Hello from Her Interactive

[hermike]

Hi I'm Mike Paganini, the creative director at Her Interactive. I participate in all aspects of game design, character and plot generation. My biggest responsibility is maintaining the brand inegrity of our Nancy Drew adventure games. We've just release Nancy Drew #17, Legend of the Crystal Skull. ND #18 is already in progress! I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about game development for a few hours.

Please visit herinteractive.com to learn more about our company and offerings.

[AndrYxo]

Hi Mike! My name is Andrey! I'm from Ukraine! Andr I'm one of the biggest fan of Nancy Drew in Ukraine. First � sorry for my English.... And what can you tell to all fans of ND games about Nancy Drew #18?

[marina]

Hi! We are great Nancy Drew fans from Ukrain and Russia! We would like to ask you some question about Nancy.

To start with we would like to ask you if the company is going to change its policy about questioning the suspects? I would have wanted in to be not just the order of questions that does not change anything in the game, but a plot depending on the questions changing when asked one or the other.

What surprises can Nancy Drew fans expect and next games?

Will you show in future games the off-camera characters? Like Ned, Carson Drew and Hannah?

Marina and Lilith

[Lilith]

We have some other questions: The first one is a banal one - will we ever see Nancy herself in the game?

And the others are the ones, that will tickle our imagination:
What will await players in the 18-th Nancy? What will be the 19-th part about?

[hermike]

Nancy is going undercover in Venice! The Italian Police have requested her assistence (through Carson of course) to help bust a underground crime ring. The game takes place during Carnivale so there will be great costumes. It has a really nice spy twist to it which is a nice follow up to the scarier feel of Legend of the Crystal Skull. Its a nice change. Also, many more suspects in the next game.

Evolving the game play based on dialog choices is always a hot topic during our design process. I hope sometime in the future we can do it. Right now it does not fit into our production cycle. We think our games tell great stories and many aspects of stories have to be linear, or told in order. We haven't figured out how to alter the game based on the players line of interogation, without breaking the integrity and critical path of our story. As soon as we can do it well, that would be a nice feature.

You might get to see Nancy in The Phantom of Venice, sort of.

No new offscreen characters.

#19 content is still green, check our website regularly for updates.

[marina]

The other question that will tickle the imagination of Nancy Drew fans in Ukraine and Russia.
What games do you plan to release? Based on what books? How many do you plan to issue in 2008, 2009, 2010?

[Lilith]

Sorry for bombing you with questions, but we are really interested in the answers.

Will you make other mystical games like Legend on the Crystal Skull and Blackmoor?
Will you continue issuing 2 games each year?
Why do you announce game-release only in a month time? Can you announce earlier?

[hermike]

We wil continue to release two Nancy Drew games per year. We are also exploring the idea of releasing new content that might appeal to our audience. However, nothing is in the works... yet.

The Phantom of Venice is loosly based off the book by the same name.

I think we will continue to alternate the type of content. It would be a safe bet, that we will release more 'mystical' content in the future. Those are my favorites by the way.

New games are first announced in the preview found at the end of our latest release. I believe that will continue to be the trend, partly becuase we don't even know what the next one will be yet. Our production cycle is only 6 months long!

[marina]

if it is not to much trouble for you, will you please post some scrins to the new game? :

[PolloDiablo]

Hi,

Hope you are willing and able to answer some of these questions.
I've only tried one of the PC games myself (Blackmoor Manor) but found the mini-games too hard (I don't have fast reflexes to do the ghost hunt and throw a ball at a target when sliding down for instance) so I've never finished it. Are all the Nancy Drew games like that or are there any that don't have mini-games and are pure adventure?
What did you think of the Nancy Drew game on the Nintendo DS? I know Her Interactive had nothing to do with its production, but have you seen it, played it, read reviews? I've heard it's very different and not at all like the PC games. Why were you not involved?