Entertaining title, challenges ranging from easy to hard, interesting case, but a few instances didn't seem to belong.
As it turns out, Minette has been getting threatening anonymous letters and strange phone calls. Add to that some rumors that a treasure might have been hidden in what is now Minette's fashion studio and you have a good puzzle just waiting to be solved.
With a few suspects already in mind, Nancy will interrogate everyone about what she already knows and what she doesn't know. Dieter von Schwesterkrank, Minette's ex-boyfriend, could be trying to get revenge from being dumped. Minette's assistant Heather could be using her boss just to get ahead in the fashion industry. JJ Ling, one of Minette's models, was tricked into signing her contract and might be trying to get even. And then there is Jean-Michel Traquenard, the harsh fashion critic who seems to be hated by everyone in the fashion business.
Of course, Nancy will have to run a series of errands for Minette and for the other characters. She will have to answer the phone, take photos, process film, go shopping, make parfaits, bake cookies, swim underwater and even paint masterpiece reproductions to make some extra money.
Danger by Design takes you to picturesque places in Paris: a small park by the Seine featuring modern sculptures and street vendors, a corner cafe where you get to eat some traditional frog legs, the famous catacombs. You do your travelling by using the complex Metro (subway) system, and the map is faithful to the real thing: Rue du Bac, Pont Neuf, Place Monge, Abesses, they are all real stations.
Some of the different puzzles offered in this game can be a little complicated for younger players, but they're not impossible to solve. From fixing a plot (a large printer) to opening a puzzle box (it's Nancy Drew, there had to be a puzzle box!), opening secret passages, decoding messages, finding your way through an underwater maze, playing mini-games on a computer. Obviously, there are also situations where you will need to know some french.
The game lets you play in two difficulty settings, Senior Detective for the most experienced Nancy Drew fans, and Junior Detective for the beginner mystery-solver (or those like me who are just really bad at what sometimes is very obvious). And Nancy's handy journal always helps when it comes to use it as a checklist.
The storyline delves deep into history, with tales of the French Resistance and the Second World War, although it doesn't feel like a History lesson since you are given little pieces to put together mostly in the form of trivia (for example, a news article or a rumor).
Soundwise, the game presents a good level of realism. When you're outside, you can hear crowds talking, traffic passing by, birds chirping, water running and other environmental sounds. All sorts of other little sounds are extremely appropriate and the background music is pleasant and never overwhelming. What I really didn't care for was the voice acting. I mean, some of it wasn't bad, Nancy sounds natural as usual and Minette conveys her unstable behaviour perfectly. It were the French characters that sounded completely fake, their accents were atrocious. Maybe I should have installed the game in French instead, I probably would have enjoyed it more that way.
Graphically, Danger by Design is a nice looking game, with colorful and vibrant backgrounds, and plenty of details in every area. But I have the same problem as the last time I played a Nancy Drew adventure: I can't get it to run in a resolution other than 600x400. There are no in-game options to change it and no matter how much I tried to change the config files manually, it wasn't working either. It's somewhat annoying to see an image stretched out and pretty pixelized while playing, when all the screenshots taken come out in my desktop's resolution (1024x768).
A few instances of gameplay didn't seem to belong. Aside from timed events (for example, you have answer the phone in about 10 seconds or you're fired and it's game over), Nancy actually manages to get herself into a fight. I didn't expect to see that in a million years!
The level design isn't bad, but in one particular activity, Minette's studio was the most annoying area ever. There are nine cockroaches running around, and the one that kept sneaking behind the mannequin was the trickiest. Getting to that particular spot where the roach goes behind the platform was a nuisance, since I kept moving Nancy the wrong way and losing the bug. I would have liked to have seen more of Paris. Landmarks such as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Les Champs Elysees and Notre-Dame were completely left out, which is a shame.
Aside from a few downfalls, Nancy Drew: Danger by Design is a solid entertaining title, with challenges ranging from easy to hard in a brand new interesting case to crack.
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