Did you get a chance this past weekend to watch all of the official trailers on our YouTube channel? Some are definitely different and they have evolved quite a bit over the years. Do you have a favorite trailer? This is an easy question for me to answer...I personally like GTH and SPY's the best, but I am biased. XD
Here are the last few trailers, including the teaser for The Shattered Medallion below. After you watch these, come back tomorrow to watch the official trailer for The Shattered Medallion! You can subscribe to our channel to stay updated on our latest uploads, too.
Pre-orders begin tomorrow for Nancy Drew's next mystery! Head's up: we only made so many physical BONUS EDITIONs...so if you have your heart set on getting the boxed version, I suggest ordering early (or sometime this week) to be sure you will get your copy.
Wow! Where did the day go? A lot of things happened today. Let me briefly share it with you: at first I began to work on the official trailer for The Shattered Medallion, getting a few transitions perfected. But then we were given the "green light" to start working on the official product page. WOOT!
Once we started working on that page, an unexpected bug over on the Message Boards occurred. (Those bugs are annoying...so we got out our bug expert and he started cleaning up those pesky bugs.) Later today, the board was fixed.
I wandered through the forums and noticed every one's requests for new avatars. So I made a few from The Silent Spy and put them up. I'm still working on some more...
The most important random message I have for you: visit our web site tomorrow sometime after lunch. Very interesting things to come!
While many of our awesome fans eagerly await the arrival of our next game, Nancy Drew: The Shattered Medallion, they keep themselves busy with other Nancy Drew-related things.
This fan on Tumblr posted a video of herself playing the old Nancy Drew theme song on her accordion! Check it out here.
Her Interactive received a little more attention this last week when we had a vlogger (and now TV show guy) highlighted our latest game, The Silent Spy. Check it out here as I show him around the game!
As for the weekend puzzle, it looks like I can't read my own handwriting. My "a"s look like "c"s... The Sa was supposed to be Sc. Bad detective points for me. So I drew a sad face.
Anyways, the letters were periodic table elements. You can see the solution in the above image. The atomic numbers of the elements translate into the alphabet, which in turn spells out [Team Tui] in reference to our next game.
Howdy all! Yesterday was a vacation day for me. We are right in between game launches, so there aren't very many new things to share about the latest game...yet.
There are game launch seasons, holiday seasons, and summertime, but then here at Her Interactive I also like add the "quiet" season. It's really the season for our fans to replay games, get caught up on older games that haven't been played yet, reading Nancy Drew books, and so on. This is the season where we must wait what seems like foreeeeeeever until we get to announce information about the next game.
I was replaying SPY last week. COOKIES!!
In this season for rumors, we leave you with only the teaser for the next game. Well...and replicated images from that teaser which are now on the merchandise store. What are your thoughts or guesses of what MED could be like? Do you have any ideas what sort of characters will be in the game? What Nancy and Greg George will be challenged with?
I don't know if I should be mad or thrilled that a certain someone whom I am a HUGE fan of hacked into my computer and took over my work. I suppose I should be more worried about him leaking information that he *could* have found opened on my computer... we'll see. I'll have to keep a close eye on any of our secrets getting out too soon.
**Edited** Too late. He must have uploaded all of the art from the Flying Cow Productions up to the merchandise store for me. Well, thanks! That saved me a bit of time...even though these images are up a bit early...
Hmm.. on another distracted note...I wonder if I can film anything going on in the office to make videos for later...?
Oh! We had a fan send in some art, so we have to share it with you. The excitement for The Silent Spy is still evident!
I can't talk long, we are working on a few projects here and some involve large files, so if I have a few programs open and running these at the same time...it could freeze, or worse: crash. In a nutshell, we showed off The Silent Spy today to a visitor with a video camera, and I've been working on images for the merchandise store, and I overheard something about illustrations and captions from one of the artists...
Anyways, I gotta run! Computer is doing something weird.. and I just lost my emails...
Hey all, I was out sick yesterday. :( But now I'm back a ready to dive into the latest Nancy Drew game we are currently working on.
While I get to see everything and play the game as we work on it, just about all of you are eagerly awaiting more information. Don't worry, we will hide clues here and there... and of course tease you as we go. Because we like to keep secrets. And... well... we also like to reveal our secrets, too! All in good time.
