Nancy Drew: Trail of the Twister

Nancy Drew: Trail of the Twister is the twenty-second game in Her Interactive’s series. Nancy joins a storm-chasing team on an Oklahoma farm competing for a hundred-million-dollar prize, and finds that the team’s run of bad luck is somebody’s doing. This walkthrough covers the six days of the Junior Detective game, all three Easter eggs and every award, with the Senior Detective puzzles noted at the end.

How the game plays

• Read What Every Detective Should Know. Travel is by car with a GPS navigator; your phone has a camera. The inventory is unchanged; directions are from the player’s viewpoint. Read the case file to the end; click the plane ticket to start.
• The game runs over six days at your own pace; Debbie ends each day once its tasks are done. Saves live in Documents\Trail of the Twister. Played on Junior Detective.

Awards

• Big Spender: price is no object.
• Candy Dish: treat everyone around you.
• TV Fan: watch television.
• Eternal Pessimist / Optimist: always expecting trouble, or finding the good in everything.
• Homesteader: defend your land.
• Smarty Pants: a perfect test.
• Traveller: frequent trips round Oklahoma’s sights.
• Cloud Expert: photograph every cloud type.
• Super Sleuth: examine everything thoroughly.
• Sweet Tooth: a great love of sweets.
• Know-It-All: the closing quiz.
• Easter Egg: top secret.

Day one

The farm

Rain pours; hurry to the house. The porch is blocked by wind-blown junk: look down and click the items to move them aside. Under it, a metal box unlike the rest, with money and a note; take it. Inside, read Debbie’s apology and first tasks on the banister. Sort the catalogue: read her instructions on the cabinet, drag the labelled tabs into the frames as told, then put each folder in its slot. Under the folders, a chocolate wrapper: bin it, and take the receipt for three packs of corn from the bin. A mouse flees. At the television left of the door, open the small panel top right and switch it on and off several times to glimpse other Nancy Drew games through the static (for the award). On the coffee table, the book and a pa-cent, which shows top left. Through the grey door to the basement, left along the curved arrow, and examine everything for the Super Sleuth award. Under the table right of the paper bag, the sheet of weather symbols, for later. Left, a clipping, another mouse on the top shelf, and in a cardboard box the observation log, for later. The green bag on the left holds a family photo. At the laptop by the sink, read the photo-upload instructions.

Save here so you can retake the test if you slip. Click the monitor, left icon, the Tornado Test; answer, reading the correct information after each. Perfect score for the award. Afterwards you are in Scott Varnell‘s office; he gives two tasks. Look at the tornado map on the wall and read the newspaper interview about Betsy Oaks’s death. Ask Scott more; he stops you at the door with questions. On the left shelf, the radio announces Krolmeister’s universal lockpicks; note the corn on the floor under the shelves. Upstairs in the dining room meet Debbie, the team manager; take her task and give her the box of money and the note. Turn to the board and place the coloured circles, sirens of different range, so their coverage overlaps across the map. Say it aloud when done: Scott’s first task. Back in the basement, Tornado Test question 5, Storm Preparation, option A, lists the emergency kit: water, sugar, salt, granola bars, batteries, torch, can opener, toothpaste, duct tape, disinfectant. Then the Gallery icon: cloud photos with codes bottom left. Left, meet Frosty and talk about everything. Outside, pick a car, press the yellow GPS icon, pick Farm as origin and Ma and Pa’s store as destination, Enter; memorise the route, then drive with the left button held, dodging traffic and watching the life bar.

The store

Talk to the owner about everything; take the second pa-cent from the counter. Buy the whole emergency list within the $32.50 you hold (shown top left once you start). Water from the bottom shelf of the fridge with the 60% yellow tag. Read the local paper on the right: two teams chase a hundred-million-dollar prize; the article on Scott’s research on the left. Along the counter, right: sugar, salt, toothpaste; ahead right, torch and batteries; granola bars; tape and can opener; disinfectant. To return a wrong item, open the inventory, click the basket, click the item. Check the basket against the list and talk to the shopkeeper to pay. Into the museum: the Dust Bowl, the tornado facts that debunk myths, the homesteaders, whose stand is missing its divining rod; take the pa-cent. Tell the owner about the theft.

