Does anyone remember when the Lorde album Melodrama came out, she said something like she didn’t want to take another 4 years to release another album? And then it took 4 years again for her next album to come out? (Or maybe she said that about Solar Power, which came out 3.5 almost 3 years ago, hello yes, I can math — whatever, you see my point.) Anyway, I was just thinking about that, because…
…yeah. When Midnight in Salem dropped in 2019, four years and untold amounts of drama after Sea of Darkness, it revived some hope that HER wasn’t dead and the Nancy Drew franchise would soldier (or shamble) on. They’d found somewhere to outsource to, they’d figured out Unity (kind of), so…we’re back? Maybe not back to two games per year, but maybe one, right? Right?
Aaand then HER went radio silent for another four years. Finally, in spring of 2023, they started teasing the new game. The rollout was pretty fun, for the first few months — HER posted images and teasers, inviting fans to search for clues to the game’s title, setting, and plot. Then spring 2023 turned to fall…2023 turned to 2024…I basically stopped paying attention and was like, “Whatever, call me when the game actually drops.”
Which it did: suddenly, at the start of May, they released a video that was like, “Oh yeah and the game is dropping Tuesday next week. See you then!” I swear. The game dropped on Steam about a month ago; I finally bought it and burned through it in about twelve hours (it would’ve taken longer because the puzzles are pretty hard, but I am a cheater at heart and that hasn’t changed in 10 years); now, let’s do this thing.
Anyway, much like Midnight in Salem, this game was not worth a breathless, five-year wait — but if you were waiting less breathlessly, I don’t think it’s too disappointing. They improved on some of the worst aspects of MID, i.e. the wonky graphics, the clunky UI, and the lack of puzzles and self-direction. While I think I actually liked MID’s story better, KEY is a decent enough tale of jewel thefts and Czech history and revenge, with a few scary moments and a solid twist at the end. It occasionally gets frustrating or boring, but it’s uneven, not consistently bad (unlike some games…you know the ones I’m thinking of).
That said: I said the graphics have been improved, not that they’re great. Before the game starts, you have the option to adjust your settings, particularly the brightness of the game. This was a pain. I don’t know if it was my computer, but the dark spots were way too dark, and turning up the brightness to compensate only made the light areas far too bright. The game generally looked better if it was slightly too dark instead of too bright (the warm nighttime lighting is really pretty and I didn’t want to wash that out), but there are some catacomb/tunnel scenes that are gnarly if you can’t see properly. On top of all that, the game is still incredibly heavy and I could hear my laptop fans whirring pretty much throughout the entirety of the game.
Anyway, let’s begin! I chose Amateur Sleuth, as always, because I’m dumb and bad at puzzles, let me live. You can also choose between “Classic” and “Modern” navigation systems; Modern being the free movement that was promised to us like 5 years ago, and Classic being the, uh, classic point-and-click style of the old games. I chose “Modern” to get the full effect of the new game design. (From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like the “Classic” design was anything more than just a wonkily edited version of the Modern design, so…there’s also that.)
We’ve been called to Prague by one Adela Čzerná, who wants us to investigate a theft: all the jewels in her mother’s necklace have suddenly been replaced with fake gems. Her letter is weird and vague, implying that she’s being watched and there’s something mysterious about her mother’s relationship with the necklace, though her mother never told her what. Adela won’t tell us anything more until we meet with her in person.
After a brief, odd interlude where another character takes over and narrates an introduction to Prague while the camera zooms around the environment, we head over to this cafe in the square. This is the closest thing we’ll have to a “base” in this game, in the sense that nobody tries to kill us in here.
We’re immediately greeted by this woman, to whom Nancy says, “You must be Adela.” Adela briefly makes small talk and asks if anyone is waiting for us at home. “Oh, Ned!” Nancy says. “Yes, but he’s not waiting for me — he has a full life when I’m away.” Heh. Nancy, you know that’s not true. We chat a bit and reference some past games — Adela will ask if we were more scared by the Japanese roboghost or huffing carbon monoxide in Georgia, to which Nancy will be like, “They were both super fun and the real mystery was the inappropriate, invasive questions I got to ask grieving families along the way! :D”. Adela will say that we’re brave. Is that the word you were looking for, Adela?
