"Creepy and Timeless - A Ghost Story unlike anything else"

7th Guest was one of the first and most well known games to be released on CD. Boosting two CD`s, the game was full with Full Motion Videos, superb music and pre-rendered graphics, crazy puzzles and an unbeatable mood that freaked out more than one poor player in the night. It was a success, and an indication and a example of just WHY you had to upgrade your computer.

Lets look a little bit closer at one of the biggest games in the beginning of the 90`s.

Story
A crazy old man, called Stauf runs around killing people and taking their money to survive, until one day he gets a crazy dream about building dolls. He starts building dolls, and gives them away to young children. In return, he is offered food and shelter. What nobody knows, is that he and his dolls has a sinister plan, and after the children starts dying, a group of parents sets out to find Stauf in his mansion. Nobody returned alive...

Many years later, a strange man(You), enters the mansion to solve the mystery, and thats where the game starts.
Score: 9/10

Gameplay
The gameplay of 7th Guest is very simple, yet so challenging that its sort or ironic. Half of the time, you move around in the spooky mansion with the help of a skeleton hand cursor, clicking your way through it. You move from picture to picture, and the transition between the pictures is done nicely with animated movement. If you have played Myst and its sequels, you know what kind of movement this game uses. Its quite alright, might not be as interactive as one hopes, but it allows for a relaxing yet very effective and scary ride, as the visuals can take much more place as you can click in the direction you want to go, and watch the environment zoom by as you glide forward. Movies and sounds are played sometimes when walking around, and quite often they work rather well, making you feel alone and left in the dark.

The second half of the game, is spent on solving puzzles. There are puzzles in nearly(If not all) of the rooms, and some of them are variations of old traditional puzzles, while others are inventive and new. They are actually quite fun. There are a ton of puzzles, and some are easy, some requires some concentration, and some are next to impossible unless you spend a whole night or look up a guide to help you. That is, unfortunately the weakest point with the game. The impossible puzzles can be so hard, that its just not possible to solve it on your own, and if you dont have access to a guide, you can find yourself stuck, without a clue how to go on. This, should not be necessary. Still, the Puzzles are fun, although the fun somehow dies on the second playthrough because you know how to solve the puzzles.

Solving the Puzzles nets you movie clips that tells the story about what happened after the Guests arrived in the house, and it is quite exciting to follow each character as they explore the mansion and discovers the truth.

Some might complain about the simplicity of these games. That games like 7th Guest, 11th Hour, Phantasmagoria, Shivers, Gabriel Knight 2 and so on, are nothing more than partly interactive movies. And sure, they dont hold the same complexity and playability of a platformer game or a racing game, but they usually contains excellent story, graphics, sound and mood, something really important. They suck you in like a good book should, and they never let you go.
Score: 7/10

Graphics
To be a game from 1993, 7th Guest holds up well. The Quality of the Movies are low, but considering the age and how the game WAS on the edge of technology, it gets pretty high marks from me anyway. The pre-rendered mansion looks a little flat, but it still manages to look creepy. Its mostly our own perception of good graphics that have made the game look less good, because the graphics for the time it was made, was absolutely fantastic, and you can still see traces of the graphics that scared people out of their pants back in the middle 90`s.

Its always hard to rate graphics in older games over 10 years ago from when they were released. What looked great back then in 93-94, looks usually mediocre or even bad now. (This of course, has exceptions) Its not that the 7th Guest looks bad now, it just doesnt look as good as it did before. Especially compared to its sequel, the 11th Hour, which looks quite good now, and has some sweet quality FMV`s, the 7th Guest has lost some of its touch. Not all, but some. It still is a forgotten beautiful pearl and an amazing proof of the graphics they managed to create back in 93.
Score: 6/10

Sound
One of the most amazing parts of the game, is the sound. Both the music and the voice acting is very well done, and the music is directly chilling sometimes. It is a perfect soundtrack for a Ghost Game. From the choir, to the slow creepy jazzy songs, to the sneaky puzzle songs, the music is some of the best for a PC game ever. An additional bonus, is that you can pop in the game cd`s in a normal CD player, and listen to the music. Definitely worth a listen.

About the Voice Actors, as I stated before, they are quite good compared to what you would believe...especially from a game from the 90`s where they used C Actors to provide some kind of voice to the games. Stauf himself, sounds especially good, and he seems to enjoy voicing the madman who inhabitants the mansion.
Score: 9/10

Summary
7th Guest is one of the Pioneers within the Interactive Games Genre, and it was one of the first games that really used CD`s for playing. While it will be remembered for its heavy graphics, live action actors and weird puzzles, the quality of the product, the importance of its attempt to push the technology and the simply irresistable concept(Solve fun puzzles, get creeped out and watch fun cutscenes) made this game into something that never should be forgotten. It might not be a game(at least a real game) in everyone`s eyes, but its still one of the most memorable products within the gaming world of the 90`s.
Score: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/04