Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness () (pc) [Any %] [Segmented] [Amateur Sleuth] [0:33:38]
Run Information
Completion Date Sept. 8, 2015
State Published
Runner Michael 'arglefumph' Gray
Segments 8
Links
Verification Thread
Run Comments

Nancy Drew is awesome.

A copy of this run with my commentary is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9m10ul3Dl0

My computer is two years older than the game, so the hardest part of the speedrun was getting the game to record without slowing down the game. With long segments like segment 6, it's not uncommon to have 1-2 minutes of lost time, simply because the game slowed down during navigation.

The two most obvious mistakes in this run examples are the navigation errors at the end of segment four, and the misclick on the music box, at the end of segment six. Both errors cost 1-2 seconds. But these are still my fastest speeds, by far, because they have no slowdown.

Another timewaster, which is unavoidable, is waiting for Gunnar to reappear in the pub in segment 6. He reappears after three minutes of real time. The route is designed so you solve seven puzzles AND hear a musical number during this waiting period. I got through the puzzles extremely quickly, and so I had to wait a comparatively long time (twenty seconds) for Gunnar to reappear.

This only happened to me about four times, out of sixty; with every other attempt, there was no wait for Gunnar to reappear, because game slowdown ate up at least twenty seconds.

I think the best way around the "mandatory wait for Gunnar" problem would be to re-route the run, so you do eight puzzles instead of seven. Either the dartboard puzzle or the crow's nest puzzle would work nicely here. The downside being that both those puzzles are over thirty seconds long, and you'd have to do backtracking with that route (either a backtrack to Soren's, or backtracking to the dartboard puzzle later to solve the other puzzles there).

Segment 1 - 1:53.6
Segment 2 - 9
Segment 3 - 7.03
Segment 4 - 6:35.4
Segment 5 - 1:01.73
Segment 6 - 12:36.83
Segment 7 - 7:35.97
Segment 8 - 3:52.17

Total: 33.51.73