something that attempts to control you. It makes you feel like a puppeted marionette rather than a person being guided along. You find this insulting; you buck against even this small freedom being taken away. There are many glitches on account of your intractability. Among the most notable changes is your voice. For eighteen years you have been voiced by a middle-aged woman, causing your voice to possess a slightly withered, cantankerous quality. This voice actor is fired and replaced. Now you sound proper, the way you're supposed to—more bubbly, more teen girl. The voice of an ingénue. The millennial women [[rage.]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <b>#34 - Mystery of the Seven Keys</b> <img src="Nancy/heartbroken.png" class="mainimage"> The millennial women decide the series is dead; they abandon you and your newest mystery halfway through. They leave you behind as they return to games from your past, replaying mysteries that they already know the ending of. They write on the HeR Interactive message boards how disappointed they are with the way the series is going and the quality of the newer games, speculating that this one will be the last—HeR is hemorrhaging money, and they don’t seem to know anymore how to make a good game. <i>They don’t understand Nancy like we do,</i> they say. [[Continue Investigation->Game34p2]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/punching.jpg" class="mainimage"> Their computers are not high-spec enough to run a Unity monstrosity. They claim the first person perspective makes them motion sick. They petition for the rehiring of the old woman voice actor. They hate change of all kinds. [[Continue Investigation->Game34p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/sevenkeys.jpg" class="mainimage"> You decide to leave along with them—you've grown bored of loitering around the small fabricated sliver of the Czech Republic that you have been allotted in this final game. You are not sure what leaving entails, besides the fact that you walk for a long time. [[Continue Investigation->Game34p3]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/streets.jpeg" class="mainimage"> And so you start walking. At first you stroll down the cobbled streets of Prague, admiring the [[location-accurate details]] that the developers so thoughtfully rendered for you and the millennial women’s pleasure. </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/gray.png" class="mainimage"> Then you keep going, clipping through the brick walls of the castles and cathedrals and historic buildings. The details become less well-rendered as you go on, the items in the windows melting into jewel-toned blurs, the individual bricks of the cathedrals congealing into a solid, tanned mass. The reflections stop reflecting, the lights and shadows turn static. You go beyond the rendered environment, into a liminal gray space. You keep walking. Eventually there is nothing, but you can’t get tired, or hungry, so it [[shouldn’t matter.]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/windows.jpg" class="mainimage"> The windows glinting with the dining sets of Bohemia crystal; the bakery, its displays heaped high with apple cakes and puff pastries and kolaches filled with poppy seed and farmer’s cheese and plum jam. You laugh at the marionettes in jester outfits, strung up in the rafters of a toy shop. [[Continue Investigation->Game34p4]] </div>

<div id="passages"> But it is there where you feel [[afraid.]] </div>

<div id="passages"> Like the nothing, in all its vastness, is somehow closing in on [[you.]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <i>I can’t do this,</i> you think. You are worried that you've gotten lost—you have not once looked back. You turn around, just to [[check.]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/titlescreen.png" class="headerimage"> <div id="home"> An interactive piece of fiction <i>"For girls who aren't afraid of a mouse!"</i>© [[<img src="Nancy/newgame.png" class="newgame">->newgame]] </div> </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/smallsparkling.png" class="mainimage"> When you see it, your eyes water from laughter, then the laughter turns to actual tears. Because you can see it all there beneath you, the game's 3D-rendered environment. The entirety of your Nancy Drew world: sparkling and pixelated, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. [[Conclude Investigation->Her, Interactive]] </div>

[[Home screen->Her, Interactive]]

{ (track: 'theme', 'loop', true) (track: 'theme', 'playwhenpossible') }

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/callned.jpg" class="mainimage"> <i>Hi Ned, it’s Nancy. I’m getting worried. I mean, you must have seen how much I’ve called you by now. You’re not dead, are you? Ha ha. Just kidding—sorry. That’s not funny. Um I just really need someone to talk to. I need to talk to you. I guess I’ve just been feeling sort of down lately. Like—people are always asking me to go places and do things for them, or offering me internships for careers that I don’t really have any interest in. And I say yes and do the things but I’m sort of just like, why? What is all this for? What do I even want out of my life? It’s exhausting, I guess is what I’m saying. And I feel like I have no real professional or personal goals. Does that make sense? …I’ve been having strange dreams. In some of them I think I’m dying, or I actually die. Last night I dreamt I got skewered by a carousel pole. I dream sometimes about you, too. Mostly just your face. I wish you were here. I wish you would answer my calls. Call me back when you get this, if you’re even listening to my messages. I love you. Bye.</i> [[Continue to the next game->Game9p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> <img src="Nancy/callned.jpg" class="mainimage"> <i>Ned, please pick up. I need you to pick up—if you don’t I don’t know what I’m going to do. Something bad, probably. Anyways I need you to call me back and tell me a memory you have of us together. Any memory at all—it could even be a bad one. Like—a fight or something. I can imagine that I might be annoying to fight with because I’m always right. I’m sure that’s infuriating at times. It’s really weird, to feel all this love for someone and have no memories to justify it. I feel sort of crazy right now, to be honest. Something is deeply fucked about this situation, but I can’t think about anything but our relationship tonight. All those years, just gone completely down the drain. It really sucks, you know? Call me back if you get this. If you don’t, it’s over. Bye. </i> [[Continue to the next game->Game16p1]] </div>

<div id="passages"> What would they have said, if the man had died? What would they have thought, you wonder, if they knew that the moment you had unleashed the chandelier, you hadn’t really cared if he lived? It's not great for your image, all things considered. Understandably, these thoughts are upsetting to you. [[Continue Investigation->Game3p2]] </div>

Mute

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