Hallowe’en may be over (just), but for this month’s Reality Frights, I’ve got a wonderfully seasonal game for you. It’s the brand-new remake of the grand old mystery puzzler The 7th Guest, a game which Bill Gates notably referred to as “The new standard of interactive entertainment.” In fairness to ol’ William, he said this seven months before Doom blew out the new standard’s insides with a 12-gauge shotgun, shunting PC gamers’ tastes away from kitsch adventure games and toward grisly murder-fests. But The 7th Guest is nonetheless fondly remembered for its spooky atmosphere, alongside its blend of pre-rendered backgrounds and live action cutscenes you could call ‘pioneering’ had it not proved such an evolutionary dead end.
Today, the original 7th Guest looks more dated than Henry VIII, which is probably why this remake replaces everything but the very skeleton of the 1993 original. The game still takes place in a creepy mansion belonging to a murderous toymaker, and still involves six eccentric guests to the house searching for a missing boy named Tad. But it’s otherwise been completely rebuilt, with whole new puzzles and whole new mechanics, all designed to be experienced in first-person VR.
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