Adela tells us that she’s well-known in Prague because she’s very wealthy and beautiful, so she brought in Nancy because she doesn’t trust any locals to be chill about her. Before we can react to that, this other woman rocks up and says that she’s the real Adela. Our first puzzle!
So now we must suss out who the real Adela is. If only Nancy had, like, Googled this woman before arriving in Prague. In lieu of having ever seen a photo of our client, we instead say we can figure out who the imposter is with a single question. How very Sherlock Holmes of us. You can ask one of two questions to the suspects: either “How do you take your coffee?” or “Whose necklace is missing?”
I chose the necklace question, since that seemed like the obvious choice — we have no idea how Adela takes her coffee, after all. The older woman says that the necklace was her mother’s and they “were very close” — and now we know she’s the fake Adela, since the letter we received implied that Adela’s mother kept secrets from her. That’s the right answer, and the older woman turns out to be Patricie, the cafe proprietor.
(If you get the question wrong, Adela will just be like, “Wow, I’m not sure you’re a very good detective at all…but it’s too late to hire anyone else, so I guess I’ll keep you on.” Heh. Also, if you ask the coffee question, you can still get it right: the real Adela says she takes her coffee black, and Nancy will note that there is a black coffee left on the table, which Patricie hasn’t touched. I’m not sure if the player is supposed to be able to recognize that the coffee on the table is black or if you’re just guessing.)
Adela says we’ll discuss the case further in the morning, and with that, she leaves.
We fade back into the cafe, and the game eases us into a little tutorial scenario with the task “Explore the cafe.” There are popups telling us how to check our new, technologically-advanced tablet, from which we can text, make calls, use the task list, look at a map, and take photos. Despite this, Nancy still has a separate journal, which is where we need to look for our suspects and a summarization of the story as it unfolds. I like the journal a lot, but I wish it was folded into the tablet — I kept pressing “Tab” out of habit and realizing I wanted to press “J” for journal instead.
So, let’s explore with our new, unrestricted movement! You use WASD to navigate, and you can press the spacebar to “run”; doing which will cause Nancy to absolutely zoom across the room. Hee. I mean, look, I hate having to plod my way across the streets of Prague/Salem/Telos/wherever, but I’ve played Danger on Deception Island! I’ve gotten bored and started scrolling on my phone while waiting for Nancy to bike her way from the beach to the Hot Kettle Cafe! I know this girl cannot run that fast.
Also, minor note, it’s kind of annoying that you still need to use the mouse to turn the camera in order to run in the right direction, so essentially you need both hands to direct Nancy. I am fully a “playing with one hand, snacking with the other” person, and it was hard to enjoy my French fries when I had to keep putting them down to navigate, you feel?
So, our first task, per our tablet: explore the cafe and figure out the Wi-Fi password. The password is on a plaque near the door; I am a dumbass and passed it multiple times without noticing it. Anyway!
Hey, can I go through this door? Is Nancy’s hotel room up there? Ah well, I guess we’ll never know.
The NPCs also no longer talk in this game, which feels like a regression (of all things) from Midnight in Salem. I miss the random snippets of gossip 🙁 Also if the background characters aren’t even talking, I don’t know why my laptop sounds like it’s trying to takeoff from my desk.
There are a bunch of books around the cafe, some of which will be important later. This massive Kafka display, however, is not important — although on the upside, I guess if any children still play Nancy Drew games (and not just, you know, nostalgic millennials), there’s a reference to The Metamorphosis that may help kickstart their interest in absurdist literature and philosophy and eventually a spiral into anxiety over the loneliness of life. I mean, what?
It’s interesting, because it does feel like they made a genuine effort to improve upon Nancy’s, uh, less than stellar reputation as an international traveler: there’s a lot of real, interesting information about Czech history and culture in this game. On the other hand, there’s so much history and culture — not all of which is pertinent to the plot — that it can get overwhelming, and it’s not always presented in the most engaging way. I admit I started skimming by the time I got to the tenth museum plaque that had a bunch of text about medieval Czech history crammed onto it.
