Her Iteractive's Letter To The Fans

Here is Her Interactive's Letter To The Fans, or you can read it and all the others here.

JANUARY LETTER FROM HER INTERACTIVE

Dear Nancy Drew Fans,
As the New Year starts, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for being such great fans and loyal supporters of our Nancy Drew community.  We value your enthusiasm and comments, so we feel it’s important to keep you “clued in!”
In 2014, we had a busy year with two all-new PC/Mac mystery adventure games plus our expansion into mobile with the tablet version of Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall. We were thrilled to hear that many of you liked the experience on mobile and are hoping to see more games available for “on the go” Nancy Drew fans. We believe there’s a great future for adding a mobile Nancy Drew experience because the devices offer so many fun ways for players to further engage with Her Interactive games. We are currently working on developing the best game experiences possible for you. Although we will not be moving forward with Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy for tablets, please keep looking for news and updates as we continue our development work on this exciting platform.
We have a lot in store for 2015. At the top of the list, we are very excited about the upcoming release of Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness this spring.  Set in Iceland, it will truly be an epic game that we know you’ll love. After Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness, we will have a new voice for our famous amateur detective. We didn’t take this decision lightly, and we’re hard at work on the casting process. Recasting an iconic character like Nancy is no small task, and we promise to bring you a voice we feel is equally as true to Nancy’s spirit and personality.
We hope you will grow to have the same emotional connection you have enjoyed with the previous Nancy Drew voice and all the other supporting characters. The feedback we have received from the community about the talented Lani Minella has been very heartwarming.  We know that for some fans, change is hard, but trust that our goal remains to continue the legacy of developing award-winning games for many years to come.  It bears repeating that Lani will always be part of the Her Interactive family.
In closing, thank you for being part of the Her Interactive family. It means the world to all of us to be the constant recipient of your insightful feedback and your wonderful enthusiasm for our games!
Cheers,
Team Her Interactive

- Samantha Quick

The Sea of Darkness

Nancy Drew #32, The Sea Of Darkness, I think will be a scary game. We have had 3 games since the last scary game, The Ghost of Thornton Hall, and by the looks of it, it will be a scary game! It takes place in Iceland, and we know that there is a phantom/ghost ship, and the color scheme so far is dark blues, blacks, greys etc. A.K.A Dark. I can't wait! Here is the teaser.
I really can't wait for this one, it looks like so much fun!

  On another note, I might go to the Her Interactive offices this spring!!!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! I am beyond happy, because since I found out about the games, I have wanted to go. AND I COULD MEET LITTLE JACKALOPE!!!

Also, Her has been re-tweeting me very often. multiple ties this week, and I even got a reply!
Me: Will you guys be writting a game guide for Treasure in the Royal Tower?
Her: We are on it!

............ Yay! So look out for that!

   I am going to try to keep up with the book reviews, but I can't make any promises. I really want to, but I have been busy and I have been reading other books too, trying to branch out. I'm also trying to play more of the games, so I am playing LIE with my little sister, SPY with my mom, MHM with my other sister and SHAW by myself.

Enjoy The Sea of Darkness! It comes out this spring!!

- Samantha Quick

New Year!!!

Hello! I'm so sorry I haven't been able to post. I have been very busy, Which Her Interactive has been busy. As some of you may know, Her is replacing the longtime voice actress Lani Minella as Nancy Drew. Here is what she has to say about some things on the Her Interactive message boards.

"Yes very good point. This is what I was trying to articulate earlier but didn't do so quite as effectively. The main reason I'm uneased with Lani's immediate taking to social media is because look at all of the backlash and speculation that it has caused. We are hearing one hurt person's side. I was specifically thinking of the "new things" tweet. Everyone has been up in arms over this the last several weeks and it could very well be nothing of great significance. I'm not trying to imply that she said anything outright negative either. I just don't personally think it's appropriate for someone who no longer works for a company to speak out about their termination -- amicable or otherwise. Just my opinion. Doesn't seem very professional to me. "

 

   "First let me say I'm being asked to change my user name but before I do, I want to respond to some common threads regarding me etc. The term "new direction" as to why I should be replaced, didn't entirely make sense to me. But I was amicable and understanding and hugged the people telling me, saying "I know it was not your fault and thanks for many years of great work."

When Nancy's voice sounded older, it was because I was told to sound that way. I'm can sound any age and maintain that character. I think perhaps they knew the audience age range had matured. We also tried to give her a little bit more attitude sometimes when confronting a suspect we knew might be the bad guy. Mixed reactions were the result of those attempts. Can't please everybody all the time, right? This brings me to the second point.

Secondly: When we tried to make Nancy sound more cool, modern, or sarcastic, we were stopped in our tracks. Told it wasn't true to her persona. I could not even say "Gonna" instead of "going to." She could not believe in anything supernatural, could not pronounce foreign words very well etc. I had to go along with the acceptable persona....always nice, straight-laced, a bit clueless on how to pronounce things, and no slang. The writer and I both hoped many of the adlibs and fun recorded moments would remain in the game, but they would get nixed before release.

