The famous game remastered in a new 25th Anniversary Edition!
The father and mother of all 'Haunted Mansion' games!
Winner of multiple gaming awards and “No. 1 Rated Game of 1994”.
"The new standard in interactive entertainment." - Bill Gates (Founder of Microsoft Corporation, 1993)
Henry Stauf's...
The famous game remastered in a new 25th Anniversary Edition!
The father and mother of all 'Haunted Mansion' games!
Winner of multiple gaming awards and “No. 1 Rated Game of 1994”.
"The new standard in interactive entertainment." - Bill Gates (Founder of Microsoft Corporation, 1993)
Henry Stauf's mansion has been abandoned for as long as anyone dare remember. Stauf was a master toy maker, a maker of amazing puzzles and this strange, eerie, mansion was his greatest creation.
It stands empty, rotting ever since children started dying with his toys near them, ever since six guests came and were never seen again.
Now, you are in the house, moving from one room to another, trying to remember and trying to forget. Because Stauf's game isn't over. There were six guests the world knew about - and there was one other.
The mansion of horror comes to life again and only you can end this mad nightmare and learn the secret of the 7th guest.
The game features:
Groundbreaking use of full-motion video and dialogue recorded by live actors in a terrifyingly virtual environment.
Bizarre puzzles to solve and games to play.
22 stunningly rendered, devilishly surprising, 3-D rooms await you in this fully explorable haunted mansion.
‘25th Anniversary Edition' features:
Totally new, much praised, game play controls that were built from the ground up.
Hotspot based with the option to highlight all hotspots in each game screen.
Skip quickly any scene.
Completely new map, which can be access directly from the game screen.
Many new mouse and keyboard shortcuts.
Completely new game menus and save/load system
Three Music options: The praised, orchestrated, music score re-mastered or the original score in high quality Midi recording or Adlib
Much improved voice acting audio and all-new, optional subtitles
High-end graphics upscaling (xBRZ filter) for high-resolution displays
Optional retro settings: play with original graphics, original music and even the original controls
A lot of extras:
‘The Making of’ featurette
19 Deleted Scenes and 34 Deleted Audio Parts
Comprehensive Soundtrack: 36 Tracks to add to your music collection!
‘The 7th Guest’ Novel (157 pages)
The Original Script (104 pages), ‘The Stauf Files’ booklet (20 pages), Original Game Manual (41 pages)
Legacy Editions as FREE downloadable content (DLCs) for Windows, macOS and Linux (English voice-acting only)
Multiple languages (ALL included without additional payment):
English voice acting, with or without English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Swedish or Hebrew subtitles
German voice acting with or without German subtitles
French voice acting with or without French subtitles
Russian voice acting with or without Russian subtitles
In theory, it sounds great to "remaster" the original game for modern machines and provide quality of life improvements. And actually, some of the additions to the game in this version are nice ideas: hotspots, skippable cutscenes, easier access to the map.
However, from the moment the game starts up, you get the feeling that not a lot of care was put into this. The menu screen feels a bit thrown together, the MojoTouch logo looks surprisingly unprofessional, and the replacement for the original Trilobyte logo is bad (and ruins the game's intro's atmosphere). Presentation is important!
As you actually get into the game, it still is basically "The 7th Guest," but it feels not very polished around the edges, especially where the new features are present. One very annoying thing is that the skeleton hand mouse cursor now seems to be entirely different and doesn't point at things quite right on-screen.
Apparently this version includes the original "legacy" game too...maybe play that instead. Its a much better experience from a time when a game like this was a big budget event versus something thrown together to get a few more sales.
It isn't without it's faults, but I love The 7th Guest. If this was jsut a straight release identical to the original I'd have given five stars.
My low score is due to the nature of the remaster. It's really bad. They've worked hard to suck out any charm or mood the original game had.
The music is choppy, restarts randomly, and often cuts out entirely. Audio cues are out of sync with animations. Animations seem to speed up, slow down, and jitter randomly. Scene transitions have awkward strange pauses while the mouse cursor changes clothes. The screen is cluttered with always on tools and icons which detract from the immersion. It crashed on me several times.
Bugs aside, I didn't really recognise any real improvements. The extra content is nice, but in game the improvements are almost universally bad.
The storyline of this game is okay. Its not good, not great, not bad, its 'okay', squarely in the bloody middle of the road.
The puzzles themselves, however... range anywhere from deceptively easy to excessively difficult or just outright irritating. However, what really irritates me about this game is the CONSTANT interrupting commentary from the main character and the antagonist.
Commentary that is just bargain bin level of 'bad jokes' constantly, interrupting your attempts to solve puzzles with no way to turn it off or to shut them up. It grates on the patience quite heavily, honestly.
I normally like most puzzle games--and I can see why there weren't very many "7th Guest" sequels... this game is more or less testing your patience whilst you're attempting to solve puzzles and I wish I could just stuff the chatterers into a box so I can focus on the puzzles without interruption.
I can not recommend this version of the game. In any way it varies from the original, the original is just plain better. And yet I have to recommend this package at the same time for the exact same reason. You see that vastly superior version of the game is included with your purchase. This version includes it as a goodies download. This should allow you to play the best version of the game hassle free.
Add to this the sound track, cut scenes from the original, and even a downloadable novel to sort out that story definitively and I absolutely can and do recommend the total package... despite the main release you are expected to get it for being a cheap knockoff at best. At least if you are a fan of brainteasers, anyway. All horror story and themes aside, this game is just that: a collection of brainteaser puzzles, so if those are not your thing, stay the hell away from this one.
This is one adventure games I didn't play when it originally came out, so my opinion is of someone who's playing this fresh in 2023.
To keep it short, the puzzles are dry, some are very unoriginal, and most aren't really well tied to the mansion.
The story is non-sensical and does little to keep you invested in what's going on.
I can't help but compare it in my head to Myst 1 and 2, which I also played for the first time recently, and how the puzzles were interesting and tied directly to the world you were in.
If you're not buying this out of nostalgia for when you played it 30 years ago, I'd say don't bother.
