After reaching the midpoint, Nancy's investigation kicks up a notch with the puzzles and snooping. This is also where, in applicable games, she evades her first/major (ie not a falling object) death at the hand of the culprit (DOG and the burning shed, CAR and the roller coaster) or gets clobbered over the head and knocked out (TRT). Nancy discovers something that changes the direction of the investigation. Typically, you hit this point by the end of the first third and kicks off the second act. You also dig up the motivations and secrets that your suspects are keeping that may implicate them as the culprit(s).

This is your hardcore story building, usually where they wrap up the secondary plotlines and refocus on the primary mystery at hand. Nancy is given a list of chore puzzles (or stumbles upon them while snooping) that she needs to complete, which usually take her all over the game map in order to meet your suspects. Very rarely, there is a delay in the intro to the mystery (SSH and the stolen carving), but all are established in the first quarter to third of the game. Sometimes the mystery is outright stated (MHM and the accidents), sometimes we're thrust into it shortly following the exposition (CRY and the skeleton man attack).

Here, we get a breakdown of where we are and why we're here, usually in letter form (earlier games) or the case file dossier (later games), followed by what the mystery actually is. Here's my breakdown of the Nancy Drew narrative design for the standard adventure game series:

Upcoming nancy drew game