Nancy Drew®: Alibi in Ashes

Alibi in Ashes is the 25th game in the Nancy Drew series. In this entry, Nancy is arrested for burning down a historic building in her hometown. She's obviously being framed, but she'll need to start her investigation from behind bars with the help of Bess, George and Ned. You'll use all four characters to free Nancy and uncover the real culprit. Although Nancy is blamed, she's sure the real culprit is one of the witnesses she saw at the scene. To take the blame off Nancy and figure out what's really going on, you'll have to gather evidence about the witnesses and their secrets. Nancy directs the investigation from the police station and is able to call other characters, test samples, and organize evidence. The other characters do the legwork of the investigation, talking to suspects, collecting evidence, and solving puzzles. In that way, the mechanics of this game are pretty similar to the previous ones, although this one was relatively light on puzzles. Most of the puzzles were the right amount of difficulty, a little tricky but solvable. There were a couple, though, that were super difficult and annoying. They didn't really give you enough direction and were pretty painstaking to solve (and one was timed!). I also had trouble finding a few things. I ended up needing a walkthrough a few times. The game relies really heavily on walking around and talking to suspects. The side characters were pretty interesting and had fun personalities. All of them have secrets, shaky alibis, and strong motives, and I enjoyed trying to figure out what their backstories were and what they were actually up to. The real arsonist wasn't the most obvious character, but wasn't terribly surprising either. This game stands out from the rest of the series for trying to shake up the formula a little bit, but unfortunately none of the changes actually work that well. Playing as four different characters was fun at first, but ended up just being tedious. There are a couple of places where you need one of the characters to discuss a specific topic with a specific NPC, but other than that, it doesn't matter who does what. If you want to switch between characters, you have to switch back to Nancy first. You'll end up having to try to talk to the characters over and over again. Sometimes, you'll have to talk to everyone to find the specific conversation you need to trigger other conversations that then lead to you having to make the rounds of talking to all of the characters AGAIN. The map is also huge for no reason. There only 5 locations you can explore, but they're all spread apart. There are a ton of other locations that you can also drive to that don't matter to the game. While I liked the characters and mystery in Alibi in Ashes, I was more annoyed than intrigued because of the irritating, repetitive gameplay. I appreciate that they tried to do something a little different with this game, but it just wasn't executed that well. 4/10