The 7th Guest and I go way back. Back to when my mom bought our first family computer, an old Windows 98. The first game she bought for it? The 7th Guest. Fun fact, real quick, about my mom before I talk about the game in depth: she knew butt about computers so it took her forever to install it. That being said, she got it to run once and never went back to it. All these years later I found it here on Steam and bought it eager to finally finish it. Was it worth it?

Well.

The 7th Guest is a point and click puzzle game. That's it. It relies solely on FMV's to progress the story. What is the story behind The 7th Guest? Old Man Staufe made dolls and a spooky house. The game begins with the ghostly guests showing up at the house, the player being one of them, and then you're off to explore the mansion solving puzzles as you find them.

There isn't much to 7th Guests presentation or interface. The house is well detailed and the music is charmingly eccentric. For a PC game that debuted in '92, it all still looks pretty good. The variety in the themes and aesthetics is nice so navigating the mansion is always fun.

But here we run into the first of 7th Guests' problems: the game moves slow. S L O W. The camera pans about with a lazy, languid motion which is fine when you first explore the house, but after an hour or two of trying to figure out what to do next, it gets frustrating. Coupled with this is the fact that the game bars you from entering new areas until you finish X amount of puzzles first. You would think just finding the puzzles would be easy: you would be wrong. Some are obvious items of interest; others are not. It's a pain to have to precisely move your cursor around until you find just the right spot on the screen to interact with. I missed a puzzle or two because of this. Now, this issue is par for the course with the genre, but figuring out how to navigate the mansion and not miss entire rooms because of the clumsy camera work sucks.

And now to discuss the core of the game: the puzzles. Simply put, some work while others don't.

For example:

The Spider puzzle is ambiguous at first but after a few minutes of trial and error I figured out what I was supposed to do. Cool. The Tin Can puzzle, however, was terrible. The Chess Knight puzzle is ridiculous. The Microscope puzzle? I felt so relieved to look online and learn I wasn't the only person who hated it.

The problem with the puzzles is that some of them rely too heavily on blind luck or complete randomness. There are some puzzles that have to be reset because their starting orders produce an unsolvable puzzle.

You know what was super satisfying though? Solving the cake puzzle my first shot when my mom couldn't. Eat that, mom.

Look, the reason I'm recommending this game is because at its best moments its silly and spooky with puzzles that offer decent challenge. At its worst moments its a frustrating slog with total booty puzzles that aren't fun. Luckily, with the internet ready at our fingertips, solving these puzzles is now doable. Buy this when it's on sale if you're a fan of puzzles and spooky stuff. Otherwise, you might wanna pass on it.

The 7th Guest and I go way back. Back to when my mom bought our first family computer, an old Windows 98. The first game she bought for it? The 7th Guest. Fun fact, real quick, about my mom before I talk about the game in depth: she knew butt about computers so it took her forever to install it. That being said, she got it to run once and never went back to it. All these years later I found it here on Steam and bought it eager to finally finish it. Was it worth it? Well. The 7th Guest is a point and click puzzle game. That's it. It relies solely on FMV's to progress the story. What is the story behind The 7th Guest? Old Man Staufe made dolls and a spooky house. The game begins with the ghostly guests showing up at the house, the player being one of them, and then you're off to explore the mansion solving puzzles as you find them. There isn't much to 7th Guests presentation or interface. The house is well detailed and the music is charmingly eccentric. For a PC game that debuted in '92, it all still looks pretty good. The variety in the themes and aesthetics is nice so navigating the mansion is always fun. But here we run into the first of 7th Guests' problems: the game moves slow. S L O W. The camera pans about with a lazy, languid motion which is fine when you first explore the house, but after an hour or two of trying to figure out what to do next, it gets frustrating. Coupled with this is the fact that the game bars you from entering new areas until you finish X amount of puzzles first. You would think just finding the puzzles would be easy: you would be wrong. Some are obvious items of interest; others are not. It's a pain to have to precisely move your cursor around until you find just the right spot on the screen to interact with. I missed a puzzle or two because of this. Now, this issue is par for the course with the genre, but figuring out how to navigate the mansion and not miss entire rooms because of the clumsy camera work sucks. And now to discuss the core of the game: the puzzles. Simply put, some work while others don't. For example: The Spider puzzle is ambiguous at first but after a few minutes of trial and error I figured out what I was supposed to do. Cool. The Tin Can puzzle, however, was terrible. The Chess Knight puzzle is ridiculous. The Microscope puzzle? I felt so relieved to look online and learn I wasn't the only person who hated it. The problem with the puzzles is that some of them rely too heavily on blind luck or complete randomness. There are some puzzles that have to be reset because their starting orders produce an unsolvable puzzle. You know what was super satisfying though? Solving the cake puzzle my first shot when my mom couldn't. Eat that, mom. Look, the reason I'm recommending this game is because at its best moments its silly and spooky with puzzles that offer decent challenge. At its worst moments its a frustrating slog with total booty puzzles that aren't fun. Luckily, with the internet ready at our fingertips, solving these puzzles is now doable. Buy this when it's on sale if you're a fan of puzzles and spooky stuff. Otherwise, you might wanna pass on it.