GAME CLEAR No. 203 -- The 7th Guest VR

The 7th Guest VR (2023, Multiplatform)

VR remake of: The 7th Guest (1993, PC/Mac/CD-i)
Original Developer: Trilobyte
Original Publisher: Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Remake Developer: Vertigo Studios, Exkee
Remake Publisher: Vertigo Studios
Clear Version: PS5, PSVR2
Clear Platform: PS5, PSVR2
Clear Date: 12/19/24

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Why should I care?
A daring remake with great VR-oriented puzzles, The 7th Guest VR is simply fun from beginning to end.

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Old man Stauf built a house

This is the first one of these I’ve done in a minute about a game I’m really very excited to talk about. The 7th Guest VR is a virtual reality remake of the 1993 video game The 7th Guest. The original game was one of the very first games released exclusively on CD-ROM and helped popularize the format. The game involved wandering around a haunted mansion owned by long-dead toy maker Henry Stauf solving puzzles. Doing so then revealed visions of the past, specifically a fateful night on which Stauf invited six guests to his home for an ostensible party. Whichever guest solved the mysteries of his puzzling house would be ostensibly be rewarded with whatever they could dream up. These scenes were played out with live-action cutscenes superimposed over the game’s pre-rendered 3D backgrounds (the ambition of which necessitated the CD-ROM format). This 2023 VR remake rebuild’s Stauf’s mansion, puzzles, and cutscenes from the ground up for VR. In so doing, it accomplishes a rare feat for a remake: it justifies its own existence beyond the mere virtue of availability while also making the original game even more compelling to play than it was before.

On that note, I should say that I have not played the original 7th Guest, but I am highly interested in doing so now. It exists in that PC-only space that is such a blind spot for me, but I’m very interested in checking it out now. In any case, it’s worth noting that my impressions are not based in nostalgia, but they are also uninformed by the original.

Anyway, your journey through Stauf’s mansion begins outside it. You find yourself in a little boat, which you row to a dock outside the mansion. You are immediately provided with a magic lantern, which can restore things to the state they were in at the time the mansion was in active use. In most cases, this fixes worn, broken, or dilapidated things. The disembodied voice of a young boy teaches you how to use it, and you’ll be hearing from him plenty more. Once you acquaint yourself with that, you must solve a simple puzzle to unlock the gate to the property — a taste of what’s to come.

Inside, a gramophone beckons. Restore the vinyl record next to it to working order, place it on the platter, and Stauf’s voice will ring out. The record contains his welcome spiel to the aforementioned six guests he invited to his home many decades ago. After that, a ghostly vision of the guests from all those years ago appears before you, and the way Vertigo Studios brought live acting to the VR version of this game is really something to see.

Using “volumetric video,” the studio essentially mapped the actors’ performances to 3D models, which then move about the real-time environment you find yourself in. Altogether different from mocap, it is essentially a fully-3D recording of a scene. I think it’s fuckin’ neat!

Following Stauf’s indication that the dining room is open, you proceed there and solve the puzzles presented therein. When you do, you’re treated to further cutscenes revealing the events of years past. The game loop continues more or less the same way the for the rest of the game’s duration. Solve a room or rooms, see some plot, and listen to Stauf’s next orders.

It’s a pretty good reward system. The puzzles are quite fun and nearly all feel “just right” in difficulty. I only gave up and sought help online for one part of one puzzle, and the bit I missed immediately struck me as something I should’ve noticed and perhaps would have if I had walked away from the puzzle and returned to it with fresh eyes. The puzzles were all also created newly for the VR game (to the best of my knowledge, again, I did not play the original), and this was ostensibly done to take advantage of the medium of VR itself. While I wouldn’t say they all necessarily benefit much from VR (indeed, some may have been simpler with traditional controls), they certainly benefit from being in a realtime 3D environment (which of course was not possible in ‘93), and the cutscenes are just awesome in VR. Plus, I think there’s just something to be said for navigating a haunted house in a true first-person perspective.

The morsels of plot unlocked after each cognitive workout are also doled out in tantalizing amounts. As the story progresses, you learn a bit more about why Stauf invited these particular people to his home. He decorated their respective rooms with puzzles modeled after their specific vices and has littered them with newspaper clippings or other bits and bobs that indicate he knew their lives hadn’t panned out quite how they thought they might. One guest was in life-ruining debt, another was an aspiring actress who never did hit it big (or even small). Stauf’s taunts fueled their desire to win the competition and turn their lives around.

But the game is not simply a matter of uncovering the events of the past. It also becomes clear that you are meddling in some occult affair of Stauf’s. He still lives in these walls somehow, and he grows ever more frustrated as you continue to unravel the mysteries of his mansion. You realize it’s now on you to finally drive the metaphorical stake through the heart of this madman.

Then it’s just a matter of working your way through the puzzlebox until you reach that final showdown. I never tired of the game’s challenges and always wanted to keep going, humming along to the pleasingly atmospheric score as I did. The story isn’t overly self-serious, and it’s well acted and compellingly written. I wanted to know what happened in the mansion in the past and what Stauf was up to now. The only thing that ever slowed me down was occasional bits of motion sickness, but that’s unavoidable to a certain extent with VR.

Something seems so fitting about revisiting this game in VR as well. The original game used the emergent technology of the CD-ROM to provide a gameplay and storytelling experience previously unachievable. With VR and volumetric video, Vertigo Studios has once again taken advantage of pretty cutting-edge stuff to bring a lovely game back to life. It’s such a thrill to play a remake like this that is a competent enough re-do to feel like a valid way to experience the game without obviating the need to play the original.

On the contrary, I can’t wait to see how Trilobyte’s 1993 effort compares. I hope to be able to recommend both once I play it, but until then, I can heartily endorse this one.