Nancy Drew Secrets Can Kill

The first title in a series, this two-CD package puts kids in the role of teenage detective, Nancy Drew. In this adventure they explore the town of Paseo Del Mar, Florida, where an unpopular student at the high school has been murdered. As they look for evidence at each of five locations, players discover 300 hidden clues and objects, including keys, coins, a bolt cutter, a pen knife and a remote control. Many of the found objects come in handy for solving the case. The program cleverly involves kids in the action: posters in the school and menus in the diner contain encrypted messages that help unravel the mystery, and kids can talk to the murder victim's fellow students by asking series of questions. They can also get help by calling their friends using numbers on their phone card. Games can be saved for later play. We especially appreciated the "second chance" feature that lets you repeat sections of the game later on. For instance, when testers accidentally caused an explosion at the town's diner, they were glad to be able to go back to the segment just before the disaster instead of starting all over again. Some of the weaknesses of the program stem from the fact that it is a two-CD game that uses DirectX 6.0. You can install it via a compact, 40 MB installation, but we found the mouse action to be sluggish. The full installation requires 220 MB which is a hefty chunk for older, smaller hard drives. The disk swapping is frequent but testers didn't seem to mind. There's also a bug in the program that requires getting technical support or a download from the web site. On the whole, the program's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. Girls loved the murder mystery adventure theme and enjoyed exploring the high school, diner and other parts of the town. Even though finding and using the clues and objects was very challenging, they played the game repeatedly. Only one tester has solved the mystery so far and that was with the help of a cheat sheet. The next program in the series, Nancy Drew Stay Tuned for Danger, is terrific.