Haha we’re only on part three and I’m already falling behind here. Oops! I have been tragically promoted at work and as such am busy, like, doing my actual job. It sucks! Anyway, not to mislead you into thinking that I stopped because I was bored or anything: the game does pick up from here, now that I’ve gotten most of the complaints and explanations about the graphics and new UI out of the way.
Also, oh man, embarrassing discovery: you know how I was complaining about the brightness of the screen back in part one? Well, I was installing a new lighting mod for my Sims game (as I do) the other day and realized the actual brightness of my monitor was also wildly low. So! Entirely possible that you don’t have to pump the brightness up to ridiculous levels to see the game! Sorry Nancy Drew, that one was entirely my bad :(((
Anyway, previously on Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys: We found out we have to track down the DEGAS file for Adela’s necklace, in order to figure out who might’ve gotten their sticky paws on the necklace. In order to open the DEGAS file, we need a laptop.
“How many chores does one laptop equal?” Nancy wonders in her journal. Heh. Also, there’s some nice continuity stuff here — after chatting with the Hardys, Nancy will note that she’s glad they didn’t bring up the “Hardy/Drew Detective Agency” again, as she’s still not sure what she thinks of the idea. (Nancy also cracks a joke that Patricie said “The first pot of coffee is always the best — clearly she never heard of the first johnny cake rule!” Nancy, are you casting aspersions on my johnny cake-making skills? I’ll have you know I totally got the cakes right the first time I tried that puzzle.)
So we head over to the other section of town, and we can finally enter Aparát. Note the security tips and the very pertinent suggested password in the corner. Although, now I’m wondering, if these games manage to shamble on for another decade or so, will these tips seem just as outdated as Nancy’s old cell phones and Internet browsing are now?
Off to the side, we leave all the laptops and go through this side door, where we find a bunch of old phones and radios instead. There’s also this older dude who may look familiar to you if you were paying attention at the start of the game — he’s the dude sitting in the cafe when we meet Adela and Patricie. Once again, however, I’m not sure it’s meant to be intentional, since no one ever acknowledges that he was there.
So we’re like, “Hey, I see you’re old and have a ton of old stuff, can you tell me what this old key is?” The guy looks at the key we found in the book at the cafe, and tells us that it’s the Iron Key — one of the Seven Keys of Prague! Wow, that was convenient. He doesn’t seem at all bothered that we have an ancient Czech artifact (that…might also be needed to open the vault for the crown jewels…?) and tells us that we can learn about the legend of the Seven Keys at the marionette show in the square. Once we’ve watched the show, he’ll tell us what he knows about the keys.
(By the way, at no point does he introduce himself, but we can see in the dialogue box that this dude’s name is Marek.)
Alright, well, before we do that thing where we dive headfirst into a centuries-old mystery that seemingly has nothing to do with our current job, let’s at least get a laptop for the DEGAS file. Marek tells us to talk to his granddaughter, Elka, at the front of the shop: she handles modern technology; he focuses on fixing things from “when craft really mattered” blah blah youths don’t care about their history or culture and they don’t know how to rewind a VHS anymore blah.
We ask if Elka owns the shop, and Marek says, “She’d like to think so.” He tells us that she’s very dedicated to the shop, but he’d rather that she study: “She works too hard, like…like her mother.” Hear that awkward pause? Do you think Elka’s mother is a sensitive topic? Let’s respond to that by chirping, “Does her mother work here, too?” I’m so good at reading the room. Do you think we’ll be able to rock into Aparát throughout this game and be like, “Hey Marek, where’s Ma?” Just kidding; Marek is slightly better adjusted than Pa, and tells us that Elka’s mother died “some time ago.”
(By the way, Marek is kind of an interesting contrast with Takae from Shadow at the Water’s Edge, re: their attitudes towards their grandchildren carrying on their work — Takae desperately wants her grandkids to stay at the ryokan, although she and Marek similarly care about losing their culture.)
Marek’s side of the shop also has several posters like this, which feels kind of spicy for a Nancy game.