Alright, well, ten minutes into the game and I’m already kind of stuck. Patricie, help me! She isn’t much help sadly, instead she just suggests that we write a postcard to our “special someone”. Our task list will then update with a new task, to write a postcard to Ned. So blah blah, we grab a pen, we can poke around some pamphlets and postcards and learn about Prague’s old town and the nearby castle. We also see a pamphlet for Loutkari, Prague’s biggest Internet service and security provider, apparently. While Loutkari will be plot-relevant, the game also generally brings up Prague’s tech presence a lot, in a way that feels like it’s trying to be educational. I guess real-life Prague has a pretty big tech sector?
In my search for postcards, I finally trip over the Wi-Fi password, by the front door. However, it actually won’t come into play for a while. We also cannot check off the “Explore the cafe” task, even though its only subtask (find the Wi-Fi password) is completed. This is because we’ll eventually have to uncover more secrets in the cafe, but this type of inability to complete tasks comes up several times, and it’s a little confusing/frustrating when you’re first trying to figure out how the game works.
Let’s open our phone and see that we’ve been texting Ned and the Hardy Boys, play both sides so you always come out on top, etc. We can also call Carson, although he won’t pick up for the entire game. You generally can’t call anyone unless it’s necessary for the game; it seems like the game wants you to use the hint system in the journal instead of calling your friends, which is a little disappointing. I miss talking shit about the suspects to Bess and George 🙁 Speaking of whom, it occurs to me that Bess and George haven’t actually shown up in the games at all since Shattered Medallion. What’s up with that? The ignominy of going out with that game as your grand finale, Jesus.
Once you grab a pen, a postcard, and sit down at a table to write to Ned, the game will go to a cutscene and the next day will begin.
We start off Day Two in the courtyard, which we can explore a bit — there’s not a ton to do here just yet; there are several gates and doors that are locked when we run into them, so we’ll have to come back later. There are a few spots, like a little marionette theater cart, that will pop up on our map as a new location. They’re just there to mark the spot on the map; you can’t jump from one map spot to another, unfortunately.
This cafe lady is basically just Lauren’s model recolored, isn’t she?
Let’s go back inside the cafe to meet with Adela and learn more about the case. Upon stepping into the cafe, we’ll get a text message from an Unknown Sender, which says “Fall in love with our past. Find your own way.” There’s an attached file that’s locked with a code, and the message is a hint as to where to find the numbers. However, I completely forgot about doing this and didn’t unlock it until way later than I should have because I am a dumbass. We’ll come back to this.
We also trip over this clock in one of the cafe alcoves, which Nancy will note looks just like a clock in the square outside. I have not actually looked at the clock outside yet.
Alright, let’s trigger Adela’s arrival. We have to talk to Patricie first; we’ll have a little chat about Nancy’s coffee order, then Nancy will say she’s going to sit at the table by the window. I, uh…had an embarrassingly difficult time figuring out which table to sit at. You basically have to march right over to the table after talking to Patricie and stand nearly over it, then click the chair by the window. I wandered around the cafe for a bit and then tried to approach the table from a different angle and click on the chair from too far away. When it didn’t work, I was like, “Okay, I guess this is the wrong table” and then I ran around like an idiot for another five minutes.
Behind the table we’re meant to sit at, we find a newspaper detailing a rash of jewel thefts all over Prague, wherein both jewels and jewelry have been stolen and the gems replaced with replicas. What’s more, the paper notes that a theft with a similar M.O. happened twenty years ago from the city’s own historic jewel collection, although the thieves were never caught. It seems that a new exhibition including historic jewelry will soon be opening at the nearby St. Vitus Cathedral/Prague Castle, and the curator, one Oskar Dvořák, is super grumpy at the suggestion that the jewels might be stolen again. (By the way, were the real jewels ever recovered, or is this new exhibit just going to be showing a bunch of fakes…? Although museums do regularly use replicas, as I found out from my other sleuthing adventures! 2000s children’s games were so educational.)
Anyway, I finally manage to click on the right chair, and Adela arrives.
As soon as she sits down, this elderly gentleman approaches us and gives us some coffee, then suggests that we read some mystery books on the shelves. When he walks away, Adela points out that he dropped a strange playing card. All very sus! We’ll worry about him later.
