Making the Game
| Lately, we've been reading your letters and emails (and we SEE the ruckus you're creating on the bulletin board!) and we're delighted to hear that so many of you whip-smart detectives are enjoying the historical aspect of our games. You know that the deeper Nancy Drew gets into a mystery, the more she finds out about intrigues and dramas, romances and betrayals, that happened long before the villain-of-the-moment started causing trouble in Nancy's 21st Century world. (It's kind of like cleaning your room: the more you clean, the more mess you find, you know?) Many of you have heard that the historical component to our upcoming game, "Treasure in the Royal Tower," revolves around Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France at the time of the French Revolution. Some of you have expressed your heart's desire: "If only the history in the games were true." Well don't despair, dear players! We have good news for you: while the bottom line is that this is a fictional game and not a textbook, the history in the game is more true than you might think! Here's the deal: When we start designing a new game, we try to stay as true to the original mystery as we can, but we just can't resist putting in puzzles and gadgets and trap doors and secret rooms--everything we can think of to make the game more fun to play and the mystery harder to solve. With the historical material, we go through a similar process. We do lots of research on the textbook facts to make sure we have them straight and we stick with them as much as possible. Sometimes we have to "dress up" the story of history a little to make it work with our game and our characters. For example, we might take a real historical figure and "make up" a letter that she wrote. The facts in the letter would still be true even though she never actually wrote this letter in real life. It's our way of bringing the information to you in a way that's fun to discover and makes you feel close to the character. The thing you should know is, We always remain true to the spirit of the history or the historical figures we represent. Filmmakers and novelists do this too. It's just part of making a true story fun and interesting to watch or read. You can still learn a lot from these sources about historical people and the times they lived in. So we thought we'd challenge you to a little detective work: Below you can read up on Marie Antoinette--it's pure textbook!--and when you play the new game, it'll be up to you to figure out which of the names belong to real people and which are fictional, which of the historical incidents are perfectly accurate and which ones have been "dressed up" for the ski holiday at Wickford Castle.
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