Anyway, Nancy has learned some social graces, because when we go see Elka, we merely ask after a laptop with nary a question about deceased mothers. Elka offers us a secondhand laptop that she “wiped clean [herself]”, although it’s missing a charger. We should be able to find one at any “Internet cafe”, though! What? There is no way anyone under 30 even remembers what an Internet cafe is.
(Also, dig the various stickers related to past games on Elka’s laptop. I personally wouldn’t publicly admit to being a Pacific Run fan, but sure, whatever. Also, is that a Cathedral sticker? Like…the government spy agency? I feel like selling merch is not very stealth of them.)
Elka tells us that, in addition to selling various electronic equipment, her grandfather also fixes marionettes and “other junk.” She asks us not to tell Marek we said so, however — and especially not to tell Radek, the dreamy puppeteer who drops in sometimes to get his marionettes fixed. No offense, but if you have a crush on a puppeteer, seek help. That’s like one step up from having a crush on a mime. On another note, Elka is a college student and is studying cybersecurity. She tells us that the government has been having trouble recently with a group of hackers, who people think are from Prague.
That’s it for Aparát so far. When we go to leave, a cutscene will start. Radek turns out to be the dude we saw at the cafe earlier, and he comes by to speak with Marek. They greet each other in Czech, but fortunately have the rest of their suspicious conversation in English so that we can understand them. Radek wants to know if Marek is done working on “puppet 12”, and Marek says not yet. Then they both get a message on their phones at the same time and exchange shifty glances. Nancy’s like, “Ooookay.” Having made our presence known, Radek introduces himself and invites us to see his marionette show.
Alright, so let’s go off to do that! We cannot brag to Elka that Radek has asked us out, by the way, just in case you were wondering. (Not that I tried because I’m a bad person, or anything.)
Back to the cafe! Okay, I have the laptop, and there’s a charger lying right here on the table, and…I cannot use them together. Wait, what?
…sigh. I have to watch that stupid-ass puppet show before I can keep fighting crime, don’t I?
Except, of course, one does not merely watch a puppet show when playing a Nancy Drew game. We go to meet Radek, and naturally his assistant (whoever that is; it doesn’t come up again) has come down with Nancyneedstodoachoreneosis, and thus Radek needs us to step in and help him with the puppet show.
OK, so this is a puzzle: we have to set up each scene and pick a puppet, a prop, and add any lines if necessary. Radek has notes for each scene that we can consult, and occasionally one of the pieces will already be filled in for us; we have to use context to fill in the rest. It’s not too tricky, but it got annoying towards the end — kind of like Fox and Geese, it’s not too bad the first 1-2 times, but you have to fill out seven scenes, each with multiple frames. By the end I was just straight-up bored and randomly clicking props to try and guess the right answer. Some of the props and puppets are repeated, and some scenes won’t have any props or dialogue, which also tripped me up. I don’t know, maybe it would have been easier if I had actually read all those museum plaques and knew how all the characters were related to each other, but…LOL.
“This would be fun to do again!” Nancy says when we finally finish. Would it? Would it, Nancy?
Anyway, once it’s done, a cutscene will play where we see the fruits of our labor. We learn about the history of the crown jewels through the play, which ends with the seven keys being used to lock the jewels away inside the castle. “And the crown jewels have been safe in Prague ever since!” announces a puppet. Except…for that time they were stolen? Hello?
After the play, we cut back to talking to Radek, and also it’s suddenly nighttime. Damn, I know it took me a while to finish that puzzle, but surely that puppet show didn’t go on that long. (Also, it’s clearly still afternoon when we finish the show?) Radek offers to answer our questions about Prague’s history. Oh…well, I guess we’re not gonna ask Marek, even though we’ve done the puppet show? Whatever.
We ask him who has the seven keys of Prague now, and he tells us that the jewels are kept at St. Vitus Cathedral — which is part of the Prague castle complex and is used kind of interchangeably with “the castle” when characters speak about it — and the keys are kept by people like the President, Lord Mayor of Prague, Dean of St. Vitus, et cetera. So…is one of them missing their key? You know, since we have it?
