Drew's Out of Office - The 7th Guest

Could Use Some Sprucing

Games I’m Playing – The Witness – When I was young games were a luxury. They cost money and you had to be choosy with where to spend your ducats, birthday/holiday wishes, or whatever other methods used to obtain such things. There was a split between the PC nerds and the console nerds. Within those groups there were subdivisions based on what you owned. “Nintendo is for kids… have you not seen those Genesis ads? Why don’t you run home and play with that Italian plumber or pointy eared elf guy. I’m gonna play Altered Beast cause it’s tough. I mean, check out the muscles on this guy here! He turned into a tiger man.” (I had planned to link to something but honestly, sometimes the internet is too much). Point is, there are games that got missed due to budgetary constraints and unnecessary affiliations. Games like Myst or The 7th Guest

Now, I don’t know what anyone else’s recollection of The 7th Guest is, but for me, it was the game that was on demo at the local computer store… was that actually a computer store? I’m pretty sure they sold subscriptions for Prodigy so let’s go with “yes, it was a computer store”

T7G looked brilliant on whatever tiny-screened, enormous Cathode Ray Tube monitor was hawking it. There were ghostly figures that appeared to be real actors. It was a lot for my youth-addled brain to take in. Sure, DOOM was fast and furious, but it wasn’t photo realistic. It was like when you saw the game Night Trap and thought, “that looks cool. I should play that.” No, you should not. Anyway, here we are, 33 years later, and it’s time to break it down like I’m M.C. Hammer

“M.C. Hammer wasn’t cool in 1993”

Neither was I, disembodied voice, neither was I

What happens when a crazed toy maker named Henry Stauf gets a mildly creepy mansion and invites people to stay there? MILD SCARES AND MISCHIEF! So, yeah, you arrive on an island by boat where you grab a lantern and head up a mildly sloping hill to a mildly creepy house. As you enter you immediately know something is wrong. Why? Because you start seeing visions of people that were there at another time. I don’t know about you, but if I walked into a house and started seeing visions, I’d probably walk right back out of that house

6 guests were invited to Mr. Stauf’s mansion, a banker, a singer, a married couple, a shop owner, and a magician. Each has baggage that Stauf wants to exploit because he’s (let me check my notes) possessed by a demon!? That can’t be right. I mean, if he’s possessed by a demon then why is everything so tame? It’s like if Jigsaw had a younger brother that assumed throwing the word “scary” around would inherently make things scary

The 7th Guest is a first person puzzle game. So you walk around an empty house, looking at stuff, and doing puzzles 

“Demonic puzzles?”

Nope, just regular ones. 

There is some child that’s leading you through the house, as a butterfly with cryptic messages and Stauf is also talking about a child quite a bit. I wonder if these things are related

I’m pretty sure these games were the total inspiration for escape rooms

It should be noted at this point that I am playing the flat screen remake. The photo realism of the world is gone, and even the people don’t feel like they have that 1993, pre-rendered panache. Of course, my child brain is also gone so I’m certain they look much better than they didVisual cues are all over. They help you determine where you need to stand to bear witness to dialogue, where you need to go via the sudden appearance of cobwebs outside unlocked rooms, and what to interact with due to manifested ethereal energy around certain items. There’s even a nod to the blue and orange portal language established by Valve. What if The 7th Guest pioneered that visual language?!

The whole place is run down, so people must have been here, like 20 years ago. Instead of hiring a cleaner or grabbing a bucket, you can clean a room by solving a few puzzles. Neato. I think I’d like to have that be true in my house as well. A couple puzzles = clean? For sure

The lantern you have can be used to find things. Sometimes it illuminates hidden patterns on walls or floors. It also changes some hanging portraits to reveal slightly more disturbing portraits. I use the word “slightly” here in its most literal sense. If a picture is at 0% creepy, your light might make it 0.1% creepier. Oh no! That woman’s face is a skull under the light. Whatever will I do? It’s nothing like the melting face portrait from Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That picture was truly disturbing within the context of that game and makes you wonder if you, the player, are starting to lose it

Contributing to the not so creepy atmosphere is the soundtrack which sounds less like suspense or horror and more like smooth noir jazz. Something you’d sit in an armchair and enjoy while drinking an old fashioned and puffing a cigar while the sax player really starts wailing

None of this is bad, mind you, it just really misses the demonic theme. Ah the 90s, twas’ a simpler time

There are some standout moments, like the elevated bass volume with each pendulum swing as you solve the grandfather clock puzzle. There are also distorted voices, which is probably the most disturbing part of the game. Classic move, Stauf 

As mentioned, this is a puzzle game. That means you solve puzzles. Typically you have a major puzzle in every room as well as a couple sub puzzles that are needed to solve the major one. The types run the spectrum

“It’s run the gamut”

I know. There are math puzzles, spatial recognition puzzles, mazes, weight puzzles, puzzle boxes, etc. It’s like an amalgamation of all the internet IQ tests that weren’t really tests but definitely infected your computer with malware back in the day. What? I was the only one who did those. Remember, kids, M.C. Hammer

You’re allowed to pick up most objects, at will, in the world. Unfortunately, the majority of them are useless. I get this is a design problem as if you could only pick up key items, then finding them would be simple. However, making all the dossiers, books, and papers you pick up essentially meaningless is a bit of a let down. Throwing some color in there about the back story of Stauf, the guests, some creepy toy, or something else would have been a good addition. Something that wouldn’t materially change the arc of the story, but make me feel less manic about picking up a fire poker and immediately wondering “why?”

This is a game that’s of its time. It was revolutionary then, like Myst. This remake was done for VR originally, which is a cool idea. Honestly, I’m glad I played it. As a kid, it might have scared me, but I’ve been alive long enough now to have witnessed true terror, like the effects of social media. The puzzles can be tough and I definitely looked a couple up. That has me worried as I don’t want to offload critical thinking to AI and become an automaton in Stauf’s toy shop

The great thing about games back then, is you didn’t get to play everything. You had to make decisions to invest in something and that created a value attribution. When things are free, we attribute no value to them. No matter what one thinks of this game, the fact that 33 years later, I finally played it means it had some power. Now when are they doing that 11th Hour remake?