2000 video game
Message in a Haunted Mansion is the third installment in the Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure game series by Her Interactive.[1][2][3] The game is available for play on Microsoft Windows platforms as well as Game Boy Advance. It has an ESRB rating of E for moments of mild violence and peril. Players take on the first-person view of fictional amateur sleuth Nancy Drew and must solve the mystery through interrogation of suspects, solving puzzles, and discovering clues. There are two levels of gameplay: Junior and Senior detective modes. Each mode offers a different difficulty level of puzzles and hints, but none of these changes affect the actual plot of the game. The game is loosely based on a book entitled The Message in the Haunted Mansion (1995).[4][5]
Message in a Haunted Mansion was a commercial success, with sales of 300,000 units and revenues of $5.5 million in the United States alone by August 2006. At the time, Edge named it the country's 64th-best-selling computer game of the 21st Century.
Plot
Nancy Drew is helping Rose Green, a friend of Nancy's housekeeper Hannah Gruen, with some renovation work in an old Victorian mansion in San Francisco that she is converting into a bed and breakfast. But, there are other uninvited guests, visitors from the past—spirits who want the place all to themselves. Strange accidents are slowing down the renovation, and Nancy is trying to figure out who, or what, is trying to scare everyone away. Nancy suspects that there is another force at work: greed.
Nancy is threatened and nearly scared out of the mansion, but that doesn't stop her! She eventually discovers that treasure is hidden in the mansion. After solving puzzles and finding clues to help her find the treasure, she is blindsided by the culprit! Louis turns out to be the culprit and starts pocketing the treasure. Nancy very carefully works her way up the staircase and drops the chandelier right on Louis. Louis is arrested for his crimes, and Rose starts getting numerous reservations for her bed and breakfast.
Reception
Sales
According to PC Data, Message in a Haunted Mansion sold 97,257 units in North America during 2001,[7] and another 20,717 units in the first three months of 2002.[8] Its sales in the region for the year 2003 totaled 44,826 units.[9] The series as a whole sold 1.5 million units by 2004.[10] By August 2006, Message in a Haunted Mansion's PC version had sold 300,000 copies and earned $5.5 million in the United States alone. This led Edge to rank it as the country's 64th-best-selling computer game of the 21st Century in August 2006. During the same timeframe, Nancy Drew computer games as a whole totaled sales of 2.1 million units in the United States. Remarking upon this success, Edge declared Nancy Drew a "powerful franchise".[11]
Reviews
The PC version received "favorable" reviews, while the Game Boy Advance version received "mixed" reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings.[16][17] In The New York Times, writer Charles Herold praised the PC version and noted that "the puzzle design is as good or better than most adult-oriented adventure games."[3]
Message in a Haunted Mansion received a "Gold" Parents' Choice Award in fall 2000.[18] It was also a finalist for The Electric Playground's 2001 "Best Adventure Game for PC" award, but lost this prize to Myst III: Exile.[19]