Whatever. Anyway, we know the dean of St. Vitus — that’s Leo! Hmm, what does it mean that he has one of the seven keys? Radek explains that the keys have to be used simultaneously to open the vault; one person can’t just steal all seven and then open the vault themselves. Nancy says she’s worried someone might try anyway.
(Radek also adds that no celebrities hold the keys: “No movie stars, football players…or puppeteers, sadly.” Er…Radek, why do you think that this career path is going to lead to you getting handed the keys to the country’s most valuable heirlooms?)
Radek blah blahs on about marionettes and his job for a bit, and explains that he has devoted himself to the not-exactly-lucrative life of puppetry because he cares about preserving traditional Czech culture. This is very much a running theme with Radek and Marek’s characters and is one of the ways the game weaves information about Czech history into the game. I like it a lot more than the endless plaques in the museum, and it also gets interesting for reasons that we’ll get to later.
Nancy expresses admiration that Radek is so devoted to his country’s history and culture, and Radek says we can always learn more if we want to see another puppet show — if his assistant is out again, we can help! AHAHAHAHA, no. I cannot tell you whether or not doing the puppet show again will teach you about a different event in Czech history, because I absolutely refuse. Just kidding, I dug further into my notes and saw that I did repeatedly talk to Radek after this, and you don’t get the opportunity to do the puppet show again, thank God.
Anyway! Radek, you should really thank Elka for being the one to tell us about your puppet show. Radek blows this off and says that Elka is like a kid sister to him. I mean…okay, that’s relevant information to us, since we know Elka has a crush on him — but it’s actually a very weird reply to, “Hey, your friend told us to check out your puppet show.” Is Radek hitting on us? Because see above, re: my philosophy on dating puppet dudes.
Our task list says we should meet with Leo “tonight”; being that night has fallen, let’s go talk to him. There’s two entrances to the cathedral: one is outside, by the cathedral proper, and the other one is inside the museum area where Oskar is.
Aaaand then I accidentally clicked on the haunted tour poster when trying to go to Oskar’s room. Alright, well, we might as well do it. We see the same exhibits and plaques that we saw earlier, except now it’s nighttime and there’s a bunch of fog in the room. Clicking on the plaques or displays will have a disembodied voice (the tour guide?) do a ~*~SPOOOOOKY~*~ explanation of each. What we’re really after, however, is the mysterious artifact that Oskar wouldn’t let us mess with earlier. It’s still chilling in its box, because after all, why would Oskar like, lock it up or take it with him? I’m starting to see how those gems were stolen the first time.
We can now see that the gems can be moved around, although we’re not sure how to arrange them yet. We can take the nighttime tour multiple times, so we’ll come back to us.
You may also notice that the knight in the corner (who’s meant to be Dalibor of Kozojedy) is mysteriously lit up — we’ll come back to this, too.
When the tour ends, suddenly Oskar is back, but we can’t needle him about his questionable security practices. Instead, let’s go into the cathedral and find Leo. We eventually come upon the door to his office, which is closed. Clicking on it will start a dialogue: Oskar is trying to get a meeting with Leo, but Leo’s snide British assistant tells him that he’ll have to wait, as Leo is away on a trip. Already? Jeez, Leo, don’t schedule meetings at an unspecified hour if your flight leaves today.
Oskar gets super pissy and demands to speak to Leo now, and Leo’s assistant is having way too much fun telling him no. (They seem to have a history: Oskar’s like, “What are you doing here?” and the assistant snipes that he’s been promoted, because unlike some people, his career isn’t stagnant. Uh…Assistant Man, I’m on your side since Oskar is being a total dick and is also totally incompetent, but one of you is a museum director and the other is a secretary, you feel?)
Once we’re done eavesdropping, that will trigger a message from the Hardys, telling us that they’ve sent over the DEGAS file. We can go back to the cafe, and now the charger we saw earlier can be picked up and used on the laptop.
We have to connect to the WiFi (provided by Loutkari, naturally) using the password on the wall. Once we’ve done that, we can open the email and download the DEGAS file. Tragically, we can’t look through the rest of Nancy’s inbox to see if Frank Hardy’s been sending her dick pics or something. I like this bit with the laptop overall, though! It feels very modern and as always, I like a good bit of “realistic” mystery solving with making phone calls or getting email attachments.
