Nancy Drew®: The Secret of Shadow Ranch Reviews

come on bob! i love this one.

I loved this game as a kid. I came back as an adult for the recipes and fun and to actually finish this game. The recipes actually work-they are real-I love that about this game-you can make the recipes on the recipe cards! How cool is that? I had so much fun when I was in high school looking up this game and attempting the cake! It turned out delicious. I also love the gardening, the horses, the mystery, the fun puzzles. Granted there were parts that made me all scared! I still get scared easily and so I did not finish this game. I still am thankful for this game though. I suggest it to this day! It's worth the price too-you get a decent amount of gameplay in.

Highly questionable morality. Beware -- especially if you are a young person or are buying the game for a young person. Contains mild spoilers: The story-line for the mystery revolves around a romantic tragedy type of story wherein a man stole what accumulated to be a huge treasure from innocent people (they explicitly state this in the game). For his crimes, he was put to death by the law enforcement in the old West. Before he was put to death, he hid away all of the treasure for his love interest, who blames her father for his role in what happened (he was the sheriff -- so just doing his job) and calls him the "vilest man alive". And they make it out that the father feels deeply guilty about it even though he was doing his job in bringing a guilty man to justice. So all of this makes it out to be that the thief who stole from innocent people was an innocent victim and that it's romantic he hid this stolen wealth for his love interest (so the innocent victims never got their wealth back) and the sheriff who did his job in serving justice was the real criminal. Like, what? You can certainly make the argument that the death penalty for his crimes was excessive but I am still deeply uncomfortable with the romanticization of the situation and demonization of her father. I played this as a teenager and didn't realize how immoral that is but it is very obvious to me now and I'm honestly pretty appalled. Aside from that, the actual game itself is fine. Has a cool baking and animal-feeding part where it teaches about measurements (ie how many teaspoons in a table spoon?). Which is practically useful and pretty fun to do in the game.