#34 Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys

The storyline was very well written and thought out. I enjoyed how at one point I thought I was getting close to the finish and then there was a twist of events. It feels very reminiscent of the past games in music and also some gameplay features. I love how there are movie-type clips to change up the scenes. The characters were interesting and a variety of ages was neat. The only thing that bothered me a little was that the npcs were copied and pasted so there were duplicate people. It did not affect the gameplay, so it was only for aesthetic sake. I did notice an option for a smaller crowd, so that helped. Thank you herinteractive for making a game that feels new in technology and yet can satisfy the nostalgia. I think it is a great game to bridge the gap of longtime players and new ones. Beautiful! I can't wait to keep playing to achieve more awards and just because it was a really fun game.

I have played just about every Nancy Drew game and I love them! I love the puzzles and interacting with characters to ultimately solve the mystery. This was a great mystery! However, it needs some help. I usually play the games in master sleuth mode but, I had to restart on amateur detective because I was lost. I had no idea what to do next. Usually if I had this problem I would talk to characters or even call someone but when I tried to do this I wasn't able to talk to anyone. The checklist on amateur detective was the only way I was able to even keep track of what I needed to do. The game play itself was a little frustrating. I could not do the modern mode because it made me motion sick. So I played in classic mode. This took some getting used to because it was still different than the classic games. I had to be in the right spot before looking to my left or right to look at something. There was a time I had to pick up something on the floor and it was difficult to do because I could see it but I wasn't able to click on it.



I also miss the magnifying glass lighting up red. This really helped when I would be double checking things.



The puzzles for this game were interesting. Some of them were great and then some of them were mind boggling. I consulted the walkthrough more this time than any other game. Some of them I still don't understand even after looking at the answer.



Over all I agree with a lot of the other reviews that have been submitted as far as gameplay logic, puzzles, controls, etc. But it was a great storyline and loved the ending! Hoping there will be more!

Congratulations to the team at HER Interactive, KEY is a great improvement from MID—it was fun to play and felt a lot more like a classic ND game to me. As a life-long fan of these games, thanks for all your hard work in keeping the series alive. (Spoilers ahead.)



POSITIVES:

Starting with a technical point, the game ran very smoothly on my computer. It only crashed twice, and it autosaved my progress both times—much improved from MID. I also really liked the inclusion of a point-and-click option, although it did seem a bit like an afterthought (but I imagine it’s hard to incorporate both, so well done!).



Second, I really appreciated the increase in the difficulty and quantity of the puzzles, as well as their general integration into the narrative of the mystery. While I think there is still room for improvement on this front, the puzzles kept me engaged and many struck the right balance of “hard but fun to figure out.” The clock puzzle was one of my favorites, as well as the final key puzzle. I also loved the return to form with some of the busy-work puzzles, like making lattes!



Third, I found the dialogue in this game to be overall helpful in advancing the story. I enjoyed the references to the wider ND universe, and I thought many of the characters were interesting to get to know. I thought the voice acting of the new and old cast of characters (especially Ned, Radek, Elka, and Zane) was generally very good.



Finally, I really liked that the story tried to incorporate historical and cultural elements of its setting into its mysteries and puzzles. That feels very classic ND to me, and I am glad the HER team continued that tradition. The story felt relatively well-thought-out, while keeping some element of the ND light-heartedness. Overall a fun and engaging game!



NEGATIVES:

But this is not just any game—it's a ND game! So there are big shoes to fill. Some areas for improvement stood out to me.



First, I don’t think I’ll ever like the free roam gameplay better than the point-and-click style if it doesn’t actually offer more things to do, stuff to find/pick up, or interesting places to see. When I played KEY, I felt like there were about as many places to go and things to do as some of the least expansive ND games of the past—which is fine, but then why have the free roam? It just made it harder for me to find what I needed to find to progress the story.



