From Virgin and Trilobyte
The opening sequence of 7th Guest explains the background. There was a man named Stauf and there was something very odd about him. You are in his house, and you need to piece together what happened when he had a group of 7 guests.
To do this, you wander Stauf's house and solve the puzzles that he has left around. After you solve a puzzle, a video clip with some of the guests will be played to show you a bit more about what happened on that fateful night. There is a map (useful for letting you know what rooms you can enter now) and a hint book. The instructions say that using the hint book will cost you, but given the ending of the game, I'm not sure how it can.
Around the house are also areas where strange things happen if you click on them. The seven guests are ghostly forces left in the house, and some very odd things happened when they were present. I do rather like the way the video was incorporated to make the ghostly presence possible.
Pay attention to your cursors to find the significant spots in the house. Also, Stauf and Ego (as you are called in the instruction book) make comments that can help you learn the rules of each of the puzzles.
The basic thing I hate about this game is that the video sequences are rewards for solving the puzzles but otherwise the puzzles and video are separate elements. A lot of the puzzles are based on standard brain teaser puzzles that have been around for years.
It's bad enough to need to map a maze, but I *really* detest the voice over you get every time you reach a dead-end. This voice over might have been OK periodically, maybe, or perhaps have several phrases ready. But to get one sentence every time you reach the end of a corridor gets to be old *very* quickly. Actually, you don't need to map this yourself, it is embedded into one of the carpets in a room. But for whatever reason, I never associated the pattern with the maze and so did this the hard way. And it is solvable this way, just not pleasant.
I bought this as a special from a mail-order place. At a price of $20 US (shipped), it was fine. I am very glad that I hadn't bought it at full retail price though. It isn't worth that much to me. If you really like brain games, this is good. An even better game would be Jewels of the Oracle for that though.
Love the closing credits. Good music and after a while, some really strange credits go rolling by.
I did like the way the video sequences were integrated into the game. The ghostly images of that far away dinner party were good.
My favourite from the developers of 7th Guest and 11th Hour is Clandestiny. That game has a lot more character and charm.