#34 Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys

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.

There were some things this game did well and some it really didn't excel at at all... First of all, the navigation (even the beloved classic mode) is not intuitive, extremely frustrating, and disorienting. Also, I feel like if a lot of people said there was too much dialog in MID, there was a severe lack of characterization in this one (by way of dialogue). I barely got to know Oskar or Patricie as characters, and I felt like things like mundane tasks or favors would have pulled me further into this world. When the culprit was revealed, I felt like it was unearned and undeveloped. As for the puzzles, I dreaded the ones that required me to look around the city (because I hated the glitchy navigation so much). I liked the ones like the security puzzles. Overall, the game felt underdeveloped and rushed in many aspects (although the story was pretty good). I think many people were asking for a release date, and the HERinteractive felt pressured. Now there is one other big elephant in the room... The voice acting. All of the characters did GREAT... except for the titular character. With the utmost respect, Brittany Cox falls really flat when trying to deliver the embodiment of Nancy. She feels lifeless and awkward in comparison to Lani Minella's interpretation of Nancy Drew. Lani's Nancy was awe-inspiring and beautiful.

So where to start... I am a long time Nancy Drew fan and have played most of games multiple times. I started Nancy Drew with the haunted mansion when I was about 8 and now I'm 31, I've loved most of them ever since (except for RAN, MID & MED). I was disappointed as most of us were with Midnight in Salem but stayed optimistic all these years hoping for another game. Well now it's here, I bought and downloaded instantly and plan on buying the physical copy as well. I just started playing but what I can say so far is I LOVE IT! The graphics and characters are definitely improved over MID but even more is the feeling of warmth the game has. Also the story is more compelling and the content so far is great... From the coffee shop (making lattes) to the architecture and the Marinette show. I'm really impressed so far... Haven't beat it yet but enjoying every minute. It's not the old games but that's okay the HER team has really delivered on a fresh modern Nancy Drew of the future. Oh and the new voice has grown on me a lot and has been working on her craft. I'm excited for the future of Nancy Drew. Thank you her for 25 years of amazing games!

I am so glad that Mystery of the Seven Keys is out! I have finished the game, and while I have many thoughts on it, I'll have to stick to a concise rating of the different elements of the game. In this review, I will be comparing KEY to both Midnight in Salem and to the other 32 games in the ND series, but this is hard to do in full because it's really different from both sets. Bear with me.



Gameplay -- 7/10



This is the same rating I gave MID -- the new user interface is, in my opinion, worse than the one used for games 26-32, but it's not bad. I do love being able to interact with inventory items and other objects in 3D. However, the point-and-click navigation seemed a little janky. It was nice to have that throwback to the older games, but it was obvious the game was made for the modern navigation and the point-and-click seemed almost like an afterthought. All the same, I'm glad it was included. The hint system was OK, though I would have rather been able to see the puzzle solutions while working on the puzzles like in games 26-32.



The game ran just fine on my computer. However, I was disappointed that there were several places where I couldn't save the game. I had to let it run while I left my home, just because I was in the middle of the marionettes puzzle. That shouldn't have to happen. Also, there were some small misspellings throughout the game. Not terrible, but certainly not as professional as it could have been with better proofreading.



I don't have an official place to put this in the rating system, so a quick note on the voice acting. Everyone was OK, not great. Everyone, that is, except for Nancy (Brittany Cox). I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that it was just direction that she was given, but she does not sound natural when delivering her lines. Her questions sound like statements. She adds emphasis in weird places and doesn't add it in places where it would make sense. I'm fine with moving on from Lani Minella -- believe me, I had enough issues with her inconsistency -- but maybe it's going to take a few voice actors to find the right permanent replacement for Nancy. Brittany Cox just might not be right for the role. Or it's the directing. Either way, it was very distracting.



Plot -- 7/10



The plot was a bit hard to follow at times, but not bad overall. I did have more trouble toward the beginning of the game and less toward the end, which I guess is standard. There were some good twists at the end that really made the game more interesting and helped flesh out some of the things hinted at earlier. I am just torn between congratulating the game on being less direct and linear than MID and wishing some parts had been easier to follow. I don't know. I'm going with a 7 for now.



Setting -- 9/10



Have to hand it to the HeR crew and friends on this one. Prague is one of the better settings in any game, and they did it justice. This is a significant part of my enjoyment of the games generally, and it did not disappoint. I appreciated that there was much to explore, and the lack of unique NPCs, while jarring at first, was not a huge drawback. I just wish Nancy could actually have eaten a potato pancake! Come to think of it, did she eat anything at all during the game? She'd better get some of Hannah's home cooking when she gets back to River Heights, poor girl.



There is a little less charm in the setting than the games used to have. I think the old graphics were more comfortable, and even though the newer look has been pretty well-executed (and knock's MID's graphics clear out of the park!), it still just leaves something to be desired.



Characters -- 8/10



I was glad to see that there were so many characters in this game. They were not all equally fleshed out, but they did each get a decent bit of screen time. I should have liked more time to get to know the Dean. Perhaps a round of Mariáš could have been arranged? Oh, well. There was a good variety of characters and it did help make the game more nonlinear. I would have liked some more pointless dialogue that wasn't crucial to the plot, just characters chatting away with Nancy, but I guess MID had enough for two games.



The phone characters were... underwhelming. Again, this was a point of enjoyment in older games. I loved just calling up the phone characters and chatting away about nothing at all. There wasn't much phone conversation that didn't tie in directly to the plot. It would have been appreciated.



Culprit -- 7/10



Trying to get through this without major spoilers. I appreciated that the Dean's captor was the person I had pegged from before the reveal as the one to blame. But making someone... else... liable was a downright mean trick, HeR. Especially someone who was so sympathetic and had been so nice the whole game. I'll probably get over it around the same time I get over the culprit reveal from CAP. Which is to say, never.



Puzzles -- 6/10



I'm not going to spend much time on this. I have never had patience for puzzles and am not going to start enjoying them now. I enjoyed some more than others, as I do with all games. I did like that there were more in this game than in MID. But if you really want a good opinion on the puzzles in this game, stop reading this and ask someone who plays the game for the puzzles. And then come back and finish this. Or don't. It's your life. I play the game for the characters, the plot, and the chance to live vicariously as the detective I never got to be. Don't ask me about the puzzles.



Overall score -- 44/60, same level as TRN, CAP, TMB, SPY



I was glad to see this game massively improve over MID. However, it still lacks some of the charm and professionalism that characterized the older games. Is that all in nostalgia? I'm not sure. But HeR Interactive is off the schneid. They've got one good new modern game down. Can they keep it going and improve as they go? Let's hope so! KEY could be the magnifying-glass-shaped precursor to great things in the future.

I really enjoyed the new installment of Nancy Drew. I’m also happy the developers listened to the reviews from MIS and provided an option to play in Classic Mode. I’m still not sure if I can get used to the new Nancy Drew voice.



The setting was beautiful, and the characters felt nicely fleshed out, along with the story line.



I do believe some of the puzzles were a bit hard to maneuver, and I kind of wish they had better options for comparing information found, to the designated puzzle. I had to do a lot of backing up completely from the puzzle, to double check my in game tablet/other in game documents.



Even though the next installment probably won’t be out for a few years, I’m excited to see what’s next.

This was definitely much more enjoyable than Midnight in Salem. The puzzles and story were great!! There were still a few questionable aspects here and there which is why I'm not giving it 5 stars but overall this felt like a return to form for the series.