Dare to play
Location: At home
Date Played: May 2024
Team size: We recommend 1-2
Duration: ~20 hours
Price: $32
REA Reaction
Mystery of the Seven Keys was the 34th installment in the Nancy Drew adventure games series by Her Interactive, 26 years after their first release Secrets Can Kill. I have been a huge fan of this series since 2000 (at the age of seven), starting with the 3rd game in the series Message in a Haunted Mansion. Nancy Drew games were my first foray into point-and-click puzzle games. Although I have now played countless other point-and click-games, the Nancy Drew franchise stood out for its ability to combine puzzles with a compelling story told through dialogue and thematic puzzles/ tasks.
From 2000-2015, I could count on 1-2 new Nancy Drew mysteries per year. This culminated in the 32nd, and my favorite game in the series, Sea of Darkness, which contained a brilliant mix of puzzles, story, and graphics. In fact, I still find myself to this day singing the sea shanty written for that game. In those days, each Nancy Drew game teased the trailer to the next game. Upon finishing Sea of Darkness I grew excited for the 33rd game in the series, Midnight in Salem. However, Midnight in Salem was not released for another four years (2019) due to internal chaos within Her Interactive: a new CEO without game development experience, staff layoffs (including the voice actor of Nancy Drew), and a push to shift from Her Interactive's proprietary game engine to Unity.
I purchased Midnight in Salem on its release date and had finished the game by the next day. I was incredibly disappointed. After such a long wait, I thought Nancy Drew games were finally back. Instead I found myself playing a very short Nancy Drew game with lengthy dialogue and a few simplistic puzzles. Since there was no trailer at the end of the game, I assumed that was the final game of the series. Imagine my surprise when Mystery of the Seven Keys was announced on April 1st, 2023.... and it wasn't a joke!
Mystery of the Seven Keys took me, as Nancy, to the city of Prague to investigate the theft of a multitude of gemstones from a necklace dating to some of the oldest rulers of Prague. The owner of the necklace, a woman named Adela Čzerná, had specifically called Nancy in to help based on her reputation as a detective. The graphics of the game were beautiful and did a great job implementing a modern movement scheme characteristic of video games (WASD + mouse). A classic point-and-click movement scheme was also available; however, I found this to be very difficult to use due to the vast number of movement directions. Additionally, the dialogue added to and progressed the story, but did not dominate the game, another marked improvement from Midnight in Salem. However, there were some moments where the intonation of the voice actors was jarring.
The vast number of puzzles and substantial length of Mystery of the Seven Keys was also reminiscent of earlier Nancy Drew titles. I played this game over the course of a week spending approximately 20 hours, as advertised. However, for all of the improvements, I thought the puzzle design in Mystery of the Seven Keys was lacking. I became frustrated with four puzzles specifically due to a lack of clear connections between puzzle components and, in the case of an in-game logic puzzle, a multitude of possible solutions. Additionally, hints to help with solving these ambiguous puzzles are only available when playing as an Amateur detective or from the downloadable strategy guide included with the game purchase. Therefore, I highly recommend playing at Amateur level for your first play through (I started at Master level and switched about a quarter of the way in). The "hacking" puzzles also became a bit tedious and repetitive by the eighth one. However, for each puzzle with manufactured difficulty due to lack of clarity, there were also several well designed, logical, medium-difficulty puzzles of a wide variety of types.
Finally, triggering game progression has consistently been one downside to all Nancy Drew games, including Mystery of the Seven Keys. Throughout the franchise I have often been uncertain how to progress because I haven't called the right person on the phone at the right time to trigger the next cut scene. This problem was also alleviated by playing at the Amateur detective level, which provided direction on what to do next throughout the game through the inclusion of a task list. However, I still found one trigger in Mystery of the Seven Keys to be particularly disappointing because the action was extremely minor (rotating two inventory items), not on the task list, and led to the last puzzle and an alternative ending. In fact, I had deduced the conclusion much earlier, but specifically had to look online for the steps necessary to lead Nancy to the same conclusion within the game.
In summary, the latest release of Mystery of the Seven Keys has allowed Her Interactive to redeem themselves somewhat from Midnight in Salem. The graphics and new movement style are excellent, the dialogue enhanced the story, and the game was lengthy and filled with puzzles of a wide variety of types. However, the inclusion of illogical or unclear puzzles makes it clear that the Nancy Drew franchise still has room to improve to get back to the quality of Sea of Darkness.
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