The farm

Drive back (check the GPS map if lost). Right into the barn: a voice asks you to fix the LED display in the car; click the car and listen to the mechanic: no two consecutive numbers may touch in any direction. Place the numbered fuses accordingly. Talk to Chase Relerford about everything; he explains earning pa-cents. On the workbench left, the Canute Truth article “Land Rush, New Style”. At the desk with fan parts, scare the mouse, read the instructions, click the box of weather-balloon boards: connect wires, starting from the fans with the highest numbers and attaching from every free side, by elimination; tasks vary; quit any time. Click the jar for your pa-cents. Left, the cooling hose with the hole Chase mentioned. Outside, phone Krolmeister about everything (Prudence Rutherford recommended you) and the Hardy Boys. In the basement, put the emergency kit in the green bag. Out, right from the door to the cornfield: open the hatch, take pa-cents, click the panel and open the valves to meet the stated conditions until the green light comes on: the irrigation runs. Try Scott’s room: Debbie sends you to bed. Upstairs.

Day two

Tasks from Debbie. In the cornfield, look left at the prairie dogs and pick up pa-cents; right, the mirror sensor: turn the mirrors to send the red beam to the red sensor and the blue to the blue. Overhear Debbie and Frosty, and take Krolmeister’s call about your suspicions. Take the blue car; Frosty joins. Route to the windmill; take out the phone camera, clouds appear, Take Photo, Frosty comments. Visit every cloud-marked spot on the map, leaving and re-entering to change the clouds, and photograph. At the laptop in the basement, click the cable on the right to connect the phone, Gallery, Camera, Upload. Frosty’s cloud journal ticks off the types you have; upload one at a time, checking the journal, deleting duplicates; location does not matter; five types today. Talk to Frosty, who asks you to take his player to Chase. Debbie calls bedtime, but first the barn: Chase is grumbling; give him the player. Bed. At night, noise: downstairs, a figure bends over the table in the lightning; left along the curved arrow, through the door, down to the basement.

Day three

Debbie’s task: relocate the prairie dogs. Scott’s: humane mouse removal. From the book on the coffee table pull the invitation addressed to Debbie and read it all. In the barn, ask Chase about catching prairie dogs and take the hose to swap for the right size. At the store, Pa sets two tasks for the hose and a mousetrap. Buy the cheapest box of sweets and click the empty box: pack the sweets so no space remains, rotating with the right button. Tell Pa: the white hose. In the museum, the Trail of Tears stand, then the Fujita scale: set numbers and pictures on the old F scale and compare with the EF scale, using Scott’s wall map (EF wind speeds 65 to 85 up to 211 and over) and test question 7. Minimum values in the top boxes, each following the last; pictures on the right. Overhear Pa with Brooke, the rival team’s leader. The arcade game Land Rush right of the stand pays pa-cents; 9,999 points unlocks an Easter egg. Pay five coins at the slot, pick a level: you are a settler against a land-grabber; click the biggest area first, then cut vertically to seal your half; the rival must take his own half first. After the four levels, restart level four, take the biggest cells, quit at once and collect as for a finished round. Repeat to 9,999.

Easter egg one

With the points, click the box left of the counter, the Hurricane Globe, for a token; in the museum, drop it in the Croleny Battle stand, watch the film, take the egg.

Pa allows the mousetrap: right of the Dust Bowl stand. Buy three cheese treats for bait; for the awards, buy the cheapest sweets to hand round, one of every sweet, and overeat to fainting three times. Talk to Pa and offer him a sweet from his own shop. At the farm, Chase’s vacuum for prairie dogs is ready. Left of the hatch in the cornfield, use it on the burrows, aiming the nozzle and clicking when several show at once. Behind the barn, set it down and release them; at the yellow roses, a glint: a tin box with a letter, essential later. Talk to Scott; under the radio shelf set the trap by the grain and bait it from the sweets bag top left (open the bag without the trap set and Nancy just eats). The mouse game: mice come from the left towards the spinning central ring; set the central gate horizontal; when a mouse is on the ring, turn it so the gate stands vertical and the mouse runs into a branch; reset and repeat. Take the trap; Scott says release them at the shed. Offer him a sweet; turn the radio knob. Question Debbie. Drive to the shed, set the cage at the door, release. Debbie sends you and Frosty after a storm in the blue car: GPS to the Observation Point, north-west. Frosty’s camera fails: Instructions top left; place black and red numbers 1 to 88 so each touches the last horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Tell him. In Scott’s office you are accused of sabotage; Frosty is not in the basement; Debbie sends you to bed.

