Ludography
64/100
Players11 ratings
More scores
Metacritic usersuser score
63/100
GameFAQsEasy-Just Right
3.66/5
Player reviews
78% positive327 reviews
Steam Deck
Playable
Runs on
Windows, Mac
Price
US$19.99

Where to get it

Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill cover

1998 · Her Interactive · Adventure · Point-and-click adventure

Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill

Secrets Can Kill is the first of many instalments in the Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure game series by HeR Interactive. Players take on the first-person view of fictional amateur sleuth Nancy Drew and solve the mystery by interrogating suspects, solving puzzles, and discovering clues.

Released
23 December 1998
Platforms
WindowsmacOS
Genres
AdventurePoint-and-click adventurePuzzle
Developers
Her Interactive
Publishers
DreamCatcher Interactive
Series
Nancy Drew
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
First personBird view / Isometric
Themes
Thriller
Country
United States
Age ratings
ESRB E
Languages
English
Time to beat
3hmain story5hcompletionist

About

Secrets Can Kill is the first installment in the Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure game series, released on November 23, 1998 by HeR Interactive. Players take on the first-person view of fictional amateur sleuth Nancy Drew and solve the mystery through interrogation of suspects, solving puzzles, and discovering clues. The game features pre-rendered 3D environments, but unlike later games, the characters are animated in 2D. There are three levels of gameplay: Junior, Senior, and Master detective modes.

Each mode offers a different difficulty level of puzzles and hints, however, none of these changes affect the actual plot of the game. The game is loosely based on a Nancy Drew Files book of the same name, Secrets Can Kill (1986).

Players say

Media

Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

Nancy Drew takes a semester off of school to visit her Aunt Eloise in Florida. A student named Jake Rogers is murdered at the local high school, where Eloise works as a librarian. Eloise asks Nancy to investigate, so Nancy goes undercover as a new student and attempts to solve the mystery. Throughout the game, Nancy discovers that Jake Rogers was blackmailing several of the other characters by videotaping their misdeeds:

Hal Tanaka took on additional coursework to be approved for a scholarship. He knew that if he didn't get the scholarship, his family would send him back to Japan. He slowly became overwhelmed and buried in work, so he decided to plagiarize an English essay from a school library book, which Jake caught on camera. Jake blackmailed Hal into doing his homework for the remainder of the semester, otherwise Jake would reveal the plagiarism to Hal's family.

Development

Nancy Drew - Nancy is an 18-year-old amateur detective from the fictional town of River Heights in the United States. She is the only playable character in the game, which means the player must solve the mystery from her perspective.

Daryl Gray – Daryl is the one who found the victim's body. He works part-time as a short-order cook at Maxine's Diner, and he is the school's student council president (taking the position after his father who was a Florida state senator). He is known as a rich, popular, pretty boy who drives a Porsche 911. He tends to be a bit of a flirt, but is he as wholesome as he seems?

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Windows23 December 1998North America

Editions and related releases

Included in
Nancy Drew 75th Anniversary Edition
Followed by
Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger
Remastered as
Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill Remastered
Built on it
Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill Remastered

In the same series

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Collections3 collections

Series and characters

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.