The 7th Guest - Part 1

[@andrewdwilliams]

The maze is particularly annoying when you later discover there's a map of it hidden elsewhere in the house!

[@samw1501]

Yeesh! At least it's less obnoxious than the one in Myst...

[@DavidXNewton]

@@andrewdwilliams Oh my god I’ve SEEN that map, the game goes out of its way to tell you it’s there and I completely dismissed it!

[@icepriestess]

I remember playing all these types game when I was a kid with my parents and one of them had a maze that was so dark it was just black and you could see nothing. My poor mother had her note book out and walked through that whole thing blind. A little later played some of it again on a different computer and it turns out while it was still very very dark you were meant to have some vague light but our computer wasn't good enough to pick up the colour lol

[@DOOMenstein12]

This whole video is just David's therapy for going through another RAMP lol. Also, nice to have another video again, especially on such an excellent - yet slightly questionable - classic.

[@therezinUK]

"Feeling.... LONELY?" is giving me flashbacks to playing Cybermorph on the Jaguar. "Where did you learn to fly?"

[@SiD3WiNDR]

which brings my mind to AVGN (never played Cybermorph myself) :D

[@DFallsWolf]

Murderhobo loses business during pandemic, throws house party

[@spacequesthistorian]

28:00 "It's important to think about what you're saying and not perpetuate harmful stereotypes... so they don't put a curse on you." 🤣🤣🤣 Fuckin' hell, I don't think I could have gotten away with that one!

[@Gingerbread_Gorl]

I’m excited! Couldn’t figure this game out when I was younger and tried it again recently but didn’t have the patience! Watching you do it will be so much easier

[@DavidXNewton]

I suffer so you don't have to :)

[@Quaternality]

I don't think I've proper watched any of your adventure game playthroughs yet, but 7th Guest is a treat - I think i'll check this one out as it happens!

[@mousebetr]

You may be the seventh guest, but you're also the first bun.

[@Zelgados]

I have the cd for this game and always wondered what it was, but never tried it. Thanks for the video and reminding me this is a thing that piqued my curiosity.

[@Qoko88]

I did play this slightly more recently (in the 10s I believe) together with the sequel, and somehow it still upholds itself: half decent storytelling, interesting puzzles... just very slow gameplay. It lingers on the success of some DOS puzzle games (Castle of Dr. Brain being the one I can recall the most) but in a movie-esque setting. Pleasantly surprised to see you uncork this classic.

[@JediMB]

Some of the puzzles are pretty neat, but it does feel like the game suffers from the very same thing that modern AAA games do: looking technically impressive (for its time) at the expense of feeling good to play. We've always had that, I suppose. But at least we have more well-developed game design standards now.

[@TangoBunnie]

One of the things I've always found annoying is that ports/remakes never tried to fix the problems of The 7th Guest, just cut them entirely. Obnoxious puzzles are completely absent in the CD-i version and remasters.

[@DavidXNewton]

I think you're right, especially because this game was such a massive leap - they suddenly had unprecedented capacity for video and audio, but didn't really know what to do with it, so they made really a very basic puzzle game wrapped up in all this incredible new technology. Other games would later work out how to use the new toys in better ways but it was what started them all :)

[@thestigsdutchcousin]

Yes, David is back! And I'm betting that the mansion is going to be a Doom level in the next RAMP.

[@DavidXNewton]

Oh no, I'm definitely going to get loads of puzzle levels now! :)

[@GreggsonWong]

Whoa, I completely forgot I even played this game until I clicked on your video. Thank you very much for resurrecting this time capsule memory within myself.🙏😬

[@DavidXNewton]

You're welcome, it's been an interesting journey so far!

[@cubid0u]

To this day I still listen to the OST. I've got skeletons in my closet and they're rattling tonight...

[@ahandsomefridge]

THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY One of the many earworms (albeit a visual one) this game left in my memory

[@YodelingLoonRetail]

I mind it funny that the year before 7th Guest, the composer The Fat Man created music for a fully walkable 3D game, Ultima Underworld, where here it's all pre-rendered FMV for the maze.

[@trashymc4564]

These midi instruments are driving me up the walls.

