7th Guest Review

Many years ago when I was a younger man we had a computer. It was a Tandy something or other from Radio Shack. That has nothing to do with this game really, but when we made the step from that thing – which I loved by the way – to a PC with Windows 3.1 I didn’t think it was gonna get any better than that.

Low and behold I was a fool. We ended up with a Win95 system not too longer after that and, wonder of wonders, it had a CD-ROM drive it it. It may, and I can’t back this up, have even been dual speed. Think of it. Wonder of wonders.

All of that is to say that The 7th Guest was one of the first games to be released only on CD. A new engine had to be created for the game so the data could be streamed continuously from the disc. It was also designed to require the most basic of inputs possible. The idea was the game would be something you could play on a home PC or a variety of (at the time) modern video game consoles like the ever popular SNES-CD which, as we all know, didn’t even make it out of the prototype phase.

History lesson over.

The 7th Guest is a first person point n’ click (kind of), adventure (kind of), puzzle game (for sure). We are an amnesiac protagonist that makes his way through the creepy old abandoned mansion of Henry Stauf. Stauf was a toy maker and generally creepy dude. Turned out that he had a pretty shady history and his toys had a knack for un-aliving children.

Anyway. We don’t know who we are, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, or why a dismembered hand beckons us so sweetly.

As we make our way through the mansion we run into some blue-screened fmv’s of people that arrived at the mansion for the chance to have their greatest desire granted to them if they can solve a puzzle. Kind of a House On Haunted hill thing. As we solve the various logic puzzles, mazes, and Othello clone in the mansion we get a little more of the story here and there.

Stauf himself makes appearances when we’re working on puzzles. To laugh at us when we fail, to be annoyed when we solve them, and to misdirect us when we’re doing it right… sometimes.

Stauf’s voice actor (Robert Hirschboeck) is pretty danged good in the role. He doesn’t have to do any real acting other than reading his lines which I think helps. Everyone else is actually there acting out the scenes and they have a “community theater” vibe to em. It’s not bad, it’s kinda cheesy, but it fits with the atmosphere of the game I think.

Puzzles range from swapping cans to spell words, chess board puzzles, a type of “Pipe Dream” style maze involving a heart, serving cake, a “Blackout” style game with coffins, and the a fore mentioned “Othello” clone which on modern systems is really the most difficult thing in the game as you actually have an opponent to play against. Difficulty of the puzzles range from a little tricky to confusingly annoying as the mechanics aren’t always clear, and if you’re playing on a modern system the game does have a habit of crashing in the middle of things. So save often.

The music is quite good, but quite strange at the same time. Like… Tom Waits and Steely Dan had an orphaned child together. George “The Fat Man” Sanger composed it and it’s not just his nickname that makes me leave the above comment on it’s style. Midi instruments are all over the place in the game, which is obvious given the time it was released. If you’re the kind of person that finds marimba music creepy, then this should work for you just fine.

I don’t feel the music is always appropriate for the scenes, but it does a good job of making you feel a little off balance because of the way it’s arranged. Is it all good? Nah. Does it work in the situations? Nearly all the time.

Graphically the game is very much a product of its era. That’s not a bad thing though. Other than those FMV’s I mentioned before, 100% of the things in the game are all early 3d rendered graphics. Chairs, tables, stairs, a telescope, a bathtub. If it’s not a “ghostly” image of a long dead guest or your cursor then it’s going to be there in glorious 3d for your viewing pleasure.

Is it creepy? Eh… not really. It kind of has a fun house aspect to it, but I think that’s the color scheme more than anything else. There’s a lot of blue and purple in this game. The different rooms that contain all the puzzles do work well for what they are. You’re not going to find a globe in the kitchen instead of the study, for example. Nothing is out of place I guess is what I’m trying to say. Each room has it’s own vibe, color scheme, feeling; and the puzzles in each room generally make sense with the room they appear in. A planetary puzzle in the study next to the telescope. The black and white tile floor is perfect for a chess puzzle. Going through the maze to get to the basement where you’ll find a puzzle involving coffins.

Speaking of that maze. I hate it. I really do. The path to the maze is actually in the game as another puzzle you have to solve, so if you were interested enough to write it all down and then do the maze you could. I wasn’t and I paid the price.

I’m not going to give any spoilers to the story in the review here so you can play it for yourself or watch my LP and experience it that way, but I’ll say that it does wrap up fairly well. However some of the sound design at the end isn’t very good. The music gets so loud you can’t actually hear the big reveal at the end. Still, if you like games like Myst, Traitor’s Gate, or Critical Path (never played that one myself) then I think you should totally give this one a try.

TLDR, here’s some numbers.