The 7th Guest: 25th Anniversary Edition

[h2] Play the original version of 'The 7th Guest' instead [/h2] This review is not about the "The 7th Guest" game, which is clearly above any criticism. I grew up with it and know it inside out. So why giving this a 'not recommended' then?? My complains only refer to this 25th Anniversary Edition of this game. This is hands down the worst remaster I have ever seen, and it really hurts to see this gem butchered in such a way. But first the positives: This 25th Anniversary Edition comes with the ebook of The 7th Guest (which is really nice to have) and cut content which you can download outside the game. It also supports Steam achievements to 100% your journey through the world of toymaker Henry Stauf. Unfortunately, this is where the positive aspects end. First of all, this game only runs on Windows and offers no ports for Linux and macOS, which the legacy version had. Speaking of the 'Legacy Version' ... the original version of this game is now only available via free DLC to this Anniversary Edition (just for your information). Upon loading the game, you are not greeted by the familiar Ouija-Board but rather by a weird menu which lets you choose between "Enhanced"-Graphics/Sound/Controls and "Classic“-Graphics/Sound/Controls. The "Enhanced" part does not grant you better graphics but rather an ugly hq-scaling shader which was placed on the original 640x320 render footage. The results are less pixels and more smear on everything! The "Enhanced Controls"-part is just hotspot-highlighting you know from modern mobile games. Also, there is the possibility to skip cutscenes with a stopwatch icon. Other Icons like Map, Hotspots and MainMenu are placed in the other corners of your screen. This 'improved' HUD flickers every time you make a move in a puzzle. Don't ask me why! Also, the original map design and its animations were removed and replaced with an ugly "hq" version of the house's layout. But now for the most annoying part: In order to comply with the high framerates we all have today, all room transitions are sped up! Yeah, you heard that right! You are forced to sprint through the mansion like a dog chasing a cat. You'll never see anything of the house because everything is so fast it almost feels like an instant teleportation to a new scene. I have never found a switch to return to the low-frame transitions from the 'new-and-improved-MainMenu'. The only good thing here are the subtitles and better voice quality; all other things are just awful. So if you are a new player—I mean, a player who is experiencing The 7th Guest for the very first time—please, please, please, with sugar on top, play the original version via ScummVM, Dosbox, or any other MS-DOS emulator of your choice. You deserve to experience this game in all its glory!

Be sure to check if this game will even run on your machine while it's still within the refund window. For me the pause menu was entirely broken (needed to save the game), and none of the workarounds in the "known issues" forum post helped the situation. I was hoping to play a piece of videogame history, but this version just did not work.

There are things to like about this game, mostly from a nostalgia perspective, but for the most part it's not much fun as a puzzle game. It has a few fun puzzles at the beginning, like the famous cake puzzle in the screenshots, but the entire second half is simultaneously high-difficulty and low-effort. Most of the later puzzles involve chess pieces, coins, or playing cards. Most of them aren't solvable using pure deduction, so you have to use trial and error to find a solution. It was an acceptably decent game when it first came out, when the graphics and FMV could carry it, but in an era where the video is only interesting for its camp value, and nearly all puzzle genres have evolved for the better, it's decidedly unfun. It's not fair to compare it against immersive puzzle games, but even compared to pen-and-paper puzzles, the design is very weak.

Recommended, yes. It's a cool relic of the '90s - "relic" meant in the most loving way. It's basically a spooky, surreal mansion full of puzzles and hokey, wonderful FMV scenes. I was crushing out these puzzles until I got to the one that is basically Reversi. I hate Reversi. I have never gotten Reversi. Brain felt smart, then brain destroyed by child's game from a time before sanitation and plumbing. It is what it is. I need to find one of those genius-tier hobos Hollywood always makes movies about to beat the Reversi puzzle for me. Although, the last time I talked to a hobo, he threw dead lizards at me.

It's a very bad game. I don't know why it was so famous back in the day. I'd been putting off playing it for like 20 years and figured I'd play it while I was on vacation. Well... Now I know why I put off playing it so long. It's just really really bad. It's just a bunch of really boring terrible puzzles. Most of them seem to be "classic" puzzles pulled out of chess books from a hundred years ago, heck, maybe a thousand years ago. I understand why people were interested in puzzles like that a hundred years ago, but today it just doesn't hold up (even in 1993 it doesn't hold up). It's just really boring. I recommend using a walkthrough for any puzzle that takes you more than 10 minutes. After that it is not worth it, but if you really want to torture yourself with a bunch of trial and error be my guest... Heck, be my 7th guest.

Amazing and cerebral game.. up until the end. The last 2 puzzles were incredibly easy and didn't require much and the ending made no sense at all, however, aside from that, this was a fun, if not frustrating in some places, experience. You will need a guide if you do not understand chess rules as 2 puzzles are dependent on knowledge of the movements of knights and bishops.

Over 30 years ago I played this game on a Philips CD-i A classic Legend with stunning graphic details at the time Oo

Controls are a bit jank and the clues for how puzzles work could be clearer, but very much gave me the feeling of going through a haunted house. Quite fun!

Well... it comes with the original version running stably in SCUMMVM, so I can recommend that. But the 25th anniversary version is not good. It's smeared with an ugly smoothing filter. Most (but not all) of the house transitions are speed up to hyper speed and look ridiculous, like I'm fast forwarding a speed run. And the game barely runs on Steam Deck. After an hour of trying different proton versions (proton-GE-9-13 seems to work the best along with the command line options " "), I still had to boot to Windows to get past the microscope puzzle without crashing. It's a bad release without any love or passion put into it. In 2025, the age of AI, I would love to see this remastered again. Use upscaling on the assets and then touch them up to get them to true 4k, and generate more frames between the existing ones so the transitions feel more ethereal like the higher frame rate CDI version. That's really all that needs to be done for this game. It's not that long and there isn't a ton of assets, so it seems like this would be doable.

Adictivo y muy entretenido, grandes recuerdos. Recomendadisimo, si te gustan los retos a nivel puzzle e investigación es tu juego!