The original 1993 release of The 7th Guest occupies a rather interesting time in the history of both gaming as well as technology as a whole. The title was considered a technical marvel, being one of the first games to be released using CD-ROM—a medium that was still considered quite cutting edge, despite having come out almost a decade before that. This shift in storage mediums gave The 7th Guest plenty of extra space that it wouldn’t otherwise have access to if it were released, like other games at the time, on floppy disks. The title took advantage of this by featuring high-resolution pre-rendered environments along with live-action full-motion video cutscenes featuring real actors rather than computer-generated sprites or 3D models.
While quite dated by the standards of even just a few years later, The 7th Guest was still considered by many to be one of the benchmarks to hit when developing an FMV-based point-and-click adventure game, if not for its gameplay and puzzle design then at least for its visual flair, presentation, and storytelling.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and in 2023, we get a VR-based remake of The 7th Guest, complete with brand new puzzles that make a lot more sense than the original, a fully-realized 3D recreation of the original’s mansion, and even brand new actors taking on the roles of the various other guests throughout the story. Considering the niche nature of VR, however, it was only a matter of time before the game made its way to a more traditional gaming platform, and now, it has been fully translated for “flat screen” gameplay on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
In the modern gaming industry, where point-and-click adventure games have largely disappeared, and horror has split off from the genre entirely, becoming its own thing thanks to a variety of releases ranging from Resident Evil to Silent Hill. Keeping this in mind, The 7th Guest feels quite anachronistic; it still has the original’s spooky atmosphere and dark storyline. However, if you’re expecting to be scared, this isn’t quite the game for you. Rather, The 7th Guest Remake is more focused on making you flex your mental prowess over its several puzzles, which can be tackled at your preferred pace, since there aren’t really any time constraints or grotesque creatures chasing you down.
“The puzzles in The 7th Guest Remake are some of the best things about the game, especially when compared to the original”
The story of The 7th Guest Remake revolves around the mansion of Henry Stauf. While not too many details are revealed in the beginning, the basic plot outline is that, at one point in the past, Stauf invited six guests to spend a night at his mansion at Harley-on-Hudson in New York, and to solve a variety of puzzles that would lead them to discovering his deepest, darkest secrets. However, none of the guests were able to make it too far, with many of them experiencing strange, supernatural events during their stay. You, as the unnamed protagonist, have taken it upon yourself to make your way through the mansion’s various rooms in your efforts to discover just what happened to the original guests, and what Stauf’s secrets might be.
Thankfully, The 7th Guest Remake also retains much of the charm of the original by featuring FMV cutscenes that feature live-action performances by real actors. Just about every character, from deep-in-debt married couple Edward and Elinor Knox, to actress Martine Burden, has been wonderfully portrayed by their respective actors, with equal amounts of nuanced emotion and hammy overacting that keeps just about every encounter you might have with their memories thoroughly entertaining.
The general structure of The 7th Guest Remake is quite linear—at any given time, only a few rooms of the mansion will be available, each room housing its own set of puzzles that you will need to solve in order to make progress, unlocking more rooms in the process. The puzzles themselves are also quite self-contained. Even if some of these puzzles might connect to others, these connections never extend to anything outside of the room you’re in, so you never really have to worry about having forgotten a key item or important detail as you make your way through the game.
When it comes to the actual puzzle-solving gameplay, things are once again quite simple, and there isn’t even an inventory screen like you would find in the Monkey Island series, for example. You only have a lantern that lets you look at things in the past, and a second hand that can hold things while you figure out what to do next. The puzzles themselves are also largely focused on logical thinking, sometimes asking you to handle simple mathematics like addition, and other times making you come up with clever solutions to a mini game, for example. The puzzles in The 7th Guest Remake are some of the best things about the game, especially when compared to the original, since the 1993 classic was well-known for its “logic”-based puzzles being absolutely illogical.
“Thankfully, The 7th Guest Remake also retains much of the charm of the original by featuring FMV cutscenes that feature live-action performances by real actors.”
However, the puzzles also betray the fact that The 7th Guest Remake was originally envisioned as a VR game. A surprising number of puzzles revolve around moving things around on a surface, for example, which indicates that fine motor skills were required of a player’s hands. Moving these same objects using analogue sticks doesn’t quite hit in the same way, unfortunately. The VR-styled puzzles felt especially egregious in Hamilton Temple’s room, where there was a heavy emphasis on using a pair of magical top hats to teleport between two places. While the original VR version would have you literally reach into a top hat to grab a key item, for example, the regular version of the game has you simply hitting the “pick up item” button, robbing the puzzles of much of their identity and uniqueness.
Other places where the VR roots of The 7th Guest Remake show themselves are in the movement itself. While walking or running around feels fine most of the time, hitting the crouch button doesn’t even seem to feature any gameplay animations. Rather, the title cuts to you simply being at a lower point of view than you would be if you were standing. This, however, is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things, especially since the only thing it really affects is the game’s overall presentation.
Generally speaking, The 7th Guest Remake is an incredibly engaging experience. Sure, it might suffer from a slow start, since it’s taking its time in setting up the various characters that you will discover secrets about, while also making sure that you fully understand the simple gameplay mechanics that will be used for its logic-based puzzles. Once it gets going, however, it becomes easy to get trapped in the general loop of clearing a room of all puzzles and then convincing yourself that you’ll just take a look at the next room, and maybe solve one or two of the simpler puzzles there. Before you know it, you’ve accidentally spent a couple of hours combing every square inch of the room to find the final puzzle piece. Sure, it won’t be offering you any frights, but The 7th Guest Remake still feels like a fantastic way to spend a relaxing evening with a cup of tea.
This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.
