The 7th Guest

The 7th Guest
Developer(s)	Trilobyte
Publisher(s)	Virgin Interactive
Designer(s)	Rob Landeros Graeme Devine
Platform(s)	PC, CD-i, Mac OS, iOS
Release date(s)	PC NA April, 1993 EU 1993 CD-i NA 1993 EU 1993 Mac OS NA January 1, 1993 EU 1993 iOS NA December 15, 2010
Genre(s)	Interactive movie, Puzzle adventure
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	BBFC: 15 ESRB: Teen (T)
Media/distribution	CD, Download

The 7th Guest, produced by Trilobyte and released by Virgin Games in 1993, is an interactive movie puzzle adventure game. It was one of the first computer video games to be released only on CD-ROM. The 7th Guest is a horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac. The game received a great amount of press attention for making live action video clips a core part of its gameplay, for its unprecedentedly large amount of pre-rendered 3D graphics, and for its adult content. In addition, the game was very successful, with over two million copies sold, and is widely-regarded as a killer app that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. Bill Gates called The 7th Guest "the new standard in interactive entertainment."

In December 2010 the game was relauched for iOS, for iPhones and iPads.

Trilobyte has confirmed that there are plans for The 7th Guest III.

Gameplay

The game is played by wandering through a mansion, solving logic puzzles and watching videos that further the story. The main antagonist, Henry Stauf, is an ever-present menace, taunting the player with clues, mocking the player as they fail his puzzles ("We'll all be dead by the time you solve this!"), and expressing displeasure when the player succeeds ("Don't think you'll be so lucky next time!").

One of Stauf's many puzzles: This one requires Ego to close all of the skeletons in the coffins. When one coffin is selected, that one, and some of its adjacent ones, open or close.

A moderately complex plot of manipulation and sin is gradually played out, in flashback, by actors through film clips as you progress between rooms by solving twenty-one puzzles of shifting nature and increasing difficulty. The first puzzles most players encounter is either one where players must select the right interconnected letters inside the lens of a telescope to form a coherent sentence; or a relatively simple cake puzzle, where the player has to divide the cake evenly into six pieces, each containing the same number of decorations. Other puzzles include mazes, chess problems, logical deductions, Simon-style pattern-matching, word manipulations, and even an extremely difficult game of Infection similar to Reversi that utilizes an AI (and would later go on to make an encore appearance in the sequel). For players who need help or simply cannot solve a particular puzzle, there is a hint book in the library of the house. The first two times the book is consulted about a puzzle, the book gives clues about how to solve the puzzle; on the third time, the book simply completes the puzzle for the player so that the player can proceed through the game. Although the game's manual states that there may be consequences for using the hint book, the hint book can be used without penalty for all but the final puzzle.

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 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. The game's POV footage of walking through the house was originally planned as live-action video in a practical set, but the idea was abandoned after pre-rendered 3D sequences proved feasible and more cost-effective.

Story

Set in 1935 in the town of Harley-on-the-Hudson, a drifter named Stauf, after murdering a woman, had dreams of beautiful dolls which he would then carve and give to the local children. Successful, he set up a toy store and continued to sell the dolls. At the height of his success, some of the children with Stauf's dolls came down with a incurable virus; meanwhile, Stauf, guided by another vision, built an eerie mansion on the edge of town, and after its construction, was not seen for some time. The rest of the game is presented from a first-person view as the player's avatar, called "Ego", explores the house, witnessing the events of the past through ghostly images and narrating on what is seen.

Some time after the virus outbreak, six people received invitations to stay at Stauf's mansion: Martine Burden, a former singer; Edward and Elinor Knox, an older dissatisfied couple; Julia Heine who reminisces of her youth; Brian Dutton a fellow shopowner; and Hamilton Temple, a stage magician. When they arrive, they find no sign of Stauf, but instead instructions that they should stay the night and solve the puzzles that he has left them, and he will grant them their greatest desires. The guests, once on their own, each come to the conclusion that Stauf wants them to bring him the "seventh guest", which turns out to be a boy named Tad that has entered the house on a dare from his friends. Stauf seeks one more child which he will turn into one of his dolls, completing his pact with a supernatural entity.

The guests soon turn on each other: Martine lures Edward from his wife, and together they search for the boy. However, both Elinor and Hamilton recognize that Stauf has only evil plans for the child, and urge him to escape when they find him. Eventually, all but Julia and Tad succumb to death from their fellow guests or traps left by Stauf. Julia brings Tad to the attic, where the wheelchair bound Stauf awaits. Julia hands the boy to Stauf and demands her wish, but Stauf dissolves her in his own bile. Tad attempts to escape, but Stauf holds him back. The narrator, at this point, recognizes that he has seen all these events before, as he is the spirit of Tad; he has tried to stop this from happening countless times before and doomed to repeat it. Through the narrator's motivation, Tad is able to break free of Stauf's hold, causing the supernatural entity to take Stauf. Tad thanks the narrator, as the loop has now been broken, and they are taken into a glowing white light.

