The original 7th Guest is an icon of early 90’s PC CD-ROM gaming, and alongside Myst it helped to usher in the era of the modern “immersive” point and click adventure. With the magic of 700 megabytes of optical storage, gamers could enter full 3D worlds complete with live action characters and many inscrutable puzzles to solve. Where Myst was ethereal and beautiful, The 7th Guest was more of a horror experience, with a dark creepy mansion and a central murder mystery to uncover.
Last Halloween, Vertigo Games released The 7th Guest VR. Unlike the earlier Myst VR, this isn’t simply a port of the original game into a new format, but rather an entirely new title. The script, puzzle designs, and cast are all brand new, and the result is a modern gaming experience that still evokes the themes from the original. Just as the original pushed CR-ROM tech forward, this new VR version has an incredible implementation of live actors in a 3D space that I hope will inspire other games in the future.
If only it could have stuck the landing.
This article doesn’t spoil this game’s story, but it does contain my opinions on the design aspects of the last few puzzles and their context within the overall game. I wasn’t asked or paid by the game’s publisher to write this, and I bought the game myself from the Meta Quest store.