Day four

Talk to Debbie, have it out with Frosty, then the barn: Chase wants a gearbox assembled, gears of the right size on three shafts, teeth touching, none overlapping; bottom row, then two on the middle, then the top; press the button. Take the estimate from Mabel Rose’s garage for Scott, give Chase a sweet and return the vacuum. Deliver the envelope; Frosty screams in the basement: mice. Trap right of the laptop table, bait, play. Drive to the shed; put a cheese treat under the door first, bait for an egg, then release the mice (the other way round and Nancy eats it). Cloud hunting today: two photos on this sunny day, cumulus at an observation point, cirrus at the windmill, or lose them; upload and check the journal. GPS to the antennas: reassemble them jigsaw-style, right button rotates, placed parts go inactive, a red light on top when complete; the second antenna is the model and also lost two parts. Say so. You find a small office key, and a film puts you near the tornado; the GPS was reprogrammed and its directions cannot be trusted; drive by your position on its map, or hail gives you a second chance. Tell Chase about the GPS; note the tyre tied to the tree; talk to Debbie; pick up the camcorder on the coffee table, open the side and press Play: sound, no picture (needed for the talk with Frosty later). At the shed, the bait has become the second egg. Debbie wants mice caught in the dining room too: trap right of the bin, bait, catch, release at the shed. Bed.

Day five

Debbie’s task. In Scott’s office the smouldering socket is active once everyone has gone chasing: run the red piece from start back to start along every segment once, closing the circuit, crossing intersections twice if needed; start is random. Examine his desk; muffled voices, a glowing phone headset: take it and listen to Scott. Unlock the desk with the key, read the letter. Listen to the radio, move the spools, look at the knife under them. Phone Krolmeister about everything, and the Hardys. In the barn, between the open bonnet and the pillar, note Chase’s muddy boots; the door on the right, pa-cents; the damaged hose again; the toolbox under the computer shelf. Pa phones: mice in the museum. Take cheese from the counter, trap at the hotspot right of the homesteader stand, catch, release at the shed, where the missing hazel rod leans against the wall by an oil puddle; take it.

Easter egg three

On the prairie-dog field, probe the burrows with the rod in turn: one holds the egg.

Tell Pa, return the divining rod to the museum, take his reward. Ask Chase everything: the lightning rod is odd. Talk to everyone in the house; Debbie wants the TV colour tuned: click the screen, open the right panel, turn the knobs under the power switch, one per coloured circle, using the hints in the screen corners; a tone and the button greys out when right; red, then green, then blue. Frosty’s footage plays with another cameraman’s name in the credits, then the set dies. Confront Frosty in the basement. For the last cloud, cirrostratus, go to the windmill. Question Debbie; bed.

Day six

In the big radar truck, GPS to the nearest observation point marked with a cloud. Scott has you tune the Doppler radar: eleven toggles in groups of three, one per group per step, all lamps blue, green button after each: 1, 4, 11; 2, 5, 9; 3, 7, 11; 3, 8, 11. The display dies again: open the side panel, plug the terminals into the sockets top to bottom, testing with the button; green when right. Back at the farm, upload the last cloud (if Upload is grey, delete a duplicate; seven photos before, eight after). Debbie asks you to find Scott. A paper sticks from his locked drawer: unlock, read; find his meeting place. In the basement, the weather-symbol sheet under the sink: moderate steady rain, light hail without thunder, heavy thunderstorm with hail. In the log, find the days matching, with dew point 45 or more for rain and 85 degrees or more for light hail: March 3, 8, 18, 21, 26; April 3, 6, 10, 23, 29; May 6, 12. At Scott’s wall calendar, look at those days and type the letters and digits they show, four at a time: March WM9A, April GV2C, May SH4A. Take the code sheet; at the laptop gallery, all three codes match the windmill photo. Tell Debbie, drive to the windmill, talk to Scott, get hit on the head, wake to a phone call. Leave, Debbie calls; GPS to the Grange theatre. Left to a locked hatch, open it with Debbie’s keys; at the closed doors, open the panel on the right, take the fourth key from the right in the top row, unlock the shelter fast. After the storm, follow the culprit: track the bug bottom right and stay on the stolen car. After the crash, at the shed, take the crowbar on the right and pry the boarded door several times, forward, escape the tornado, ending. Save before the quiz; bloopers after the credits.

Senior Detective

The catalogue, irrigation, camera renogram, gearbox, TV tuning and radar wiring puzzles are harder variants of the same mechanics; the author supplied screenshots only, so work them by the same rules given above.