The 7th Guest, published in 1993 by Virgin Interactive, is a video-based puzzle computer game, not unlike The Fool's Errand, and predating Myst. Seventh Guest is a fairly elegant horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac. The game received a great amount of press attention for making video clips a core part of gameplay, for its unprecedentedly large amount of 3D rendered graphics, and for its adult—that is, horror—content.
Description
The story revolves around a man named Henry Stauf. Stauf was a thief who became a murderer in the early 20th century, according to the opening introductory movie. After having dreams of amazing puzzles and lifelike dolls, he began making the toys and puzzles, eventually becoming wealthy. The dolls, however, seemed to cause some kind of plague to befall the children of the area and many died. The game begins with six prominent civic figures invited to come to Stauf's ominous mansion for the night with the promise that all their dreams would come true if they did what he asked.
The game is played by wandering the mansion, solving logic puzzles and watching videos that further the story along. Stauf is an ever-present menace, taunting you with clues and mocking you as you fail his puzzles.
A moderately complex plot of manipulation and sin is played out by surprisingly talented actors through film clips as you progress between rooms by solving various puzzles of shifting nature and increasing difficulty.
The 7th Guest was the first game for the PC platform to be available only on CD-ROM, since it was too large to be distributed on floppy disks: it came on 2 CDs. Removing some of the large movies and videos obviously wasn't an option, as they were essential to the gameplay.
Legacy
A sequel, The 11th Hour , was released, along with a collection of puzzles from both games called Uncle Henry's Funhouse.
The birth of a company
The 7th Guest was the brainchild of a Virgin MasterTronics programmer, Graeme Devine. When he presented his idea for the game, he was promptly "fired" only to be rehired on with a new company that Brøderbund started just for this game. Trilobyte developed the game and went on to produce the sequel, with Devine as the lead programmer. Unfortunately the sequel had trouble overcoming some technical hurdles and was late to market. Despite this, it was received somewhat favorably.
The company had a third game in development called TLC, but, to the horror of Devine (who only found out about its content after it was well into development), had a large amount of pornographic content. The company folded before TLC could be released as a game and was released as a DVD movie instead.
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