I have been waiting a long time for this. I had heard of this game back when it was being made as a fan creation to be released for free over a decade ago, and having been a fan of the franchise since the early 90s, I was instantly eager to see where it went. I won't say I was hyped at the time, for I knew it was still early in development and when a game is made as a hobby, it can take a very long time no matter how good the results might be.
While we waited, a lot changed, including the game becoming an officially licensed project despite still naming itself as a "fan game." And then finally it happened. Last Halloween we finally saw the game drop in full. Sadly it came out as a buggy mess by most reports, so I left it alone at the time. But a few weeks ago, it went on sale after the devs had time to fix it... and I took the plunge for what is likely going to be the last game in the series we ever get.
It has been many many years since the fateful night at the Stauf mansion. The mass murder left the six guest dead and never to be heard from again. But not everyone faced the same gruesome fate. A young boy named Tad who had snuck in on a dare managed to escape, at least physically. But in his mind, it's a whole other matter. He now sits in an insane asylum, convinced he's still stuck in the mansion, reliving that horrible night.
And this is how it would all remain, if not for a change of staff. His current doctor is retiring and being replaced with a new up and go-getter named Mark Richmond. Unlike the old doctor, this one believes Tad can be cured of his madness. And Dr. Richmond wishes to help Tad deal with his trauma by revisiting the old mansion under his care. But as he soon will find out, Tad might not be quite as mad as everyone believes.
From this starting point you will choose which of this dynamic duo you will play as and which half of the game you will play. That is not exaggerating, either. Not only will who you play show you their side of the tail, but it will also decide which of two completely different set of puzzles, events, potential endings, and even collectibles available to you. It might as well be two smaller games bundled into one as you wander through the mansion.
And that is also the right term. For w the hileprevious games in this franchise had you navigating the halls Stauf built by clicking where you wanted to go and watching a pre-rendered animation to put you there, this one leaves you to explore as you desire, seeing through the eyes of your chosen character. And the team has poured a lot of love and effort into this world as the game looks absolutely gorgeous!
But when the novelty of freedom of movement you never had in the series before wears off, it's also when you start to see the cracks in the gameplay it brings with it. Much like the previous titles, you will be tasked to find the puzzle in each room, the completion of which will progress the story. But also like the previous games, you only know you found these puzzles by your cursor becoming a skull with a pulsing brain icon. And now since you are playing a real First Person perspective, that cursor is fixed to the center of your screen, requiring you to turn around and look to find that spot where it resides. And with no obvious clues to look for, this search for puzzles starts to look like a first person version of the old point and click pixel hunts. Add to this that now things can be in the way of the spot you need and if it's too far away, the icon wont appear and this problem can get far more annoying. Thankfully most of what you need to find is in obvious locations, but you will hit this issue from time to time, so you should be aware of it.
Nor is the map going to help you particularly well right away. When you open it you will see rooms of the house fill in with lines of varying thickness across, solid blue, or not at all. Each of these signify if you can get into the room, have a puzzle to do in the room, or if there are no puzzles but something you need to find in the room. The problem is there is nothing to tell you what means what. And this is just one of the small issues that you will see in the interface work of this game that probably should have been ironed out before release.
However, the core game behind this is still amazing with deviously clever puzzles taking the center stage. And these puzzles will leave you scratching your head more often then not... and not just to figure out the rules. In fact most of these are very good at explaining just enough to let you know what you are trying to do while a pass or two will explain the rules enough to figure it out. From there it's mostly on you, but like the previous games there is a hint and even a "do it for you" system if you get stuck to keep you from getting frustrated and quitting. But this time, it was done both better and worse then it was before.
In the previous games, you could use hints to quickly go over the puzzle at the cost of losing any cut-scene that might have followed it. This meant back in the day you could blast through without thinking, but the 13th Doll will not let you do that. Anytime you need a hint, you can look it up in the menu, but the game will not let you open a new hint right after the previous one. Rather it will force you to wait and in turn encourage you to try for yourself before asking again. Overall I like this system, but the clues offered are usually useless beyond simply confirming if you understood the rules right before ultimately offering to just do it for you. This works well enough, but I would have liked, much like the previous games, if before it offered to complete the puzzle, the game offered to do the first step so you can have an actual hint to the solution. It can be infuriating to be told what you already know and be forced to wait when a single starting step or two done for you would be much more useful to demonstrate and get you started when you are really lost.
Bugs: The only bugs I could find are in the audio and subtitles. There are a few points late in Tad's story where both show up. In essence a couple of the subtitles are corrupted with ? symbols in the text, while the audio on rare occasion is mono and only came in through one speaker instead of stereo like the rest of the game. But other then that, it ran absolutely flawlessly.
Overall: I can not tell you this is the best game in the franchise. In fact, I would argue both other 7th Guest games are better when push comes to shove. But this is a legendary franchise, so falling short of the previous games does not make it bad. In fact, if you are a fan of puzzle games and the either the 7th Guest or 11th Hour in particular, you are doing yourself a disservice to miss this new outing. You will enjoy this, warts and all.
Score:
7/10
System Requirements:
- Graphics cards still under manufacturer support
- Windows 7
- 20 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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