[@Hussam_B]

Gosh, these transitions! I wish the spacebar sped them up like the FMVs, heh

[@hearmymotoredheart]

The coffin puzzle was the one that made me ragequit every time! In my own defense, I was nine, it was hard, okay?

[@DavidXNewton]

Definitely :) Some of these puzzles are really tall orders for anyone

[@klafbang]

Good luck on the microscope puzzle, especially if you're on a modern computer without a patch (it gets harder with faster computers and is virtually impossible on anything after 2000)

[@TangoBunnie]

I always feel compelled to jump in at this urban legend! The microscope puzzle difficulty in the game is its intended difficulty (ie. extremely hard unless you're playing with optimal moves every turn). The urban legend comes from if your computer is too slow - if you had a REALLY crap PC, the AI would make turns before it had thought out all of its intended routes, and be stupid. So, it's not that the game is impossible with faster computers, it's that it's normal with faster computers, and becomes extremely stupid with ancient slow PCs. From what I remember though, I think the ScummVM T7G engine tones down the microscope difficulty a little for player convenience.

[@DavidXNewton]

Aha, thank you - it felt like an urban legend to me, but there is at least some truth to the speed of your computer mattering :) I'm not sure if ScummVM changed the default difficulty but it does have an "Easy AI" setting - I tried this and it seemed to make no difference, it's possible the setting only applies when you start a new game with it on? I'm not sure

[@cosmicrdt]

Looking forward to watching the series. I find the story hard to follow. I couldn't even deduce that they were ghosts and he murdered them? Anyway the music in this is quite grating and the dialogue is often hard to hear over it. Was wondering if in the next video you could turn down the music volume? If scummvm let's you do that.

[@JendaLinda]

The text puzzle would be very difficult for players who are not native English speakers.

[@DavidXNewton]

Very difficult indeed and it's not easy for people who speak English as a first language either! It seemed impossible to make any sort of sentence when I only had Ys as vowels

[@TangoBunnie]

@@DavidXNewton The only way I initially solved it was by using the hint book in the library one time. The hint it gives you is "Bashful nomad, craftily, agilely, meet secretly near my underground vault." Then it actually starts to make sense as a puzzle concept. Although, even with that information, at the age I first played it I didn't know the word 'tryst' so ended up getting that one through process of elimination...

[@Rikika333]

Huh... why are several of the small channels I watch playing this game? Weird coincidence...

[@kg4ekc]

I love old fmv acting. It’s just so weird and nonsensical that I can’t look away. Also I think myst is a bit dull as well.

[@yebois_8036]

when you say creepy old house your accent makes it sound like prebuilt house which confused me for a while i must admit, anyways this some very cozy gameplay

[@TangoBunnie]

The 7th Guest was one of the first games I was completely obsessed with. Not the gameplay mind you, half the puzzles are terrible due to a combination of the sheer amount of time they take, the possibility of impossible RNG, and hotspots that accidentally make you turn around mid-puzzle ruining all your progress. But the mansion exploring part and hidden lore! Oh my goodness. I was (and still am) obsessed. The rabbit hole goes deep when you start looking into the strategy guide which showed the intended concept, the novelisation, and the short story it was based on. I'm hoping you'll play 11th Hour too, because after that, there's a great crossover of interests while it's fresh in your mind - 11th Hour came with .WADs for Doom, Doom 2, and Heretic on the CD. At first glance they don't feel anything like the games, but once you start connecting the dots and realising where each room is supposed to represent, it puts a new light on some of the hidden passages and layouts of the house. It kind of feels like a third evolution of the mansion from both games.

[@DavidXNewton]

Wow, I had no idea about the WADs in 11th Hour! I've completed this game now and I'll have to move on to it :) This era was such an incredible time for games, everything changing so much from year to year, even if it took some iterations to make games with the new technologies that were actually good to play :) Did you do a playthrough of The 7th Guest fairly recently on Tumblr or something? I thought you had but I couldn't find it again and I was interested in what you might have to say!

[@TangoBunnie]

@@DavidXNewton I think I waffled too much and youtube auto-deleted my reply, so now it will have to be a mystery!