The file is locked, and clicking on it will open up a puzzle. It’s not too hard; you just have to swap the pieces until they form a picture. You can only swap pieces that are adjacent to each other, but it’s still easier than a slider puzzle, since you aren’t locked in by every other piece on the board.
Tra la la, here we go. This looks like a nice photo. I like the snow.
I wonder what I should have for lunch? I bought some potato piroshkis the other week, but I forgot them in my fridge and now they’re all gross 🙁 My life is a tragedy 🙁
Almost there! Can’t wait to look at the DEGAS file and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?
Just as we put the last puzzle piece into place, this image suddenly jumps out at us and the laptop breaks. (Not gonna lie, I got jumpscared again while watching a video of this bit to write this post. It’s very well done.) Patricie runs over and we show her the laptop. She says it’s an image of the “puppet of death” and a very bad omen. Yeah, I kind of got that from the name. (For what it’s worth, I couldn’t find any information about there being a specific Czech death puppet — although maybe Patricie is just guessing, based on the Grim Reaper-esque hood? I don’t know.)
Patricie says that the cafe hasn’t had any problems with hacking since they started using Loutkari. Does Patricie work for them or something? I have questions. Anyway, she tells us to bring the laptop back to Aparát, and Nancy says she’ll do that before they close for the night, which is our cue to go back there now. Before we leave, Patricie asks if we know what Loutkari means in English: “People who move puppets, make them dance. What a funny coincidence.”
IS IT, PATRICIE?
We can poke around a bit more, or try to call people, but there’s nothing we can do apart from going back to Aparát. The door is locked (cue “It’s locked” from Nancy, and dozens of people rush to r/nancydrew to post “Omg am I the ONLY ONE who misses Lani Minella???? :((((“), but Elka lets us in anyway.
She asks if we were connected to the public WiFi on both the laptop on our phone; when Nancy affirms, she takes our phone to fix as well. She goes into the back, which means it’s now time to snoop through her desk! Hell yeah!!!
We can look at a photo of Elka and her mom, as well as a random pen (which we can’t steal, tragically). The main thing to look at is the computer, which Elka doesn’t lock with a password…? Okay, Miss Cybersecurity. She has Aparát’s accounting open, and we can see that Marek’s side of the business is losing far more money than it earns. We can also see that Elka was looking up flights from Prague to Rome.
(Note: I did not catch this, but if you turn the photo of Elka and her mom over, and click on the tabs to take the frame backing off, you can see a note saying: “I know it wasn’t an accident.” HMMMM.)
Now let’s go spy on Marek! None of this family’s secrets are safe from us! He has a ledger of his own at his desk, where we can see that he’s fixed stuff for such names as “Lamont Warrick“, “Emily G.“, and “Melina Rossi.” Also interestingly, he notes that he referred someone looking for an appraisal to Zlaty Jewelry, and gave an “A. Czerna” a quote for an old, “fancy-looking” necklace. This is all quite intriguing, given that we hadn’t had any indication thus far that Vladena or Adela know Marek.
At the bottom of the ledger, Marek has also noted that he needs to find a way to get into a mysterious “puppet compartment trunk” he has in his office, so clearly we’ll have to do that for him later.
There’s also a set of keys, which opens a box in one of the drawers. We can look at some toy eggs and this black…thing (apparently a stamp?)…and that’s it. Well, that was anticlimactic.
Also note, near the keys, Marek’s will — he modified it in 2006 to leave everything to Elka, presumably after her mother died.
When we’re done, we can go back to the main room, and Elka will come back. She asks after Radek, and we don’t take the opportunity to tell her that he doesn’t like her back and she should move on to other dudes who don’t have a freaky puppet kink. Nancy isn’t a very good friend.
