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The 7th Guest |
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The 7th Guest, published in 1993 by Virgin Interactive, is a video-based puzzle computer game, not unlike The Fool's Errand, and predating Myst. Seventh Guest is a fairly elegant horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac. The game received a great amount of press attention for making video clips a core part of gameplay, for its unprecedentedly large amount of 3D rendered graphics, and for its adult—that is, horror—content.
Description
Old Man Stauf built a house, and filled it with his toys.
Six guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise.
Blood inside the library, blood right up the halls.
Dripping down the attic steps, "Hey guests, try not to fall!"
Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen.
But Old Man Stauf is waiting there... crazy, sick, and MEAN!
The story revolves around a man named Henry Stauf. (Going even farther with the games love for puzzles, some will notice the name Stauf is in itself an anagram for Faust.) Stauf was a drifter and thief, robbing gas stations and grocery stores, until he became a murderer one night in the early 20th century, according to the opening introductory movie. He killed a woman named Grace Willet, who was coming home from choir pratice. Stauf killed her with a blow to the head, took her purse, and ran, futher secluding himself. He arrived in the fictional town of Harley-on-the-Hudson, where the story takes place, and had a vision of a doll so perfect that it had to be a gift. Voices spoke to him, telling him exactly what he needed to do. He carved the doll, whittling the haunting face until it was an exact replica of his vision. When he was done, Stauf went to town, to a bar. The owner had a daughter - he said his girl would love the strange doll, so Stauf offered it to the man. The bartender, in turn, offered Stauf food, and a place to stay - a workspace in which to fashion more of his magnificent toys. A simple transaction - the first of many. Stauf opened up a shop, because everyone wanted a Stauf toy. Every boy and girl in town, and all the neighboring towns. "A Stauf Toy Is A Toy For Life," people said. No two were alike. Everyone loved his unique toys. Henry Stauf grew wealthy. But then the virus came - and some of the children started dying, clutching their Stauf toys until the end. And there was one last vision, a new message from the voices, one last dream of a house that the wealthy toymaker was to build. A strange house, a house that scared people .... One night Stauf invited six guests to come to his mansion. He promised them things, their hearts' most secret desires...
The game begins with six prominent civic figures invited to come to Stauf's ominous mansion for the night with the promise that their hearts' greatest desires would come true if they did what he asked. He would not tell them what he wanted, however, only that it had something to do with another "very special guest" who hadn't arrived yet. They had to figure the rest out on their own by solving Stauf's games and puzzles. None of them knew, however, that Stauf was playing a deadly game of his own...
Characters
- Henry Stauf - The owner of the mansion in which the game takes place. Stauf was a homeless drifter who became a successful toymaker after a series of visions showed him the toys he would create, but the people of Harley know nothing of his past. They only know him as the eccentric old man who makes marvelous toys for their children and became a hugely successful "rags to riches" story.
- Ego - The player's character, a disembodied consciousness that moves through the house solving puzzles and observing the events of that mysterious night at Stauf's house as they unfolded long ago. The entire game takes place in first-person view through Ego's eyes. Ego does not know how he came to the house, or why, he only knows that there is a reason for him to be there that he hasn't figured out yet.
- Tad - A boy who lives next door to the Stauf mansion. On the night of the party he enters the house on a dare by climbing in through a window, then discovers that he can't get out again. He spends most of the game dodging Stauf's guests while he tries to find a way to escape the house.
- Edward and Elinor Knox - An older, married couple. Elinor is a decent woman who still loves her husband and seems to want to help the boy, Tad, as much as she can. Edward is having severe financial difficulties, and he shows little love or concern for his wife, instead teaming up with the younger Martine Burden to try to solve the mystery. His greatest desire is to start over with a new life, a full bank account, and no marriage tying him down. Her desire is also to start over again, but with Edward still at her side.
- Martine Burden - Young, pretty, and ambitious, Martine was once named Miss Harley-on-the-Hudson, but she hated the small town and left as soon as she had the chance. Now she is back after her wealthy boyfriend dumped her. She is immediately attracted to the older Edward Knox, whose desires for wealth and a new life away from Harley are quite compatible with her own desires for power and status.
- Brian Dutton - A middle-aged man who walks with a cane. Dutton owns a shop in Harley-on-the-Hudson and has sold goods to Henry Stauf. Brian admires the way Stauf had grown wealthy and the way he had solved his own problems, and his greatest desire is to be as successful as Stauf, but he is also haunted by memories of seeing his brother fall through thin ice and drown when he was a child.
- Julia Heine - An older woman, and quite vain. She is unhappy with her life, recently lost her job at the bank, and has developed a fondness for drinking sherry in the afternoons. Her heart's desire is to be young and beautiful again, when she felt like she could take on the world.
- Hamilton Temple - A professional stage magician nearing the end of his career, he is a kindly man who also tries to help Tad, and he gets along well with Elinor Knox. His greatest desire is to know if there is such a thing as real magic, and if there is, can Stauf give him the ability to use it?
Gameplay
The game is played by wandering the mansion, solving logic puzzles and watching videos that further the story along. Stauf is an ever-present menace, taunting you with clues, mocking you as you fail his puzzles ("We'll all be dead by the time you solve this!"), and expressing displeasure when you succeed ("Don't think you'll be so lucky next time!").
A moderately complex plot of manipulation and sin is played out by surprisingly talented actors through film clips as you progress between rooms by solving twenty-one puzzles of shifting nature and increasing difficulty. The first puzzle most players encounter is a relatively simple cake puzzle, where the player has to divide the cake evenly into six pieces, each containing two skull and two star decorations. Other puzzles include mazes, chess problems, logical deductions, Simon-style pattern-matching, word manipulations, and even an extremely difficult game of Othello. For players who need help or simply can't solve a particular puzzle, there is a hint book in one room of the house. The first two times it is consulted about a puzzle it gives clues about how to solve it, the third time it simply completes the puzzle for you so that you can go on with the game. Overuse of the hint book, however, leads to certain rooms of the house being locked, thus making it impossible to complete the game.
The 7th Guest was the first game for the PC platform to be available only on CD-ROM, since it was too large to be distributed on floppy disks: it came on 2 CDs. Removing some of the large movies and videos obviously wasn't an option, as they were essential to the gameplay. This game, along with LucasArts' Star Wars: Rebel Assault and Brøderbund's Myst, helped promote the adoption of CD drives, which were not yet common.
Legacy
A sequel, The 11th Hour, was released, along with a collection of puzzles from both games called Uncle Henry's Funhouse. A novel based on the 7th Guest was also released, with details and scences that were unable to be included into the game.
The birth of a company
The 7th Guest was the brainchild of a Virgin MasterTronics programmer, Graeme Devine. When he presented his idea for the game, he was promptly "fired" only to be rehired on with a new company that Brøderbund started just for this game. Trilobyte developed the game and went on to produce the sequel, with Devine as the lead programmer. Unfortunately the sequel had trouble overcoming some technical hurdles and was late to market. Despite high presales due to the success and popularity of the 7th Guest, the game majorly went under expected sales numbers. Causes of this were the fact that the game was designed for DOS when Windows 95 was already out and popular, causing many people to call in frustration trying to get the game to work, inane riddles and anagrams and not enough action, the fact that the music was MIDI and not WAV, and others.
The company had a third game in development called TLC, but, to the horror of Devine (who only found out about its content after it was well into development), had a large amount of pornographic content. The company folded before TLC could be released. It was subsequently released as a DVD movie instead and the game was published by Aftermath Media.
A third 7th Guest game was on the drawling board, but very little of it was worked on before the company went under.
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