Adventure Gamers - Forums

Old Man Stauf built a house, and filled it with his toys
Six guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise
Blood inside the library, blood right up the hall
Dripping down the attic stairs - hey guests, try not to fall
Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen
But Old Man Stauf is waiting there - crazy, sick, and mean!

The 7th Guest is a game that has a special place in my heart, mainly because it together with Alone in the Dark, really was the first game I played that created an atmosphere so eerie that it made the small hairs on that back of my neck stand up.

In the game we are playing as the titular 7th guest, we have no memory of who we are or how we ended up in Stauf’s house, and the objective is simply to escape the mansion, preferably alive. Doing so we will encounter and interact with the ghosts of the six guests and learn more about what happened here, while of course solving a great deal of different puzzles.

The puzzles are mainly logical isolated puzzles like the bishop puzzle in the screenshot. The objective here is simple enough: Swap the position of the white and black bishops using the normal chess rules, and you can’t place a bishop on a square where it can be taken by an opposing bishop. Simple enough, but perhaps not as easy as it sounds.

For some reason these kinds of isolated logical puzzles are something that we see less and less of nowadays. Yes I know that it doesn’t really makes sense in most games, and for example opening a safe by solving a chess puzzle in an otherwise realistic game has never been a good idea, but I still miss these kinds of small head-scratchers, and there are some games like this one, where they do make perfect sense.

Ahhh how appropriate - you fight like a cow! I’m just in the middle of a chess craze… I got “chess fever” once again and I’m watching all sort of clips on YT - Carlsen and Anand matches.. Fishcher vs Spassky…

Iznogood - 04 November 2015 04:17 PM

For some reason these kinds of isolated logical puzzles are something that we see less and less of nowadays.

I don’t share the sentiment - 1st-person Myst clones MIGHT be what we see less and less, but when we get them - it’s usually the isolated logical puzzles. One 5 words for you - The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. I’m playing it right now, it even has a chess puzzle! And a pretty hard one at that, harder than the one in The Whispered World, because it’s a smaller table with queens that must not intersect in its ways.

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes is already 3 years old

Anyway, I’m sure that they still pop up in games now and again, but it is my impression that they are getting less and less common, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, because in most games they don’t really fit in. But when they do fit the story, I personally still like them.

Kurufinwe - 04 November 2015 06:19 PM

SPOILERS!!!

Well if that is a spoiler then it is a very minor one, as it is more or less written directly on the box, though not in those exact words. But as I don’t want to spoil anyone, I have added spoiler tags.