Second, while I greatly appreciate the improvements related to puzzles, I still feel like (1) there could be more puzzles overall and (2) there could be more *easier* puzzles, which give items or clues that facilitate solving the bigger, harder puzzles. Some of the satisfaction of a ND game (for me) is the little busy-work puzzles (think room cleaning in ICE, for example) that are satisfying to solve (or just provide red herrings) on your way to the big goals.



Third, there were a few puzzles that I felt like I was unable to solve because I was confused about the instructions or didn’t have enough information, rather than because they were intellectually challenging. The one on Leo’s office wall comes to mind, as well as the pager one (I didn’t know where to start that puzzle). Although this could be player error, having the mouse change when you hover over puzzles to indicate how you are meant to interact with them would also be helpful to bring back (for example, the arrow changing for the crown jewels puzzle).



Fourth, I thought there were some shortcomings related to character development. Something the old ND games do pretty well is misdirection—you get a bit suspicious about every character and then you learn more about them and it gives you reason to doubt your suspicions. This game did that well at times, but I felt that there were several uninteresting characters, like Oskar, Patricie, and Vladéna. More dialogue or characters giving Nancy things to do related to their backstories could help. For example, we learn Oskar has a history of bad things happening at his exhibits. It would have been interesting to confront him about that and have him tell us it’s just a string of bad luck, leading him to ask us for help with this exhibit (as a segue into an exhibit puzzle, for example). (As a side note on characters, while I like the new voice actress for ND, her lines sounded strange in this game.)



Finally, there are some things I miss from classic ND games that I would love to see come back. One example is being able to go into ND’s hotel room. As silly as it is, I loved getting to open her suitcase in the old games, or sleep until the night or the next day for some event to happen. Or to be able to click on useless objects and have them make noise, or to go into the bathrooms. When there aren’t many locations in the game to go to (compare KEY to SAW, for example), making the environment really interactive is important, I think.

I have been absolutely loving playing through the newest installment in the Nancy Drew series. Everything about Mystery of the Seven Keys feels like so much thought went into it to ensure that it was an experience like the ones longtime players have come to expect, but updated for modern systems.



I have been using classic mode and I absolutely love it. For one thing, I suffer from motion sickness so having too much motion control can be a problem for me, so classic mode is great for handling that - I usually can't manage first-person games because of this, but Nancy Drew games were always safe for me to play without getting sick, and the new classic mode perfectly addresses that. It also adds to the feel of this being a classic Nancy game, only updated. Everything about the controls is intuitive and familiar. I also greatly appreciate being able to use the right mouse button to quickly do a 360 scan of an area without having to shift entirely to the new free movement mode. This is manageable for my motion sickness and lets me make sure I'm seeing everything I need to in any given room. I feel like I'm easily able to get the best of both worlds with this control system.



The mystery has been great. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, knowing little about the plot as I jumped in. I always like the spooky Nancies, but I assumed this wouldn't be one. But I've been surprised that there are a few spooky moments with the ghost knight, and there have been some jumpscares as well! The deeper into the story I get, the more excited I get as this is a true Nancy Drew windy mystery.



The puzzles have been great and the expected amount of difficulty. My old Nancy Drew notebook is getting a lot of use as I write down any pertinent clue. As always, I feel too dumb to be able to solve any of these puzzles XD but then the times I get it right, or even partially right, it's always rewarding! And, of course, if I'm totally stuck, I can rely on the strategy guide. The newest strategy guide is a marked improvement over the older ones, where they would give you some cryptic hints but if you couldn't figure it out you'd be stuck unless someone had a walkthrough online. The KEY strategy guide is a true strategy guide - it walks you through everything, gives you some hints to try to get you through it on your own, and then if you're really stuck you can just turn the page and there's the answer. That's been a big help for us Nancy fans who may be morons XD The in-game hint system (I think you need to be on junior detective mode for these?) is also quite helpful, and combined with the strategy guide I've managed to plug along nicely without getting so frustrated that I want to quit.