We ask Elka if it’s possible that the hacker specifically targeted us with the Puppet of Death thing. Elka’s like, “Why would they do that? Are you up to something secret?” and Nancy’s like, “No, of course not :)” and Elka’s like, “Oh, well, then did you download something weird?” and Nancy’s like, “Can’t tell you :)” and Elka’s like, “You know you’re acting kind of sus” and Nancy’s like, “What do you mean 🙂 I’m not being cagey and suspicious at all :)”. Seriously, Nancy, this is game 34, let’s be a little smoother here. Elka says that if we’re worried about being targeted, we ought to carry protection, like she does.
AND THEN. At this point, I expanded the conversation window to look at the past dialogue, and I could not close it again to finish the conversation. The little arrow to close the window was all the way at the bottom, and the cursor would turn into the button to back away every time I tried to close it — except backing away didn’t work, either (maybe because you can only end the conversation via saying goodbye?). Hitting “Esc” only took me back to the main menu, not out of the conversation screen. I had to reload from my last save and do this entire bit again, starting from going to Aparát to get Elka to fix the computer. I only screamed a little.
Alright, so after I restarted and talked to Elka again, then went through her computer again, then went through Marek’s desk again, we can ask Elka what kind of “protection” she’s referring to. Elka tells us that she wears a ring with a taser, which…I mean, that’s cool and all, but I don’t see how that protects you against computer viruses, Elka.
We ask if Marek made the ring taser for her, and Elka says he didn’t — although he did used to make jewelry for her mother. (There’s already a bit in Nancy’s notebook about how Marek knows how to set jewelry because he did it for Elka’s mom — not sure if that wasn’t supposed to appear until after this conversation.) Elka doesn’t say specifically who made it, but I guess the implication is that she made it herself, and she adds that she also got the base ring from Zlaty Jewelers. Is there any other jeweler in Prague? Also how can Elka, a rando college student, afford Vladena’s jewelry if a grown-ass woman like Patricie can’t?
Elka offers to teach us how to protect ourselves online, and a puzzle called “Cyber Block” starts. It’s fairly similar to some other puzzles from past games: we have to move around a board and push pieces out of our way, while being careful not to push them into a spot that can trap us. We also have to occasionally go out of our way to grab the green “data blocks” on the board before reaching the end.
“I recommend looking at our pamphlets and our other info screen here for more tips on how to protect your device to prevent any further problems,” Elka says, between levels. Girl, you don’t even password protect your work computer. I swear.
You have to beat two levels before Elka will let you go. Afterwards, we’ll get a call from Zane, asking if we got the DEGAS file. We answer the phone right in front of Elka, who tells us to put the call on speaker if we want. Nancy’s like, “Oh, sorry to not include you in my highly confidential crimebusting!” and loops her into the call with Zane. Nancy, if Elka turns out to be our culprit, this is going to be so embarrassing for you.
We tell him about getting a weird virus when we first opened the file, and Zane says it couldn’t have come from him. Nancy’s like, “Well, I guess it could’ve been my fault since I was using a random secondhand laptop I just picked up today…maybe.” Zane’s like “Whatever, just don’t do it again”, which feels kind of blase given that this is a highly-encrypted file taken from a system that random civilians aren’t supposed to have access to. Then again, he gave access to the Hardy Boys, so I guess he figures their security is completely blown anyway. Zane then adds that “Internet awareness is always the best protection”, presumably for the benefit of the nine-year-olds playing this game. Or maybe someone at the game studio failed one of those phishing tests while making this game and their coworkers are shaming them via game dialogue.
Zane tells us that we want to look through the DEGAS file and check the timestamps to see when the necklace changed hands. Nancy asks Elka if she might be able to tell if the file was tampered with, but Elka’s like, “No.” Okay, thanks for your contribution, Elka.
After we get off the phone with Zane, Nancy says she should get going, and Elka goes to let us out. A shadow suddenly passes by the door, and drops a note with the Death Puppet picture on it, saying “LEAVE PRAGUE.” SPOOKY!!!!
With that, we cut to the next morning, and that’s where we’ll start off the next post. Up next: The plot thickens. Ned is thirsty, Adela joins the ranks of Paula Santos and Chantal as our whiniest bosses, and we still can’t find Leo.
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