The 7th Guest

US DOS cover.

The 7th Guest is a horror-themed multi-genre puzzle video game developed by Trilobyte and published by Virgin on 1993-04-01 for DOS and CD-i, and later ported to Macintosh, and Windows. It's the first game in The 7th Guest series. You play an mysterious character in an old haunted mansion who, by solving various puzzles, uncovers the story of an evil toy maker who used his toys to murder children and capture their souls. The story is told though ghostly vignettes with horrific imagery which sometimes include clues to the puzzles.

Personal

My first experience with this game was at a friend's house shortly after it was released. He had bought the game, but his computer wasn't powerful enough to run it, so, when he launched the program, it just changed DOS prompt foreground color to dark blue, and began playing the intro music, but didn't advance. After his father upgraded their computer, he was able to play, and, by the time I came over again to see it, he had already solved a couple of the early puzzles. We loved how creepy the game was, but we weren't very good at it, so my friend bought the strategy guide and we used it to get through several of the harder puzzles. However, even with the hint book helping us solve all the puzzles, we were never able to get into the attic. I later played the game in a Windows port, alone in a basement of my cousin's house at night, and got creeped out all over again. This time I had the Internet to help me with the more difficult puzzles, but I still failed to enter the attic after solving the all the other puzzles. I later learned that the microscope puzzle, which I couldn't beat, could be "finished" by using the in-game hint book. After learning that, I replayed the game, skipped the microscope puzzle, and finally beat it on 2021-04-24. I was a bit disappointed after all those years that, microscope puzzle aside, I was only two simple puzzles away from victory.

Status

I own the Windows port of this game, I beat it (though I needed to skip the microscope puzzle).

Review

6	4	9	9	3

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• For the time, the game was state of the art. The graphics, sound, music, video, and 3D animation were all extremely impressive. To give you an idea of how far ahead it was, Secret of Mana was the technological apex of consoles.
• The story is quite insidious, and, as a teen, I found the game to be a bit scary. Several of the puzzles and animations are unsettling.
• There is a pretty good assortment of puzzles that tax different areas of your mind including pattern recognition, lateral thinking, memorization, and more. Also, a good amount of effort has been put toward ensuring the games organically fit the setting. Even a word puzzle doesn't seem out of place.
• Robert Stein III created wonderful art for the game designing a properly creepy mansion, and the modelers created 3D objects that were way ahead of their time.
• George Sanger and Team Fat composed a wonderfully haunting soundtrack, and the fact that you could put the game into a CD and hear much of the soundtrack, as well as a special track was a wonderful addition. The ending song, Skeletons in My Closet, is a great song for the credits.
• Using a Ouija board for the menu was clever, and the cursors (skeleton hands, eyes, chattering teeth, throbbing brain, drama mask) are all perfectly fitting.
• The manual is an in-game universe manual, and it's well written.
• I like that the game reactivates all the puzzles after you win so you can replay any puzzle you want.

Bad

• A lot of the puzzles are just old public domain puzzles: fitting 8 queens on a chessboard, peg solitaire, coin flipping mazes, follow the leader on the piano, etc. Others were derivative of existing games like Lights Out and slider games.
• Navigation through the house and puzzles themselves ends up taking about ten times longer than they need to because the animation is so slow, and you can't speed it up or turn it off. Also, there is no way to end it prematurely, even if you've already seen it.
• There were four puzzles that were variations on a theme: the coffin puzzle, Stauff's portrait, the mansion puzzle, and the block puzzle. More variety would have been nice. There are also four puzzles based around chess.
• The acting is pretty terrible.
• Like most puzzle games, once you discern the trick needed to win the puzzle, it's over, and you'll have to wait until you forget the solution before it's a challenge again. Only the microscope puzzle really taxes you every time. This hurts the replay value.
• Some of the audio is poorly engineered. Dialogue is sometimes quieter than the music and you can barely hear it, and, at other times, its completely overpowers it. The lip-sync is often badly off as well.
• The microscope puzzle is too hard. The AI looks three turns ahead, meaning it will beat all but the most expert human players (or superior AIs). The designers really should have dialed back the difficulty to allow casual gamers a fighting chance because the completionist in me hates that I have to use the library hint book to skip it.
• Due to the random initialization of the mansion puzzle, it frequently creates unwinnable puzzles. I spent a fair amount of time fiddling with this one until I finally realized that there was just no way to solve it. After restarting several times for a better initial random state, I finally beat it. It would have been nice if they programmed it to filter out initial states that can't be solved.
• Entering the menu and resuming play often places you in a different part of the mansion. You also can't load a game without first quitting the game and restarting it.
• The game demanded very impressive hardware for the time preventing anyone who didn't have an impressive machine from playing it. However, I have to give the developers props for including a huge assortment of display drivers.
• I don't like the fact that the left wall in the dungeon has the wrong lighting. Same with the bricks in the fireplace.
• The ending is a bit disappointing. There isn't one last grand puzzle to solve, you just sit there and watch yet another cut-scene unfold.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Boxes

• 

  This art was used for nearly every release, though different platforms cropped it and added platform-specific graphics. The art is impressive (though the mansion is a bit small), the lettering is fantastic, and little touches like the wrought iron gate, moss on the dead tree, and strange silhouette in the attic window make it clear you're going to play a horror game.

• 

  This art was used on a later run of the Windows port. It uses elements of the original art, along with various other pieces with a gold palette. It's nice, but it's not as good as the original, and the "For Windows 95" box is distracting.

Documentation

• 

  US DOS manual.

• 

  US Windows manual.

• 

  Manual (Europe)

• 

  The Official Strategy Guide.

Fan Art

• 

  Cake puzzle fan art by Akki14.

Videos

Review - PushingUpRoses.

Longplay.

Speedrun.

Links

       

• thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/T7G/Index.html - My old shrine, "The Doll House."