Thirdly, I was asked to remain until they found their new Nancy voice and they wanted to write me in as some recurring character, like a mentor to Nancy. I felt that fans might not resonate well with this, and I asked permission to thank the fans (for my closure and to allow Her to be able to do an open search without disguising what voice they were looking for) I waited for permission, and Her approved what I was posting before I posted it. The first post I made on FB where I did not have a lot of ND fans. I did this Halloween afternoon so as few people as possible would notice. I could not sleep and needed closure PLUS I wanted to let fans know how much I appreciated them and that I did not walk out on them or make anyone at HER upset with me

Lastly, It was never anything about a money issue, a talent issue, my not being available issue.....none of these. I can't totally fathom the logic behind this change, but I want to give both the fans and HER the respect they deserve. So please stop calling HER and me rude and unprofessional. I did not want them to do a tribute to me as it would be like an obituary. I am humble, and just wanted peace and closure without a lot of ceremony. I hope you all can respect that, and know I wish everyone all the best.

I am so grateful and frankly, very surprised at how many fans Nancy Drew has, and it's not just me, it's the games of course. The creative team at HER has been very supportive and gone through quite a bit. I wish them continued success and hope this post answers some questions and calms some nerves.
Thank you again for everything"

It will be sad that Lani is leaving, but I think it's sufficiently explained here.

Her also has a new photo in the merch store for just about every occasion! It says
It's a Nancy Drew thing, you wouldn't understand

- Samantha Quick

Her Interactive

So, October brought one of the best games Her Interactive has made, The Labyrinth Of Lies. It was phenomenal. You can buy it here. Maybe Sammy Sleuth will do a review on it?

In 3 days brings Thanksgiving, which means Black Friday is directly after. It's ironic how we spend a day being thankful for everything we have and the day after we spend money on really cheap things in mobs. People get killed sometimes. I advise you to do your shopping online. Like say at Her Interactive. They are having a Black Friday sale, all games, digital and physical, 50% off. The code hasn't been released yet, But I'm willing to bet it will be something like BlackFriday14.

In other (sad) news, Nancy's longtime voice actor, Lani Minella, is no longer going to be working at Her after Sea of Darkness, the 32nd game. Her has not yet found a new person to voice Nancy.

Her has Christmas (if you celebrate it) shipping dates! Order by these dates and you will be good to go.

-Samantha Quick

• 

Book Review Lateness

So, for awhile I was doing book reviews on all of the Nancy Drew books, but I became busy and stopped on #11, The Clue of The Broken Locket. I am in the middle of book #12, The Message In The Hollow Oak. There are 2 of them, and both are quite different. There is not a single thing the same in the books except the title. Every moment I have free, I try reading a little of it so I can post a review soon. I have also been branching out to some new series, like The Hunger Games, The Heroes Of Olympus,The Morality Doctrine, etc. I also read some solitary books, like The Fault In Our Stars. I want to read Paper Towns and The Maze Runner series too. I That's also part of the reason I haven't been reading Nancy Drew as much. I've been reading other things. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment on one of my instagram posts.

Sorry about the book reviews though! I'll try to catch up. Should I put reviews on the other books I've read here too? Again, leave comments on my IG page because comments are disabled on my blog for privacy reasons.

-Samantha Quick

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello! I am SO sorry about not posting in 2 months! I have been very busy and haven't had time to post. I have been posting more on my Instagram, nancydrew_old_fashioned, but not very often, due to the busy factor. Tonight I will probably be making quite a few posts; so stay tuned!(For Danger ;) I'm sorry, I had too.)

-Samantha Quick

Nancy Drew #11: The Clue of The Broken Locket

Here is my review for Nancy Drew mystery #11, The Clue of The Broken Locket.

  The book starts out like this: Nancy comes down to the breakfast table and sees a key next to her plate. She asks Carson Drew, Her Criminal Lawyer father, tells her it is the key to a cottage which she is to open up for a girl named Cecily Curtis, in place of a Mr. Winch because he was scared of something. Nancy is accompanied by Bess Marvin and George Fayne. It is a two day trip,in which they run into a strange, red haired girl at a resturant who is having trouble with her apparent fiancé, over a iron bird and a lawsuit. When they finish their food, Bess says she lost her earring and knows exactly where it is. Before their food came, they took a walk through the forrest where they overheard the young couple, they had walked over a rickety old bridge where Bess tripped. The go there and Nancy sees it at the bottom of the bank. Because te bridge doesn't look sturdy enough, Bess stays on ground. George holds Nancy's feet while Nancy hangs over the edge. Just as she grabs the earring, the red haired girl dashes across and the bridge collapses. They rescue her and themselves and continue on. When they get there, all the townsfolk insist on the being careful, or better yet, not going because it's no place for 3 teenage girls to go with all the scary stuff going on. Nancy promises they will be careful, and they head down to the cottage to wait for the renter.  When the Cecily finally gets there, it's the red headed girl from earlier that day!

Sorry that was so long. Anyway, I would give this book a 8/10 because it just isn't one of Nancy's better mysteries. There are too many coincidences, A police chief embarrasses Nancy and just really doesn't listen to what she says because she is a girl, and at the time the book was written, boys were superior to girls. The rest was good though. Ned, Burt and Dave show up, and a singer they get to know well, and quite a mystery! I would probably not suggest this to you off the top of my head, but if you like mysteries by the lake, like The Secret of mirror Bay, then you will like this one.

- Samantha Quick