This is not the first time I have played this game. In fact this was one of my first "must have" games way back in the days of DOS. At the time, I had a current (for the time) 486 PC and it did not take long till I had fallen in love with what is arguably my first actual horror game. I did manage to finish it, loving every second (well, besides the infamous microscope puzzle). And back then, I considered it one hell of a gaming achievement.
But with the game down and done, there was little reason to ever return so much as keep the CD-ROM as a memory on my shelf. That is until April this year when this version dropped without warning on us all. The idea of getting a new version with "director's cut" material and a novelization of the story was too much for me to even consider resisting and I bought it day one. But now that I have the game, what makes this version so special? Well, after finishing it, I can't say a lot, unfortunately.
At it's heart, the 7th Guest is a collection of puzzles wrapped in a horror story told from first person full motion videos (FMVs). You will play the roll of Ego, a bodyless entity as he wanders through the house. You have no memory of how you got here or why, but what you do know is that you are not alone. Others are trapped here with you, their ghosts repeating the events of a grisly night when the owner of the place, a Mr. Stauf, invited the six of them to. He had sent each a letter, promising the chance at their heart's desire should they accept this invitation. On arrival each had a note, explaining the rules of the game he had setup for them. There is a task he wanted done, but the contestants would have to compete with each other to even figure out what it was. And only the winner would ever leave the house again.
These and other details of the night play out for you as you progress through the game, usually by finding your way into a new room or solving the puzzle in a room, but occasionally just clicking the right "theatric mask" will also push the story along. Well, in a way anyway. While the story is linear, the presentation is more of reflections of what happened in each room and not necessarily always in the order they actually occurred. Some events unlock others giving some structure to help you along, but it is entirely possible and likely you will see events of the night in the wrong order, and it will be up to you to sort this out, at least until you look at the extras but we will get to that in little while.
In the meantime, we also need to explain how you get between these points, as this is not a first person game as you would think of one today. Rather, it is completely driven by the mouse and the cursor will change icons to explain what will happen when you click. A beckoning finger, for example either means clicking there will either turn you in the direction it's beckoning (usually along the left and right edges of the screen) or move you to the place it's beckoning to (when it's forward). Chattering teeth means clicking there will show you a spectral event... usually something meant to be spooky, but fairly inconsequential. A theater mask is similar to this, but usually is more plot-based and can be necessary to see to unlock further rooms and puzzles and progress the game itself. And those puzzles will reveal themselves by the cursor turning into a skull with a pulsing brain.
Once in a puzzle, the use of the cursor changes somewhat to reflect manipulation instead of movement. All of them have the same basic control scheme, though: if you can click there, the cursor will change into an eyeball while the beckoning finger on either side of the screen will let you back out of the puzzle if you are stuck and want to try something else instead. There is also a stopwatch in the lower corner of the screen which clicking will let you restart the puzzle without leaving if you think you screwed up and want to just start again conveniently. But within this simple interface, you will find incredibly varied and sometimes even straight up devious puzzles... sometimes just trying to figure out what the goal of the puzzle is will be a challenge. Your only clues at this point is how the game behaves with those clicks, Ego's commentary, and "some" of Stauff's taunts as you click along. Don't get me wrong, there is further help if you need it, but like so much in this mansion, I will leave it to you to find it rather then spoil the surprise.
That stopwatch is still there when not in puzzle mode, but it really doesn't do much for gameplay there. Rather, in this mode it acts as a fast-forward button, letting you blaze through events you have already seen if you clicked them again and do not feel like taking the time to repeat it. In addition to this button, however, there are three more in the corners which will prove a bit more useful. In upper left corner there is a small board much like the main menu of the game and is in fact a shortcut to it. It will do as you expect it to, allowing you to change settings, load a game, save your current one, ect. But this is also one of the first real weaknesses in game. The menu is just an overlay over the main game, feeling kinda like the digital version of a cheap plastic cover, down to the save and load "circle" being a not-quite-fitting the screen at full 1080 resolution image. It frankly looks like a spinning cut-out. And I found out it is an overlay because when trying to stream this game with OBS, it refused to capture it I chose to capture the game and not the screen. It's not actually part of the game at all!. But this is sadly not the only thing that pointed to a lack of polish and quality in this release.... though we will get to that later too.
For the moment, there are a few niceties in the right corners of the screen to help you move around easier and see where you are going. The upper of these two sports a pair of shades and clicking them will highlight where on the screen there is something to click. It is not really necessary in this game and the resolution difference between the highlights and the world around you is a bit jarring, but it is nice to make sure you don't miss anything in the game. And finally the lower right corner contains an icon of a map which will take over the screen if you click it.This, however, is nothing new to this version, but it will let you look over the three floors of the house with color-coded rooms to identify where you are locked out of, where there is a puzzle to complete, and where you have finished the puzzle in that room. This is a great way to keep track of your progress as well as figure out where you might next wish to go.
But sadly, this version of the game promises to be a remaster... and proves to be nothing of the sort. You would think if they were going to remaster it, they would take the original video used to make the game and get better video out of it now to re-build the whole thing no that it's no longer restricted to data streams a CD-ROM of the era could handle. (That would 150KB/s or just shy of 0.15 MB/s. And to put this into perspective a DVD which only handles 480p resolutions uses at least 2-3MB/s.) But instead what we get is the original game put through a filter like your SNES emulator might use to smooth out pixels on the ancient games that system ran. This looks fine and can even look really good for sprite based games, but this is not a sprite based game. This is a live-video based game and it looks absolutely horrid.
Nor are the deleted scenes back in the game itself. Rather if you play the Steam copy you will find them in a zip file downloaded with the game along side the novel and everything else, while gog will have them as downloadable in the goodies section for the game either on their website or gog galaxy (which ever you choose to use).
But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. This version was apparently already made well before it got the "25th anniversary" moniker on PC. According to reviews on Steam, the same studio released this game 5 years prior as a 20th anniversary edition on mobile devices. And based on the trailer for those editions I believe it. In essence this makes this a really cheap port of an amazing 1990s game.
Bugs: While this game ran very well when it ran, it did have some serious issues starting up. Almost every time I tried to play this game, I would get to the main menu, but starting/loading the game meant I had to start it at least 2 or 3 times before it would actually let me play rather then crash. Looking for a solution on the gog forums, the dev team who brought this version to be blamed it on the gog galaxy overlay, but even turning this off did not fix the issue. Considering the laziness of the release, I am not surprised they offered at best a guess without confirming.
Overall: I can not recommend this version of the game. In any way it varies from the original, the original is just plain better. And yet I have to recommend this package at the same time for the exact same reason. You see that vastly superior version of the game is included with your purchase. In Steam, it's a free DLC while the gog version includes it as a goodies download. I can not speak for Steam, but the gog version runs in the Scumm emulator, much like it used to be when available on it's own on the service. This should allow you to play the best version of the game hassle free.
Add to this the sound track, cut scenes from the original, and even a downloadable novel to sort out that story definitively (told you we would come back to that) and I absolutely can and do recommend the total package... despite the main release you are expected to get it for being a cheap knockoff at best. At least if you are a fan of brainteasers, anyway. All horror story and themes aside, this game is just that: a collection of brainteaser puzzles, so if those are not your thing, stay the hell away from this one.
Score:
6/10
System Requirements:
- 1.8 Ghz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- Any graphic card that supports Open GL
- Windows 7, 8, or 10
- 2 GB hard drive space
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
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