As many of our fans wait, they are enjoying the latest mystery and everything about it: The Silent Spy. Check out Samantha's fan video below. If you were not aware, you get a free digital copy of the sheet music to "Kate's Theme" track when you purchase The Silent Spy soundtrack. Samantha teaches you how to play it on the piano here:
Thanks for sharing this Samantha! This is my favorite track and someday would like to play this myself!
Check it out! We are having our first annual Nancy Drew cookie making & decorating contest this month! Learn more about this contest here.
So! Any idea on a great cookie design? I think I might make gingerbread cookies...but not sure how to decorate them yet.
Let's see, in how many games have we been able to eat or bake cookies? Well, of course there are the jam cookies in The Silent Spy that you get to decorate (and eat). There is also the mint chocolate chip cookies you must bake in Danger by Design, and you heat up chocolate chip cookies in Warnings at Waverly Academy. Hmmm... were there any other games? I can think of cake and parfaits, but no more cookies.
For those of you who like to collect the boxes to add to your shelf, the Nancy Drew games (all physical) are now on sale! Check it out below and shop here!
Also, we received an order from our merchandise store today. I got really excited and was thrilled to show off the Cathedral Logo mouse pad (in real life) to the very artist who made this for Ewan in The Silent Spy (in game):
Are there any items in the merchandise store that you would put on your wish list?
How was everyone's Thanksgiving weekend? I know I had a super great holiday break!
'Tis the season for crazy shopping! I hope those of you who ventured out after Thanksgiving to do some big sale shopping didn't get hurt, and I hope you got enough rest, too. I went out only once to get one gift, but when it comes to shopping, the best deals (I think) are on Cyber Monday (today).
These digital/online sales are where you can peruse the specific gifts to add to your wish list or get for a friend or family member, whilst in your pajamas and avoiding crazy-eyed stampeding shoppers.
Today is the last day to get 50% off your digital download games from our store! (If you want to, you can always copy the files to a disk or hard drive or flash drive to save it). You can shop here.
On a side note, I've been working with cookies. That is, I'm making digital cookies from The Silen Spy. This image below is what I'm working on for our merchandise store. I haven't decided yet if I prefer the trio of the same star cookies, or a trio of different cookies...
Looks like a few of you solved the puzzle! Congrats! The two clues provided (puzzle = keyword, and "no q") refers to a Playfair Cipher. Using the letters given, it decodes to these words [Creating a Character on Monday]. I especially like one person's theory on the message boards to what this means...he/she is spot on!
But alas, we have a short week this week for Thanksgiving break, and I got backed up with more important things. The *something* I was referring to in the puzzle will have to wait until tomorrow. :(
As for today, I was reading through the captions on Facebook and had to stop mid-way. Why? So much cookie talk and I HAD to go and get some cookies to enjoy while reading the rest of the captions.
Oh cookies...how I love them. I especially like to stare at the beautifully decorated cookies we get to make in The Silent Spy. I may just have to make some of these one day: a sugar cookie filled with jam topped with icing and sprinkles. Extravagant!
Oh wow, I just realized I added a clue to the *thing* I'm working on, releasing tomorrow...
Another part of what I'm working on this week had me looking through Kate Drew's 3D model, particularly the sample models that our character designer creates for our animators:
Since there really aren't many descriptions in the Nancy Drew books to go off on, we were able to design Kate how we imagined her to be. We had a little fun! We won't be showing Nancy in our games, but we wanted to "show" what she could look like through how her mom appears -- although Kate is in her 30s here.Kate is pretty much a 30-year-old Nancy Drew. So to speak.
I have more close-ups of Kate coming soon! Or better yet, if you want to see her animated, play The Silent Spy!
Are you on Facebook? We have another caption contest starting today! Head over to participate for a chance to win a prize! (Contest ends Monday).
Some of you have already noticed, but we posted a new video to our YouTube channel on Saturday! It's the start of a new series where we share with you real-life tips and examples on how to be like Nancy Drew, or to put "Drew" as a verb, "How to Nancy Drew".
We already have a short list that includes picking locks, finding secret rooms, and dusting for fingerprints, but we are always up for suggestions! Comment to this post below (or in the Blogs & Tweets forum on the message boards) with any and all ideas of the different Nancy Drew skills we could show you. What sort of things does Nancy do while on a case?
On another note, it looks like several of you correctly identified the weekend puzzle in the previous post, which says [New old character]. This is a reference to next game, and the discussions, comments and rumors I see are fun! Some guesses are valid, but it isn't the exact *someone* I'm secretly referring to. Another guesser is spot on.
