I actually thought I've already written about the game on this blog, I have but not on it's own, just mentioned in comparison to other games. The 7th Guest, the game to have for your new cd-rom computer back in 1993. My dad convinced my mom that they would get this game and she even commented on why should we get a game like this? Turns out it hooked her alright since she was the one sitting up late at night playing the game. So what is it about?
It's a puzzle game set in a horror story. It begins with telling the story of Henry Stauf, the toymaker who began with killing a woman and then gets visions of dolls and puzzles that he sell, but they apparently causes the death of children. With his money he builds a house on a hill and retire until one night where he has invited 6 guests to a night in the house where they are tasked with giving Stauf the one thing he wants and he will grant their greatest wish. And the thing he wants is the 7th guest, a boy that sneaked into the house, but ended up trapped.
All this is told through short sequences before or/and after solving the different puzzles around the house. It begins easy with dividing a cake in equal pieces and putting spiders on a pentagram or whatever. But after that we get harder and harder... well, mostly, I've played this game so much as a kid that several of the puzzles that have a sentence or such I know by heart, except the can puzzle that I still look up. The can puzzle is found in the kitchen where you are supposed to form a sentence, but the letter you have in abundance is Y. Not that easy to figure out when you hardly know english as a kid, I mean what does spryly mean? And don't get me starting on the different chess puzzles, the knights in the bathroom is kinda unnerving. And then we have the microscope puzzle which is pretty much unplayable now since the AI was wired to the speed of the computer, which today means it's really smart.
So you basically have to do the other way to clear puzzle, go to the library and read the hint book three times to clear the puzzle. You can do that for every puzzle, except the final one since you can't leave the room where that one is. Which gives another problem since the hint books is also the only way to get an explanation of how the puzzle works. And reading about the final puzzle (lighting windows in a three-story house) that would have made it understandable.
Still, I like this game. It still looks good almost 30 years later and the music is eerily creepy. I don't get scared as I did as a kid, but the story has great potential and the actors really ham it up. ScummVM handles it very well. There was a sequel that we got our hand on, but sadly we couldn't get it to run beside the first puzzle or so, but then ScummVM seems to be on track to get it to work.
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