I’ve been playing PC games for a long time. I was one of the first kids I knew who even had a computer at home, let alone their own computer. Because my dad worked as a beta tester, I had new software before it was even out yet. The first games I played were platform games to learn maths and English, but I suppose my first proper gaming experience was The 7th Guest. Not that I played it myself back then. I watched my mum play it, and even in the bright lights of her room I found it scary and exciting.
Released in 1993 by Virgin Games, and produced by Trilobyte, The 7th Guest was one of the first games released on CD-rom, simply because it was too large to fit on a floppy disk. It was also one of the first to use fully pre-rendered 3D sets, and the very first graphic adventure game to use 640x320 graphics with 256 colours. Might not sound like much now, but it was a big deal back in ’93. It also used live-action footage to play out the cut-scenes, as well as fully voiced dialogue. The game’s plot is engaging and more than a little bit creepy. Henry Stauf was a drifter who one day started creating toys that came to him in dreams. He sold the toys and got rich, but then the children in the town where he lived and ran his shop started dying of a mysterious disease. Years later, Stauf has retreated to the house he built with the money from his toy making business, and one night he invites six guests to his house. They arrive to find no sign of him, and instead find that he has left puzzles for them to solve. You are a nameless amnesiac, with no idea how you got there, and exploring the house and solving the puzzles, you watch the events of the night unfold, in more or less chronological order, and it soon becomes apparent that there is a seventh, uninvited guest present, a boy who snuck in on a dare.
The game has aged surprisingly well. The MIDI soundtrack still sounds pretty good, and though the graphics aren’t up to current standards, they’re still charming. The puzzles are downright difficult. The instructions you get from Stauf’s disembodied voice and your own inner monologue are cryptic at best, and oftentimes it’s not even clear what your objectives are. In other words, the puzzles are properly challenging and some can take hours to solve if you’re not used to classic puzzle solving. As such, modern gamers may find the game slow and frustrating, but given that the game costs you no more than lunch, it’s highly worth it to give it a try anyway. This is an important part of gaming history, and if you’re a puzzle solver you will likely love it, no matter how dated it looks. And if you’re not, you can always Google the solutions.
Now available on iOS devices!
If you enjoyed this article, Maia will be providing a monthly column covering similar subjects over the coming months. You can follow her on Twitter @maiamadness. Stay tuned!