To the surprise and delight of millennial women everywhere, HeR Interactive announced they would release 34th Nancy Drew game after a four-year hiatus for the nostalgic series. On April 4th, the studio dropped an animated response to fans asking for a new game, confirming that “We are excited to announce…we are officially working on a new game!”
The company had been mired in controversy, as its loyal fanbase who grew up playing the classic point-and-click games on a CD-ROM felt betrayed by the modern style of the HeR Interactive’s latest game, Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem. The game included free-roaming gameplay, extremely detailed graphics that couldn’t run on most laptops, and most controversially, a new voice actress.
Nevertheless, the constant hints about ND #34 that HeR Interactive has been dropping seem to have generated enough excitement to assuage any concerns.
As fans began to speculate about the new game’s potential location, HeR Interactive released ten preview images and greybox model on April 14th, featuring a cafe setting that the studio further elaborated on with a reveal of one of the game’s puzzles on April 11th. The “New Coffee Puzzle” shows a POV of Nancy standing behind the counter at a cafe, musing over the cups strewn about by a rusty coffee maker: “I see I’m not getting out of this,” Nancy says. “What do I need to do?” For all intents and purposes, this looks like a classic Nancy Drew puzzle where Nancy gets roped into a menial task made cumbersome and challenging by the game’s mechanics. Other features in the preview include an espresso machine, a recipe book, and a function for making latte art by drawing it on with a mouse.
On April 26th, HeR Interactive released a birthday video for Nancy Drew’s 93rd birthday featuring Nancy’s new voice actress Brittany Cox. On the 28th, HeR Interactive posted behind-the-scenes sneak peek of the voice actors from the upcoming game. There was Brittany Cox as Nancy, who opened the video with her signature phrase: “It’s locked!” The video also confirmed some of the cast of the new game, with clips of studio recordings for Ned Nickerson, the Hardy Boys, and Carson Drew. We also got a clip of a mysterious new character called Radek, mumbling shyly to Nancy from behind the coffee shop counter. “Oh, are you a tourist?” he says. “Oh, sorry, I should introduce myself… ”
All this information is sure to leave fans with more clues as to the upcoming game, but it remains to be seen what other puzzles will be featured and what new and returning characters might be seen.