49 Keys is a video game adaptation of Michele Buonanno’s 2022 book of the same name (49 Chiavi), developed by Buananno, Veronica Wu and Fabio Porfidia. While it does include some puzzles, it’s best approached as a digitalisation of the book which includes gorgeous illustrations, an atmospheric soundtrack and interactable elements such as a map unfolding as we read on and key items to collect.
In 49 Keys, we play as a monk who receives a letter from his previous master, now dying, to tell you that he has left you his work. You immediately travel to the palace where he was working, only to learn that you’re too late and he has now passed away. You must now explore the palace alone and find the ‘49 Keys‘, the work he has passed down to you. But it won’t be easy, as he’s carved a series of tests to determine your worth to inherit his work.
I admittedly picked up 49 Keys more for its puzzles rather than the interactive novel elements. However, after a discussion with the developer, who is Italian, it was made clear to me that although it does have puzzles, they aren’t the sole focus of 49 Keys. The English translation of the Steam page had been a bit excessive in its description, which has now been greatly toned down to avoid further confusion. It’s important to note that 49 Keys is an interactive novel first and foremost, so I would only recommend it to players looking specifically for this.
It’s safe to say that 49 Keys involves a lot of reading as a digitised version of the book. The game is framed as a book laying upon a table. On the left hand page is the story, and on the right you can switch the view from the map, to your inventory or your notes. Despite not being an adventure game, the way you traverse around the map of 49 Keys acts like an adventure novel, where at the end of each room description you are given the choice of where to go next, though you will usually need to come back and search the room or enter the hallway you missed before.
While the majority of 49 Keys‘ visuals are painted through heavy descriptive text, these are sometimes followed by vibrant illustrations, usually of a person or creature that’s just been described. These are beautiful and I do wish there were more of them to illustrate some of the more stunningly written rooms. 49 Keys is well-written but I found that it had an overabundance of scene descriptions. While this wasn’t so much of a problem in the first half of the game in the main palace section, especially considering the want for more descriptive text is usually a personal preference, I did find that when we entered a labyrinth section in the latter half, it became very evident that the scene descriptions were too much when we’re traversing down countless corridors. Every single one of them has a vivid explanation as to what they look like which could have been shortened to focus more on certain events that happen in them or how our character is feeling. The constant and repetitive descriptions of the corridors also took away from the more interesting scenes, such as certain rooms or statues.
49 Keys‘ storyline was really captivating, especially towards the end as we drew closer to finding out the truth behind the 49 Keys and how our master came across such knowledge. While there’s not an awful lot of horror, I did find the reading to be unnerving in parts and the writing does a good job at unsettling you by pushing our character into the unknown. At the end we are given a choice that feels reasonable to the plot and will determine what epilogue we get.
The puzzles are also well-woven into the central plot as they act as our tests to determine whether we are worthy to inherit our master’s works or not. While they are quite sparse in the first half of the game, the second half contains a lot more. They’re well designed too and don’t feel tacked on for the sake of throwing in the odd puzzle here and there. I will say that there’s a section at the end of the game where we learn about a handful of Greater Spirits and are given key information about them, for some reason this information isn’t jotted down as an in-game note and we are instead expected to memorise this information, or go back to the vassal which gave us this information for a recap. The only problem is that this is a labyrinth and the map icons aren’t labelled, so by the time I realised that I needed to have been taking my own notes for this puzzle, I couldn’t remember where these specific vassals I needed were. Luckily, the hint system is very informative and if you didn’t want to solve the puzzles at all then you can still progress in the game.
Audio-wise, 49 Keys is scored by a perfect, ambient soundtrack which blends in really well with the moods of each area. Not only this, but it also isn’t too complicated to become distracting while the player is reading, or too repetitive. It works really well with the game and I wouldn’t wish for anything else. That being said, I do think 49 Keys is in desperate need of a narrator. Not only would this help break up the reading and add extra dramatisation to the game, but it would also help take it that one step further from a book to a game. In fact, I felt like 49 Keys needed a narrator so much that I began narrating the story myself and it made for a much better experience.
While I was initially disappointed when I realised 49 Keys was more of an interactive novel than a puzzle game, as an interactive novel it isn’t bad. While it is heavy on the scene descriptions, which definitely could have been cut down as it took me around eight hours to finish, the overall storyline is really compelling and I especially enjoyed the conclusion.
Jess played 49 Keys on PC with a review code.
