Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37815 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: HER Interactive
• Model: ND-SHADOWRANCH

Customer Reviews

Very Enjoyable
The Secret of Shadow Ranch is perhaps my favorite thus far.. The story line was good, the puzzles were solvable (without frustration), and the sound and graphics were realistic.

The only negative thing I have for all the Nancy Drew games is that the dialogue is obviously not adult level. I am an adult who has always been a Nancy Drew fan. Although I no longer read the books, I do enjoy the games. There is no violence or gore.....just plain enjoyment and brain challenging puzzles... some easy while others difficult. Yes, even for me, some are not that easy.

All in all, I do recommend this game for fun and enjoyment for all ages.

One of the worst video games ever created
What makes this such an egg-layer? Three things: isolation, chores, and guilt. Only in a girl's game could anyone possibly find isolation, chores, and guilt! Good grief.

The isolation is nothing new for Nancy Drew adventure games, but in this case it's exascerbated by Tex, the horse wrangler. Tex is obviously patterned after Jack Palance and his deep, raspy, none-of-your-nonsense cowboy voice. You have to talk to Tex to be able to ride the horse (required for solving the mystery), and 9/10 of his responses are fairly threatening. Like, when Nancy exits a conversation with him by cheerfully declaring, "Talk to you later!" he responds, "If you last that long." (The truth is, I like Tex, because these little conversations are very reminiscent of City Slickers, where Mitch asked Curly, "Hi, Curly! Killed anyone today?" and Curly responded, "Day ain't over yet.")

For each "day" in the game, the player must complete chores. And these aren't fun chores, either. I thought gathering vegetables from the garden would be fun--I am a vegetable gardener, after all--but if you happen to pick a "vegetable" that happens to not be fully ripe yet--and I'm talking shades of yellow/golden/white for some tomatoes, or shades of green for snap peas--you get yelled at by the cook and guilt tripped by the folks who own the ranch. I AM NOT KIDDING. And the guilt-trip lecture (delivered as they're booting you out the door for being such a loser) is LONG. Another chore? Feeding the horses. If you get the formula wrong, you KILL THE HORSE. And darned if that doesn't earn you another guilt trip. Another chore is baking a cake. Amazingly you can dump the contents of your mixing bowl 1000 times without getting a lecture from the cook for wasting ingredients, but put the cake in the oven for 15 minutes too long, and you blow up the stove, burn the kitchen, and get another guilt trip. YAY.

If you can laugh at the game, it'll be fun. But it may not be a good choice for anyone with the sensitivity of, say, a young girl.

Wonderful!
This is a wonderful Nancy Drew PC game filled with lots of fun and detail, You have to look at every nook and cranny which makes it exciting. If you want a game with adventure and surprises, this is it!