Horror-puzzler The 7th Guest was praised for its innovation back in 1993, as it used FMV clips as part of its core gameplay and featured a sprinkling of adult content. But has this title stood the test of time or do gamers now prefer their horror a little more polished?
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The 7th Guest was one of the first video games to be released on CD-ROM only and this title, along with LucasArts’ Star Wars: Rebel Assault and Brøderbund’s Myst, helped promote the adoption of CD drives over two decades ago in 1993. It was very successful and sold more than two-million copies worldwide, as well as receiving a lot of attention for making live-action clips part of its core gameplay (as well as its so-called ‘adult’ content!).
I first played The 7th Guest shortly after its release and I remember that it scared the hell out of me. Admittedly I’m a bit of a wimp, but it was one of those games that I’d only touch when all the lights were on and my parents were at home. Unfortunately I never did finish it because I found some of the puzzles too hard and, being as it was a time before the use of internet in the home had really taken off, a walkthrough wasn’t available. So I was kind of looking forward to picking up Trilobyte’s puzzle-horror again and finally putting it to rest.
Players find themselves in a haunted mansion without a memory.
The story is set in 1935 in the town of Harley-on-the-Hudson and centres around a drifter named Henry Stauf. After having a dream about a beautiful doll, he betters himself by becoming a popular toy-maker and his playthings are given to all of the local children. However, at the height of his success many of them die after coming down with an incurable virus; and meanwhile, Stauf builds an eerie mansion on the edge of town after being guided by another vision.
Players find themselves in his house without a memory and no recollection of how they got there. As you explore, you’ll discover that the building is haunted by the ghosts of six people whom Stauf called together for a party, with the expectation that an unknown seventh would eventually join them. But what happened to them? Will the toy-maker’s true nature be revealed? And who is the mysterious seventh guest?
Who is the mysterious seventh guest that everyone is searching for?
There’s not too much to say about gameplay, except that The 7th Guest is all about puzzles. The mansion is made up of a number of different rooms and players explore these looking for the next challenge. Occasionally you’ll bump into ghosts who reveal the next part of the plot through live-action cutscenes, and you may come across a number of ‘supernatural events’ such as hands moving through a painting or a head emerging from a pot full of soup in the kitchen (see the video below).
It’s not hard to find the puzzles however so those looking forward to a spooky search for clues will be somewhat disappointed. You’d therefore expect the challenges to be good ones seeing as the game is based entirely around them, but unfortunately they’re a bit of a mixed bag. Some are very simple and require hardly any thinking; some are extremely difficult; and some are too long, taking ages to complete even though the solution itself may in fact be easy. Top this off the animated pieces of the puzzles moving as slowly as they do, and you’ll probably end up cursing at the screen at least once.
The blood-flow challenge is one of the better ones.
There were twenty-two puzzles in the original game and two have been removed in the iPad version due to ‘various technical reasons’. This is possibly a good thing as you might not want to subject yourself to an additional couple because the controls are so sticky; but the downside is that they’re not the ones you wouldn’t actually want to play. Many of the challenges are duplicates and the originality of some, such as the cake and blood-flow pieces, are outweighed by repetitive coin-flip and chess-based scenarios. This is the reason why I never completed the game when I originally tried it all those years ago: I simply got bored of seeing yet another chess board, and the plot holes meant that even the story wasn’t enough to keep me going.
The 7th Guest was originally released a year before Myst in 1993 and gamers flocked to stores in order to buy it. But now, twenty years later, Brøderbund’s masterpiece is an adventure classic while Trilobyte’s horror-puzzler has pretty much faded into obscurity. Myst immerses players in a number of detailed worlds; its puzzles are woven into the environment; the game can be completed in a number of ways; and there’s a pleasant difficulty level throughout. The 7th Guest restricts you to the rooms of haunted mansion; its challenges are strictly standalone; it’s a very linear title that requires certain mysteries to be solved before others; and the quality of the puzzles is inconsistent. For me, there’s just no competition.
Not another chess puzzle!
It sounds as if I’m being extremely negative about this title but it does have a couple of redeeming features. It started the FMV trend and was seen as the future of gaming, being heralded as a massive jump in the evolution of game design back in the day. The transition between areas in Myst was done instantly so that it kind of resembled a slideshow, whereas those in The 7th Guest show the whole movement from location to location and this does look somewhat better. Additionally, the horror-puzzle genre was quite unique at the time so many players wanted to get their hands on the title to see what it was all about.
Unfortunately however, I found the script to be poor and the acting is almost terrible. Everything is really hammed up, from the cutscenes where ghosts appear and reveal how they were murdered to the screams that can occasionally be heard throughout the mansion. I understand that video game horror wasn’t so subtle or ‘psychological’ back in 1993 but it’s hard to believe I found The 7th Guest as scary as I did then. For example, take a look at the ‘head in the soup pot’ below – it’s pretty funny, right?
There’s a small possibility that I might return to this title at some distant point in the future, when I want a puzzle title that doesn’t require too much involvement. But I can’t see this happening any time soon; in fact, Craig played most of the game with me and never wants to see it again! However, if you do find that you enjoy it you might want to take a look at the sequel The 11th Hour (although this didn’t exactly receive glowing reviews); and Trilobyte have confirmed that they’re working on a third instalment.
If this title hadn’t been so innovative with its genre, FMV cutscenes and ‘adult content’ in 1993, I doubt it would have received such a positive reception at its original release. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not the worst puzzle game I’ve ever played, but it’s certainly not the best either. You’re probably better off going with something that’s a pure puzzler, such as an instalment from the Professor Layton series or The Tiny Bang Story, or a complete horror, such as Outlast. Unless of course you want to see that soup head in the kitchen of Stauf’s mansion.
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