Music

The second disc of the CD-ROM set included a very large single audio track playable on any regular CD player. In total, the track was almost a half an hour long and it included both the in-game music, composed by already leading video game musician George "The Fat Man" Sanger, and two live music recordings: "The Game", whose melody in various permutations and stylistic variations became the background music for most of the game (as well as the theme for a piano puzzle) and whose lyrics were based on Stauf's twisted plot, and "Skeletons in My Closet", a jazzy tune with a female lead voice (Kris McKay) which was the ending-credits theme. A few years later, Sanger independently released an album titled 7/11, which was a little over an hour long and contained all the music from T7G (this time, on separate tracks) as well as its sequel, The 11th Hour.

The in-game music had conventions similar to Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, wherein each guest was assigned a musical theme; where Peter and Wolf used instrumental changes for its characters, The 7th Guest, conversely, used stylistic variations on the melody of Sanger's "The Game". Where two characters interact in the story, the styles are fused, counterpointed, or even sounded simultaneously and when tension abounds, the characters' themes are reflected thusly.

Development

The 7th Guest was the brainchild of game designer/graphic artist Rob Landeros, and a Virgin MasterTronics programmer, Graeme Devine. When Landeros and Devine presented their idea for the game, they were promptly "fired" so that they could start their own company, Trilobyte, dedicated solely to the development of this game. They originally intended to create the movements through the mansion using video. 3D graphics and animation were introduced to the title early in '91 when Robert Stein III joined the team.

Graeme Devine created the game's engine GROOVIE, which allowed continuous streaming of data from CD-ROM.

The game was to be ported to the unreleased SNES-CD peripheral.

Reception

The game received a very positive response and was very successful, with over two million copies sold. It is widely-regarded as a killer app that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. Bill Gates called The 7th Guest "the new standard in interactive entertainment."

The Macintosh version of the game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon #212 by Paul Murphy in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Murphy felt that "The Seventh Guest suffers from an incurable case of confusion about what it is trying to be. It's either a collection of puzzles encumbered by an unnecessary horror setting and story—or it's a horror story and setting encumbered by an unnecessary collection of puzzles."

Legacy

Following the success of The 7th Guest, Trilobyte released a sequel, The 11th Hour.

The 7th Guest was later released on the ill-fated CD-i console.

An official third installment was started at Trilobyte, but was never completed due to the demise of the company. Rob Landeros also attempted to create an official third installment, titled The 7th Guest Part III: The Collector.

Trilobyte released a compilation game made up of the puzzles from The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, and Clandestiny, called, Uncle Henry's Playhouse.

In December 2010, The 7th Guest was released for iPhone and iPad. There are plans for a third game in the series. There are also plans for a movie based on the game but details are, as of now, unknown.

In April 2011 Trilobyte released The 7th Guest: Infection as an iOS game only for the iPad. It is a stand-alone version of the Microscope Puzzle from the original version of The 7th Guest, which was excluded from the re-released iOS version for technical reasons. However, once the player has completed the main game, they can access the older version of the Infection game, by simply clicking any top corner of the menu board, and pressing the image for the laboratory. This puzzle, along with several others, can be played using this method.

In 2012, The 7th Guest was re-released for the PC, as a download from DotEmu.com and GOG.com.

Awards

The 7th Guest won the following awards:^{[citation needed]}

• 1995 Interactive Academy/Cybermania Awards - Best CD Game
• 1994 Multimedia World Readers' Choice Award - Best Entertainment Title
• 1994 Computer Game Review - Golden Triad Award
• 1994 New Media Invision Awards - Award of Excellence
• 1994 New Media Invision Awards - Gold-Creative Excellence for Best Animation/Graphics
• 1994 PC World Class - Best CD-ROM Game / Adult
• 1994 Electronic Entertainment 1st Annual Editors' Choice - Breakthrough Game
• 1994 Computer Gaming World Readers' Poll - No. 1 Rated Game
• 1993 PC Computing- MVP Entertainment Software
• 1993 Game Players PC Entertainment - Special Achievement in Graphics Design
• 1993 British Interactive Media - Silver Award

External links

• The 7th Guest at the Internet Movie Database
• Official website
• The Stauf Mansion - Detailed information on the games, the planned third part of the series, and rare test animations by Trilobyte.
• Unofficial arrangements (ReMixes) of The 7th Guest's soundtrack at OverClocked ReMix, one of which was created by the game's composer, "The Fat Man" George Sanger.
• The Making of The 7th Guest (video) & The 7th Guest soundtrack
• 'Beyond Tetris' - The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour: a review of the puzzles of The 7th Guest at GameSetWatch
• The 7th Guest guide at StrategyWiki