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Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy Hints
How do I play the drums?
1 of 9: After you've been to the constellation stones and looked at them closely --
2 of 9: -- come talk to Donal about them, and he'll offer you a book on Ogham runes in exchange for some drumming. Boy, the band must be pretty desperate if they'll accept -- well, never mind.
3 of 9: After Seamus explains how the thing works, click on the bodhran (the drum) to get started. What you're going to be doing here is watching that line running across the top of the screen for dots the same color as the five parts of the drum (right, left, top, bottom, center). When the dot reaches the empty circle at the right, that's your cue to hit that part of the drum.
4 of 9: There are two ways to do this. You can either pick up the drumstick and click on the part of the drum you want, or you can use the arrow keys and the spacebar -- that is, push the up arrow to strike the top part of the drum, and so on.
5 of 9: At the bottom right of the screen, there's a counter showing how many times you've hit the drum correctly. If you miss a beat or otherwise get it wrong, the number goes down. You need to get at least 70 on the counter to make Donal happy enough to give you the book.
6 of 9: This game can be pretty frustrating the first time through, I know; the beats come at you so fast, and then they're gone again before you can figure out where you are. If you can't do it the first time, just try again, and this time you'll get a different tune that might be easier. Also, the second time through it's a lot easier to remember what colors go with what arrows.
7 of 9: Also, if you look at the dots, you can see that each one has a mark on it showing you which part of the drum it belongs to. That is, the purple dot has a mark on the right, the red one has a mark on the top, and so on.
8 of 9: Oh, and don't worry about the way the rhythm fits in with the actual song. In theory it probably is connected in some fashion, but you don't have to actually beat in time with the tune or anything; just concentrate on those dots on the top of the screen.
9 of 9: If you need more tokens, you can play the drums again as often as you like. Just face Donal and click on the drum to his left to start.
