The 7th Guest
1993 · Adventure / Puzzle · PC/DOS
Overview
The 7th Guest (1993) is Trilobyte's puzzle game set in the haunted Stauf mansion, with pre-rendered 3D rooms and live-action video. It shipped only on CD-ROM and is credited, with Myst, with selling CD-ROM drives.
Deep Dive
The player, an amnesiac called Ego, explores the Stauf mansion and solves 21 puzzles, each unlocking live-action video clips that move the story along. Over time it emerges that the player is the spirit of Tad, a boy trapped in the house. A hint book helps with puzzles, and on the third use it solves the puzzle outright. The pre-rendered 3D graphics ran at 640×320 in 256 colours.
Developer Story
Rob Landeros and Graeme Devine designed it at Trilobyte, Matthew Costello wrote it and George Sanger composed the music. Virgin published it for DOS on 28 April 1993. The game was too large for floppy disks, so it shipped only on CD-ROM, and it sold more than two million copies.
Did You Know?
- Bill Gates called it "the new standard in interactive entertainment".
- It won Electronic Entertainment's 1993 Breakthrough Game award.
- Its sequel, The 11th Hour, followed in 1995.
Sources & further reading
- The 7th Guest — Wikipedia
