Nancy Drew Games
Secret of the Old Clock Walkthrough
Secret of the Old Clock Cheats
Secret of the Old Clock Spoilers
This is the section for commentary about the game that would probably ruin your playing of it, so please go back to the low-spoiler
Secret of the Old Clock Hints if you haven't played the game yet.
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If you have read that page already, and you still have questions remaining, then read on:
Possible Deaths in Secret of the Old Clock
Plot Holes in Secret of the Old Clock
Easter Eggs and Optional Actions
Plot Summary and Character Subplots
The Backseat Game Designer
Secret of the Old Clock Death Scenarios
This is an unavoidable spoiler, but there is only one possible death in Secret of the Old Clock
You may not have experienced it, and may be curious. (-: So, here's a list:
*You can fall off the rickety bridge to your death, but only if you try to catch the fluttering piece of paper there (as opposed to in the meadow.)
You can also lose the game without dying if Nancy crashes her father's car (by forgetting to tighten the lugnuts); if Topham catches her snooping
around in his house; or if Nancy lets the villain escape in the endgame.
Easter Eggs and Optional Actions
There is an easter egg in Secret of the Old Clock, but it's nothing special... straighten the painting in Emily's room ten times to unlock it.
(You can only do this between the time that she complains about the painting and your own discovery of the secret passage, so it's a
very limited window of time... and all it does is
say "I'm just tickled pink!" at you, which must be some kind of injoke most of us are not privy to. :-)
There are many references to movies and novels along Nancy's telegraph route, including "Little Shop of Horrors" at the nursery,
"Friday the 13th" at the camp, "Animal Farm" at the dairy, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" at the farm, "Jane Eyre" at the academy,
"The Jungle" at the factory, and "Petticoat Junction" at the station. This is particularly campy given that four of these are references
to things that happened after the 1930's, and so are anachronistic to the game. There were also apparently several references to early
Nancy Drew novels in this game, but the only one I got Nancy asking "Did this use to be called Brewster Academy?" -- that being the
name of the academy in the books.
There are also a number of actions you can take in the game which are entirely optional to the plot. To give them a try, follow this link:
Secret of the Old Clock Options.
Spoilers: Plot Holes
Secret of the Old Clock is loosely based on two different Nancy Drew books from the 1930's: The Secret of the Old Clock, and
The Mystery at Lilac Inn. The subplot about a forged will came from one book, and the subplot about
stolen jewelry and identity theft came from the other. If you were wondering why there are two villains whose crimes don't seem to have anything
to do with each other at all except for the amazing coincidence that the only piece of evidence about the jewelry theft happens to be locked in with the
will for no plausible reason... well, that's why. It was originally two completely different cases.
Other than the question of why Jane's picture would ever have been in Josiah's vault in the first place, the hybrid plot that resulted is much too simple
to have any holes or loose ends. This is a game with a heavy reliance on
coincidence and particularly unbelievable puzzle mechanisms (there's no way Josiah's mini-golf course could possibly have known how many strokes it
took you to sink the ball unless it was manned by ghosts, for example,) but if you're willing to suspend that much disbelief, nothing else in the game
was confusing.
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