The 7th Guest on PC CD-ROM
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008Originally published: June 28, 2006 @ 1:12am PST
"Old Man Stauf built a house and filled it with his toys. Six guests were invited one night; their screams, the only noise. Blood inside the library. Blood right up the hall. Dripping down the attic stairs. Hey, guests! Try not to fall. Nobody knows what happened that night. Not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, heheheh. Crazy, sick, AND MEAN!"
- Henry Stauf in The 7th Guest
This game definitely takes me back. When we got our very first computer, back in the mid-90s, one of the first games I picked up for it was this classic, The 7th Guest
The story of the game is simple. You wander through the mansion of the toymaker Henry Stauf, solving puzzles and finding out what happened that fateful night of the party. See, one night, he’d invited six guests to his house and offered them all whatever their heart’s desire was. All they had to do was find the seventh guest and bring him to Stauf. The characters you encounter are: Martine Burden, a former beauty queen with a lust for power; Edward and Elinor Knox, a married couple who have fallen on hard times… she wants to start over with Edward, he just wants to start over; Julia Heine, an elder woman, an alcoholic, who wishes for her youth again; Brian Dutton, a man who would do anything for money, he wants to be filthy rich; Hamilton Temple, a stage magician who wants to know if real magic exists, and if he can acquire it; Tad, a young boy who entered the Stauf mansion on a dare who’s now trapped with six people who are looking for him; and the host, Henry Stauf, who talks to you throughout the game, teasing and taunting you on the puzzles.
The puzzles in this game are relatively easy, with the only real difficult ones being the Microscope, the basement maze (Feeling… lonely?) and the piano. The chess puzzle in the bathroom is kind of hard, also but that’s more difficult for the time it takes, not for the actual complexity of the puzzle. All in all, though, the puzzles are all solvable and the back story of the game is entertaining, at the least, and intriguing, as well. Who will find Tad? Who will survive the night? What will be the fates of the guests? The only way to find out is play the adventure! If you find yourself needing a strategy guide, though, one IS available for cheap
Pictured: The Nunan House
The game was incredibly successful for its time. One of the first games to come out on CD-ROM, it actually increased sales of CD-ROM drives. The FMV scenes were filmed in Jacksonville, Oregon, and even the exterior of the house is based off of an actual historic building called the Nunan House. Back in 1995, on a vacation trip to southern Oregon and northern California, we stopped in at Jacksonville and got to tour the Nunan House. It was really amazing (and no, the interior doesn’t look anything like the Stauf Mansion). The game itself was successful enough to create a sequel, The 11th Hour, which I’ll be covering soon on the site, as well. There were talks of two more official sequels from the game company, and designer, but neither of them came to fruition, the only actual third sequel being a game called Uncle Henry’s Playhouse that combined puzzles from 7th Guest, The 11th Hour
As stated before, I loved this game. I hope that I’ve been able to entertain and inform you with this article. Of course, there’s probably no doubt that I’ll be giving this a 5 out of 5. Keep watching for the first of a multi-part article on the sequel, The 11th Hour. Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!