In other words, even though I mock myself as a moron, these puzzles are great caliber and very challenging. I would easily rank them among all the other great Nancy Drew puzzles over the years.



I like the new voice actors. Obviously we were all attached to Lani after growing up with her voice for decades, but Nancy Drew is a teenage character and Lani is my parents' age. I like the new Nancy - she sounds the right age and I think her acting's good. The actress also seems enthused about the role on social media, which I also appreciate. I'm perfectly content to accept the new era of Nancy with this voice actress. I'm not sure if the other characters' voices have changed (Ned, Frank and Joe, Carson), but whoever they all, they also all sound great.



I think the new graphics look really nice. The character designs, environment designs, etc. also all look great. The game has performed smoothly for me. I had one black screen of death very early on in the game which made me nervous, but the game had autosaved just before that scene so I didn't lose anything. I have not had any issues ever since then, so I'm assuming it was a one-time fluke.



Overall, I am very, very happy with Mystery of the Seven Keys and super excited to be playing a real, true Nancy Drew game again!

I've been playing the Nancy Drew games since I was around 9 years old, and "Mystery of the Seven Keys" (KEY) is definitely a lot more like those classic games than the previous game in the franchise "Midnight in Salem" (MID), which I feel most people will be comparing this game to.

However, if we just compare KEY to the classic games, it does still leave some things to be desired. Don't get me wrong, overall it's a very good game, it just feels like it needs to be a bit more polished to be a great game. Below I’ll go into details of each aspect of the game, but I won’t include any spoilers.





Optimization: 9/10 - First off, optimization… The only reason I'm including this category is because of just how badly MID was optimized, which might cause some people to be sceptical about purchasing this game. Although KEY is listed as having higher minimum hardware requirements, it runs a hundred times more smoothly on my laptop than MID does, while still looking great. There are a lot of graphics settings to help you optimize performance, the only problem I experienced was if the "render scale" setting is set to anything below “high”, then some textures don't display correctly.



Gameplay: 7/10 - One of the best design decisions with this game was adding the choice to play with either free roam movement, or in classic point and click style. However, I felt both settings need a bit more tweaking, as with point and click “classic mode” it's often hard to navigate such an open environment, yet in free roam “modern mode” the opposite is true where it's sometimes hard to know what's important to look at. I really love the new task list and journal, and I think if few controls there, as well as the inventory system, are refined for ease of use then it will be perfect.



Graphics: 9/10 - The environments are really well designed and, as far as I can see, are fairly accurate to actual areas of Prague, which makes you feel like a real tourist. The textures and lighting are also fairly good, and as previously mentioned it looks ok on low settings too. I also really like the new UI design and look. I feel there needs to be some additional work put into NPCs though, which break the immersion since there are so many obvious clones standing around… and they’re also just standing (or sitting), not walking around, which can make it feel a bit creepy and unrealistic.



Puzzles: 6/10 - Unfortunately, I found a lot of the puzzles to be way more difficult than previous games, which could just be design choice, but a few of them seemed a little too cryptic. Some of them still confused me, even after trying to solve them for an hour, then looking at the hints, and even finally looking at the solution. At times I started to dread the next puzzle since it slows down the progression of the story so much and often feels like a chore. It’s a shame, since there were other puzzles that I LOVED. In my opinion the puzzles should rather have progressed in difficulty to get you into the game, not make you feel blocked from the start, which might make new players lose interest.



Characters: 8/10 - I really enjoyed the character interactions and character design in this game a lot. It felt very similar to some of the classic games. All the characters are unique and have some motive and small details we can find out about them by snooping. The animation was also good, for the most part the acting was good, and the dialogue had more of those fun little lines that make interactions more memorable. It would be better if conversations had more choices though. In the old games you could often choose from 2 or more possible things to say, even if the suspect replied the same regardless of what you chose. Here we just get to choose what order we ask the questions in, which makes it feel like Nancy may as well ask the questions for us. I also wish there were a few more “just for fun” conversations, especially with phone contacts which were majorly sidelined. Texting phone characters is also an interesting gameplay mechanic, but again feels pointless since we have no option but to hit send on something Nancy has already typed out.



