Nancy Drew is no stranger to the adventure genre. She has been a regular staple in the adventure game market since her first PC adventure, Secrets Can Kill, in 1998. All of the games (seventeen of them so far) have been developed by Her Interactive, and while there have been some minor changes to the games throughout the years with regard to graphics and interface, fans of the Nancy Drew series have a good idea what to expect when they play one of these adventures. But now Nancy Drew has finally made her debut on the Nintendo DS in The Deadly Secret of Olde World Park, and the game looks and plays much differently than its PC predecessors, which is hardly surprising considering it was made by an entirely different developer altogether.

In The Deadly Secret of Olde World Park, Nancy’s best friend Bess is participating in the ribbon cutting ceremony of a new theme park, built by the billionaire Thaddeus Beaumont. The problem is, Beaumont has gone missing and Bess may not be able to cut the ribbon, as her dress and park pass are gone as well. Who better to find those lost items for Bess, of course, than Nancy Drew? But once Nancy sets out to find the dress, she finds other things are amiss at the park. With her boyfriend Ned as her trusty driver, she determines to find out what’s going on at the park and learn about the missing Thaddeus Beaumont while she's at it.

The contrast from the PC titles is apparent right from the start. Deadly Secret is displayed using third-person perspective, so finally you can see Nancy as you control her directly. Naturally, playing on the DS also brings some inherent interface differences. The top screen is used to display the actual locations, cartoon stills and dialogue. The bottom screen features a box that can be toggled to display Nancy’s clue journal (containing her list of tasks) or inventory. It also displays the various mini-games you'll encounter in your travels. Using the D-pad to move Nancy is quite intuitive and easy, and interactive hotspots are very clearly marked by various icons. The stylus is used to choose dialogue options and interact with some of the mini-games, though both the D-pad and buttons are also used at times during the latter.

Along with Nancy, you'll meet up with Bess, George, Ned and even Nancy’s father, plus a variety of new characters specifically related to the mystery at hand. All of the characters are presented in a series of still cartoon illustrations. The stills are initially effective in conveying the emotions of the characters, but before long the limited set of panels gets a bit repetitive. What's worse is that the dialogue boxes too often obscure the face of the character that is speaking, and like most DS titles, there are no voiceovers to avoid them. The music is composed of a few tracks that play throughout the game, and only really varies between tense situations and more relaxed moments in the game. As with so many other elements of the game, it soon becomes repetitive and I often tuned it out.

Dialogue options are represented by icons, and clicking on each icon will open up a conversation on that topic. Some characters are unwilling to talk to you at first, or only about certain subjects. In order to learn what you need, a conversation mini-game must be played. Strangely, at times the people you would expect not to be willing to talk to you are more than willing, while others that appear friendly require a conversation mini-game to proceed, making the process seem entirely random. The games get harder the less another character wants to talk to you. Instructions on how to play are given before each game and are repeated every time you play them. These can get a little tedious to click through and it would be nice to have the option to bypass the instructions after the first time through a particular activity.

Despite how Nancy explains them, these mini-games don’t really have anything to do with changing the mood of the person you are trying to talk to, and they consist of such tasks as matching symbols, a slider puzzle, or a pathfinding game. There are five to choose from, but only one is available to you at the start, with the others unlocked as the game progresses. The games are pretty straightforward but they are also timed affairs. Fortunately, the timer is generous, and while I generally failed the very first time I tried each game, I quickly got the hang of them with the exception of the slider puzzle game. The first slider I tried was easy, but the subsequent puzzle was more difficult and I couldn’t figure it out before the timer ran out. I’ve played many a slider puzzle in other adventure games but those have never been timed, so I often avoided that particular mini-game here. In fact, I found myself only playing two or three of the games regularly, and those soon got repetitive as characters were often unwilling to talk. In case you don't get your fill during the main adventure, however, once the games are unlocked, they can be played as standalone activities.