The 7th Guest
| The 7th Guest | |
|---|---|
CD Cover art
|
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| Developer(s) | Trilobyte |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Distributor(s) | Trilobyte, Night Dive Studios |
| Designer(s) |
Rob Landeros Graeme Devine |
| Artist(s) | Robert Stein III |
| Writer(s) | Matthew Costello |
| Composer(s) | George Sanger |
| Platform(s) | PC, CD-i, Mac OS, iOS, OS X, Linux |
| Release date(s) |
PC CD-i Mac OS iOS
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| Genre(s) | Interactive movie, Puzzle adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
The 7th Guest, produced by Trilobyte and originally 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 unprecedented 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. The 7th Guest has subsequently been re-released on Apple's app store for various systems such as the Mac.Bill Gates called The 7th Guest "the new standard in interactive entertainment".
The game has since been ported in various formats to different systems such as iOS, with Trilobyte mentioning the potential for a third entry in the series.
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!").
A plot of manipulation and sin is gradually played out, in flashback, by actors through film clips as the player progresses 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. After each puzzle, the player is shown a video clip of part of the plot, if the hint book was consulted 3 times, the player does not get to view the clip. The hint book can be used for all but the final puzzle.
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Wikipedia