Story: 9/10 - I really like the storyline and setting. The plot has multiple aspects to it, with threads that all come together in the end, which feels even more like a Nancy Drew book than a lot of the plots in the classic games did. The story progression was also good, and you can tell they tried to make it less linear, however I could often sense that I was supposed to have heard or seen something before or after I actually experienced it. Without spoiling anything, I’ll say the ending is also satisfying with everything being wrapped up nicely, however one plot point that I felt should always be explained at the end, only gets fully resolved essentially as an easter egg, which is really hard to trigger in a first-time playthrough.



Music & Sound FX: 9/10 - The music is also a step up from MID with tracks that loop less obviously and it also feels a bit more like the music in the classic games. Each environment has its own theme that starts to play when you walk into the area, which is cool, but it can feel repetitive if you’re in an area for a long time. Or, contrary to that, it can feel jarring if you move through an area quickly, causing it to change tracks. I think it would be better if there were a few tracks that could play per area, and if we got breaks of no music in between. The sound effects in the game were also good, but I would have liked just a bit more environmental sound design overall.





In conclusion, while it’s not a perfect game it’s a huge step up from Midnight in Salem, and I’d even dare to say it’s a better game than a few of the classic games. However, I think it’s important to remember that while some things can definitely be improved in future games, we will never have exactly the same nostalgia filled experience as we do with the old games, and it’s better to think of these new games being part of a new series… One that I, for one, am excited to see develop, already eagerly awaiting the release of the next title!

I waited a long time for a new game and this one was really fantastic. Compared to the last one which had a really annoying game play this one I really liked! I do like the modern gameplay vs old gameplay option. I also liked the messenger and task list that were modernized. THe sound is fantastic, i really enjoyed the puzzles. Except for the coffee making- that was really annoying. I also did not care for the several scenes were you can die- yes, there is a second chance option as usual but you cannot save during process so I did get frustrated. The story is not that exciting but i really loved Prague and the settings. The characters are all were well done. All in all i enjoyed every minute of playing this game. I am so happy Nancy is back 🙂

I knew HER Interactive would come back strong!!! I loved this game it felt like a classic Nancy Drew Adventure!! Can't wait for the next game!!!

**Spoiler free**
Leaping in improvement from the previous title in the series, Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys is a pleasant surprise and an excellent step in the right direction for modernizing the series. While made in Unity, there are pros and cons for the player who is used to 2D point-and-click gaming.

The game is hefty in size and performance for the average adventure player, but it pays off with the ability to dual-play between modern movement using WASD, and point-and-click with cursors. Thankfully, some of our favorite fan features are back, such as "Second Chances", "Good news, bad news" messages when we fail, task lists and sub-tasks lists (that's new!), classic cursor designs, meta-game achievements, minor Easter Eggs to reference past games, and familiar phone friends to help with the case.

Gratefully, puzzles are spread out well in the game, but some of them could have used more hints or references or acknowledgements to point us in the right step of thinking (candle fonts, astronomical clock dials, incomplete logic clues for Leo’s wall – there are more than one solution).

Overall, I would rank this as a B+ game, or 4/5 stars, or if on a ten-star scale, an 8 out of 10. It is an excellent addition to the series, but its minor errors in design that could have been more polished would have brough it up in rating, as well as making it non-linear and even enlarging the movement hotspots to better navigate. Optionally, I may have thought more highly of it if there were more scare scenes as the trailer implied.
I enjoyed the story, mystery, characters, location, puzzles, animation, music, but the game design fell a little short, but only in a minor sense.
Well done, HeR Interactive! I am looking forward to more games like this one!

