Nancy Drew Mystery of the Seven Keys, outline of a woman on old buildings background

Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys Review

Game: Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys
Genre: Adventure, Casual
System: Steam (Windows and macOS)
Developers | Publishers: HeR Interactive
Controller Support: No
Price: US: $32.00| UK £26.98 | EU € 31,09
Release Date: June 20th, 2024

A review code was used with many thanks to HeR Interactive.

Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys is the new instalment in the classic Nancy Drew adventure game series, developed and published by HeR Interactive in 2024.

 Nancy Drew loading screen, a historical square in Prague
a loading screen

The Premise of Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys

Nancy Drew is an amateur sleuth who first appeared in a series of books in the 1930s and has since had many reincarnations in various books, TV series, movies, and games. One of the more enduring and famous ones is HeR Interactive’s Nancy Drew video games series, which started in 1998 with Secrets Can Kill. The new game, Mystery of the Seven Keys, is the 34th game in the series.

In this adventure, Nancy Drew is hired to recover a stolen heirloom necklace. Uncovering the truth takes her to the iconic city of Prague, allowing us, the players, a glimpse at one of the most beautiful European capitals.

Nancy Drew, two difficulty options - amateur and master sleuth
Choose your adventure.

Gameplay

Mystery of the Seven Keys is a classic adventure game. We have puzzles of all kinds to solve. In some cases, we’ll have to find something missing, decode riddles, or read materials, which will later help us solve a puzzle.

Some of the puzzles were too difficult, even on the easier level. The developers have implemented a hint system should you get stuck, but it could use some more work – some of the clues were not very clear. I liked that some of the puzzles required me to do a little research – it reminded me of playing quest games when I was a kid. Since this is a detective game, we have an extensive cast of characters to interrogate and suspect. 

Nancy Drew a postcard with a historic square
Something familiar?

Sometimes, we are asked to complete tasks, such as making coffee at the very beginning of the game. To be honest, I am not a fan of side quests like this one in games—they rarely make sense in the context of the story and dilute the whole game. Someone is hired to find a stolen necklace and instead spends time making speciality coffee drinks in a cafe.

Mini-games, in general, don’t have to be pointless in the context of the story – look at last year’s Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express – a similar game, the same genre, the same classic and iconic type of detective, the same modernized version of a classic intellectual property. At the beginning of the game, we had a cake-making mini-game disguised as a challenge to Hercule Poirot. It made sense within the story. 

This iteration of Nancy Drew has a set of tools at her disposal, such as a journal, camera, phone, task list, suspect files, and so on. All of these become very useful once the plotline picks up. 

A letter about the theft of a precious necklace
The letter that started everything.

Some Technical Mumbo-jumbo

On the technical side, it’s obvious Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys was crafted with attention to detail. It’s no secret that the previous game in the series could have been better received, so the studio had a lot to make up for with this one, and it mainly delivered. 

An exciting feature and undoubtedly a try to cater to old and new fans is a new dual explore system—we can choose between classic point-and-click or free roaming in first person for the game. Both work seamlessly, and while I felt that sense of nostalgia, playing point-and-click, ultimately, I played more in the first person. For people with motion sickness, the classic point-and-click option might be a lifesaver, though. 

The game has basic audio settings, with a separate track for voices and a separate up-and-down slider for that. We have extensive graphics settings. An interesting moment is that we can control the size of crowds we encounter on the streets of Prague, but even at their fullest, the streets are still quite empty. 

A board with pictures and articles.
Boards are important for detectives.

Visually, Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys is pleasant enough to look at. It’s in the same visual style as its predecessors- nothing spectacular, but still okay. The characters look wooden, and while that’s quite retro, so to speak, it’s still on brand with the rest of the games in the series. 

In terms of voice acting, an often-voiced complaint is that Nancy sounds like AI and is not lifelike enough. I don’t necessarily agree with this assessment, but I am not a native English speaker, so I might just not be able to catch it. 

We have two difficulty settings: amateur and master sleuth. While the puzzles in the latter are more difficult, it’s also worth mentioning that in master sleuth, we have no hints and no task list. 

I didn’t experience any bugs or freezing, but for some of the puzzles, the cursor did not react immediately. At the very beginning, I had some trouble with a coffee-making puzzle, but thankfully, where the official hints didn’t help, there were enough people playing the game willing to give out tips. 

A woman with a green shirt and conversation options
The first witness.

Conclusion

Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys is not a perfect game, but it’s a welcomed and awaited sequel to a great detective game series. It certainly improves on the previous game, Midnight in Salem, and we can only hope the next game will be even better. 

Final Verdict: I Like it. I like it

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