Adela explains that she doesn’t trust the Prague police to figure out the crime: we must know that there have been jewel thefts in Prague before, even from the city’s very own historical museum! What a coincidence, Adela, we were literally just reading about that! (I think. After this conversation, Nancy starts asking everyone about the theft from the museum, and I’m not sure whether that’s meant to be one of the rash of recent thefts or the theft of the historic state jewels — nobody ever clarifies, and no museum theft is mentioned in the newspaper article we just read. I still don’t really know how it’s meant to tie into all of this.) (A redheaded protagonist investigating a jewel theft from a museum that possibly happened 20 years ago? Groundbreaking.)
Anyway, Adela gives us a list of people she suspects might be our culprit: Vladena Zlatý, who runs a jewelry shop called Zlatý Custom Jewelry, Hans Feiersinger of SecondShine, and Oscar Dvořák, whom we just read about as the curator of the jewel exhibit. Suspicious!
Let’s ask about who all these people are. Adela explains that SecondShine is a website for selling used jewelry; she sent the necklace off to them to sell on her behalf. At the time, she wasn’t suspicious of them, as many people she knew had sold their jewelry through them. When she got a better offer in Prague, she asked for the necklace back to sell in-person. Upon giving it to Vladena Zlaty for appraisal, Vladena told her the gems in the necklace were fake. However, Adela’s not sure if SecondShine are the culprits or if Vladena might have swapped the jewels out when she appraised the necklace.
Adela bangs on a bit about how the necklace has a long history, passed down through the women of Adela’s family, and how it evokes the history of Czechia and personal memories of Adela’s mother. If you’re like, “…okay, why are you even selling the necklace, then?”, Adela handwaves it away by saying she wasn’t that close to her mom. I don’t know, maybe I’m a history nerd, but I feel like that’s not a great reason to get rid of a piece of heirloom jewelry, especially since it didn’t originate with Adela’s mom anyway? Did Adela also have beef with her grandmother and great-grandmother? Whatever.
Moving on to Vladena: she and Adela are friendly, but Adela still suspects her, because “[Adela is] no fool.” This does make a certain amount of sense when we meet Vladena, so well-played there, game. Adela adds that the local offer for the necklace came through Vladena.
As for Oskar, Adela actually doesn’t know him personally at all, but she figures he has access to tons of jewelry, so it’s not impossible that he got his hands on her necklace at some point. O…kay. Surely he can’t be our only suspect in the museum or jewelry scene, if our only parameter is “has access to lots of random jewelry.”
That’s about all we can glean from Adela for now. She leaves us with her list of suspects, which has some contact information for them. Our task list will update and tell us to investigate each of the suspects; our journal will also note that Adela is still a suspect, as she could be trying to frame someone. We’ve been here before, after all, and this time Deirdre Shannon isn’t even able to back us up as a phone friend 🙁
(By the way, Nancy’s notes on Patricie: “She was so convincing as Adela, she could give Rick Arlen a run for his money.” Heh. That’s not saying much, is it?)
Let’s go through this gate into Old Town, just because it’s here and I can. There’s a shop we’ll need to explore here, but we can’t access it just yet.
I’m not overly thrilled by the main locations in this game basically both being a variation on “massive empty courtyard”, but I do think some bits are really nice — the buildings lining the streets are all colorful and pretty, and the castle behind the clouds is also lovely. At some point I tilted the camera up (semi-don’t recommend; I had a headache and it made me nauseous) and there are birds flying above, too, which is cool. The NPCs are also doing appropriate stuff like taking photos, although again, I wish they still talked.
This is the clock that Nancy was referring to when she saw the replica in the cafe. “I can’t wait to tell Ned that I’m actually here,” she chirps. I mean, you could tell him now, Nancy. You know, by texting him like we did earlier in the game. It’s 2024!
Alright, exploration over, let’s go back. Minor complaint about the doors and gates in this game: you have to get really close in order to click on them, which is annoying in the beginning, when you’re not sure which doors are open to you yet and you have to get absurdly close to them to check.
There’s a big fountain in the courtyard, behind which is the door to both Vladena and Oskar’s locations. Let’s meet them! I like making new friends!