Positive Notes:
- Great story
- Great characters
- Great balance of puzzles and difficulty
- Great environments
- The best animation we've ever had in a Nancy Drew game
- Good length
- Beautiful music
- Great Easter Eggs (references to past games)

Feedback Notes:
- Some hotspots either don't light up, or are hard to get to (returning to coffee has no change in cursor) and (bottle in lab is hard to pick up)
- I wish there were more scare scenes
- Some game design logic could have used some smoothing out. For example, I know I needed to get an item, but it wouldn't let me until I did another unrelated task. Some task items wouldn’t let me check them off even though I had completed it. Such as Adela’s necklace recovery, it was unclear that I needed to get the gems, too.
- Game is still linear, but not as linear as the previous title. Again, this could easily have been fixed with some game logic flags being adjusted.
-Leo's wall has more than one solution, but only one answer, the clues are incomplete (hammers)
- As a seasoned player, I didn’t play for 20+ hours like the company suggested it would take. I spent 15hrs, 4min, and 32 seconds in the game, but I did, however, refer to the strategy guide for hints on the aforementioned issues where I struggled.

So, I’ve been playing Nancy Drew games since I was a child, on and off for many years. My very first game was Treasure in the Royal Tower. And what can I say, we have come so far since these early games!

I loved the graphics in Mystery of the Seven Keys and the new modern mode of walking about the game space. Don’t get me wrong, point-and-click is an all time classic, but it’s nice to try out new things as well. It was great to see many new characters, more than in a usual Nancy games, and the mystery was so elaborate that I couldn’t guess the criminal/s until the very end.



In addition, going to Prague was a nice touch since we all know that Nancy is a keen traveler. I always appreciate Nancy games where we can learn a new language and culture, it’s exciting and sometimes challenging in a good way.



The only negative thing that I encountered was when you need to work with a clock at the cafe. You couldn’t open the keyholes on by one, because then you’re stuck. You needed to solve 2 puzzles: both low and high and only then open 2 keyholes at once.



As far as the price goes, I believe it to be reasonable and I hope that we will see new games soon. I remember in the past we could even have 2 games in the same year, so here’s hoping!

Decided to add my review after finishing the game. Overall its not a bad game but there are a lot of things that must be improved before it can compare to the previous versions of nancy drew games.



Firstly, the story could use some work. The fact that you collect these cards but you dont get to do anything with it sucks. I wish there would have been a mini game with leo or something with the cards. I wish leo as a character would be someone you can interact with more other than oh he goes missing. It would have tied up the story. Also the point of the character zane is just lost on me. He is just there to send you a file and then dissapear? was there a need for him to be there at all? You could have just made frank and joe send nancy that file. Another pointless character that adds nothing to the story. The call at the ending felt pretty awkward. I get that its supposed to be a replacement for the previous letters that nancy writes so the idea is great but the conversations don't flow. I don't like that you dont get to talk to bess, george or frank and joe . It takes away from the story and makes the game very puzzle heavy. This wouldn't be an issue if the game was solely focussed on puzzles but thats not the case with nancy drew games. I also preferred it when you didn't have hints in the game but you got to ask people for hints but this is more of a personal preference.



The puzzles were fine but it wasn't really great. I feel like you can have made a lot of use with the fact that the game is not two dimensional and made some amazing puzzles. A great reference for this is the room series by fireproof studios. The puzzles are intricate and three dimensional and it doesnt take away from the story. I just think its strange to make a three dimensional game in a new engine and not make use of those extra dimensions for other than random hidden buttons you press.



Finally the graphics. It was strange that i couldn't read some of the text in some places like with the potato pancakes recipe in the stand. Again you could have done things with this and made this an actually stall where you can buy stuff from. It didnt have to be elaborate or fancy. The same NPC repeated in 1 space were offputting and strange. You don't need to fill the space with that many NPC's. I did love the barista minigame but sometimes the controls can get weird. You dont have to make every object movable in all directions. You can just lock it so that it feels smooth.



Overall its a better game than the previous one but i feel like it need a lot of work still.