There is something we do/do not do when building up the suspense. Might I suggest looking at GTH and SPY again? Something is either there or totally not there...
Does this make any sense? I hope not, because whatever I'm talking about is still a secret!
~Little Jackalope~
For those of you who have not played The Silent Spy, you should totally play it! For those who have, you may recognize this image below. It is a close up of Ewan's desk.
See that awesome Cathedral mouse pad? I dove into the artists' archives and grab a copy of this very mouse pad design created by artist Jayme. This image is now available in the merchandise store! You know what that means? Not only could you put it on a t-shirt, phone case, pillowcase, and photo panels shown below...
...but you can put it on, of course, a mouse pad! This means you pretty much get to purchase Ewan's very own mouse pad for your own secret office! Yep, I love it when you can purchase actual items from the games.
We posted this Nancy Drew moment from The Silent Spy today:
To poke fun at Nancy, she is always collecting things. Things that are immediately available and things that belong to other people. Pretty much everything in sight! We could call her a kleptomaniac, but really! Don't we, ourselves, enjoy collecting things in the games?
To be fair, there are a lot of broken things or things that are missing some parts. Wouldn't it be our duty to put them back where they all go properly? This is a proud job for us! Outsiders of the Nancy Drew universe may say something like "Hey, why did you just steal those cards?" and we can respond with a rational answer like "They are an incomplete set! I need to take them to where the remaining card(s) are so that they are complete. It's Nancy Drew logic." And we crazy Nancy Drew nerds would understand.
However, it is a little different when there are extra elements available for grabs in the games, like lots of food to try, or bonus charms or souvenirs to purchase. While some simply want to collect things and see what cool toys and gadgets are available, others like to see if they get an award for collecting everything...
At times I do "fangirl" over little things, in both our games and in the outside world. One of the best moments in The Silent Spy was seeing Nancy's baby picture with Kate:
Other things can be questionable. While some people find a few moments in a game that make you go "Awwww!" other people may find it totally creepy. For one example, the adorable "Suki" robotic cat in Shadow at the Water's Edge. To roughly quote Bess: "I don't know if they're creepy, or cute, but I love them just the same!"
Today's "Awww!" moment is brought to you by our Lead Tester and Designer, who recently returned from a trip to South Africa. Look at what a great snapshot they captured while down there! A baby leopard!
Hmm... I wonder if I convince the design team to make a game set in that location, or at least someplace with wild jungle or safari types of animals...
~Little Jackalope~
I thought I'd grab a screen shot to share with you to tease what I'm working on right now:
Also, it looks like a bunch of you were able to find the secret message in the weekend puzzle! Congrats! Since there were only a few games you had trouble identifying, I'll go ahead and post the entire answer:
Once you have correctly identified the games, count the number of letters in the title to get a letter for the message. The end result will say [Real father and daughter voices]. This means our actors for Carson and young Nancy. Too cool, right? XD
Last June some Her Interactive team members traveled across the bridge to Seattle, where our favorite local sound recording studio is (it's right near the Safeco baseball field). At the time, I couldn't really share with or show you much since The Silent Spy was still kind of a secret.
The team got together and sang songs and cheered as if we were watching a sports game on TV, chattering away and such. This audio was used at the Ten Raven pub at Giffnock, as well as for the halls outside of the hotel room across the courtyard. The lady you hear singing is actually our tech support! So if you ever have game installation issues and call her, that's her voice you heard! ;)
I was lucky to get a very small part in the game, as some of you guessed correctly. :) I was the cookie lady at the deli in the courtyard. For a little bonus, one of our awesome artists, Jami, modeled a Little Jackalope charm for me in the game! This is hung up in the deli, as well as could be purchased at the souvenir machine in the station.
A few production screenshots Jami took before it went into the game:
I love seeing game references in real life, such as nautical flags, antique clocks, identifying cloud names and so on. Experiencing game sequences is just as exciting, like trying gumbo, dressing up as Samantha Quick from VEN, or actually discovering a real-life secret compartment in a desk. I'm always looking for game elements out in the real world.
Here are a few things outside of the games:
~Lauren dressed up as Nancy Drew for Halloween!~
~Another fan has started a merchandise collection surrounding game elements~
~I found a jam cookie from The Silent Spy! It was delicious!~
Have you found some Nancy Drew things out in the real world?
Also, do you remember this post from June? I'll reveal the secrets to what we were doing up there, soon.
~Little Jackalope~