First up is Vladena. She suggests that perhaps we want to get some rest instead of interrogating her, to which Nancy chirps that she’s well-rested and ready to investigate! “You don’t look it. My mistake,” Vladena snarks. Is…is she not aware of her current eyebag situation? Glass houses, my dude. Anyway, much in the vein of Helena and Margherita, Vladena is a snotty European who spends her time passive-aggressively stonewalling Nancy and implying we’re uncultured and unnecessarily nosy.
Vladena claims that she checked the necklace before Adela sent it off to SecondShine, and the jewels hadn’t been stolen then. We ask her about the local buyer she had found for the necklace, but she refuses to tell us who it is because she is, as mentioned, snotty and passive-aggressively stonewalling us.
Let’s ask about the gem theft. Does Vladena think it might have the same M.O. — and thereby be connected to — the thefts of the gems from the museum? Vladena doesn’t know, but suggests we ask Oskar, which is a handy segue into talking about him.
Vladena, as it turns out, does not like Oskar — she thinks he’s not a very good jeweler and is only in charge of Prague’s crown jewels because he’s bepenised. Vladena’s like, “You understand how sexism works,” and Nancy’s like, “Not really.” (Actually, let me put the whole line here because it’s hilariously tone-deaf: “I’m fortunate that the men in my life don’t give it a second thought. And I often don’t make it easy for them.” Heh. It’s so on-brand for Nancy to be like, “Idk I guess all my family and friends just so happen to be completely unaffected by being raised in a patriarchal society, sucks to be you :)” Remember, ladies, it’s your fault if you make it easy for men to disrespect you.)
That said, I suppose we can’t chalk Vladena’s stalled upward career mobility entirely up to sexism, since she’s also kind of obnoxious and egotistical. She sniffs that only she is a talented enough jeweler to notice fake gems that have otherwise gotten through “years” of appraisals. I…am confused. Are we still talking about how the jewel thefts from twenty years ago were pulled off? Or just jewel thefts in general? The dialogue in this game is still a little wonky, in that the conversations tend to make sense going from one sentence to another so you don’t think about it much, then you do try to think about it and realize you have no idea where this conversation was meant to go.
Anyway, let’s move on to Vladena’s girlbossing. She explains that she comes from a long line of jewelers and gemologists, and she founded this jewelry shop all by herself. She’s kind of weird and cagey about how she makes money (“I have…generous clients”) but we don’t have the opportunity to press on that. We also find out that Vladena doesn’t like SecondShine, although she doesn’t have much to say about them, either. She suggests it could be possible that SecondShine has been stealing jewels all along: “Only I caught them.” Oookay.
That’s it for Vladena; let’s move on to Oskar Dvorak. (Sidebar: Nancy’s journal will now mention the DEGAS system, which will come up in a later conversation with Vladena, but didn’t come up in the one we just had. Sigh. Still some kinks to be ironed out, I see.)
By the way, if Vladena’s shop looks familiar, that would be because a picture of it is used in the newspaper we saw earlier, in the article about the jewel thefts. I’m not sure this is meant to imply anything about Vladena, though; I think they just reused the background out of, uh, necessity.
Now, Oskar’s room is actually right across from Vladena’s (the game basically reuses the setup for Olivia and Teegan’s areas in Midnight in Salem), but we can’t find him there just yet. Instead, we have to call him, using the phone number Adela gave us. This confused me a bit, because there’s no way to dial numbers from Nancy’s new tablet now — instead, to use phone numbers or website links, you have to click them on Adela’s card. It took me, uh, an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out.
In front of Oskar’s door is this poster for a haunted history tour. Once we check it out, “Go on the haunted tour” will appear on our task list, so we’ll have to do that later.
So alright, let’s call Oskar! He looks like one of the guys from Sunstroke Project.
We ask Oskar about the gem thefts at the museum, and he immediately shuts us down with “That is in the past.” “Are you sure about that?” Nancy asks. I mean…yeah, are we sure it’s in the past? Is this a recent theft or the twenty-year-old one? Come on, game, I’m dumb! I need you to spell this out for me!
Anyway, Oskar says he will convince us that he’s an awesome jewelry appraiser and there’s no way any fake jewels are getting past him. He invites us to meet him at the castle jewel exhibit, so we’ll go ahead and do that in the next part.
Up next: Bad museum practices and menial labor, as is par for the course in these games.
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