S11: George "The Fat Man" Sanger - Misc. Scary

"Oh no! The dolls are the children!"

The 7th Guest was one of the first computer games I ever played after getting the first family PC - having prior to this been a household of Commodore A550 users. For a game that is simply a series of logic problems its premise is rather complex and its atmosphere tense and, on occasion, rather terrifying, in spite of being unable to 'lose' the game by dying in any way. Part of the reason I failed out on posting early on last week was because of stumbling onto one of the songs from its soundtrack and feeling drawn to actually finishing the damned thing as I never did at the time.

The rest of the week I just felt tired - quite unrelated to the game - and set about on a mission of recovery. Come about Wednesday I decided that it was looking like my first week off and I should resign myself to it and look into hosting of the previous fortnight's music as recompense.

I'm not actually sure where this music can be heard in the game. I dozed off on my two-seater - my sleeping location of choice this past week - whilst playing and must have heard the Downstairs Puzzles music around a quarter of a million times before getting sufficiently energised to get up and turn the computer off. This is why these slow sorts of games are, generally, the only type I ever play. I'm not much of an enthusiastic gamer so anything that requires reflexes or kills you off just because you stopped concentrating on what it was you were meant to be doing for a couple of hours isn't much for me. As it is, what with the Internet and the occasional intelligent person crafting a sufficiently complex spin on this genre - to say nothing of the rather more common non-intellect who also see fit to create their own tribute(s) - with Flash, new games in this vein rarely surface. An unofficial sequel to The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour is being worked on, the Myst franchise seems determined to reach into triple figures and The Fool's Errand (full game download available on the site) also looks to finally be getting a sequel, though the release date has been moved back several times the past five years, sometime this year being the latest predicted.

Here's the opening sequence from the game, in lieu of anything else to post, video-wise:

Download: George "The Fat Man" Sanger - Misc. Scary

The 7th Guest on Wikipedia - also has links to a page where some other relevant MP3s can be found, if that tickles you.

You can probably find the game itself secondhand somewhere. On the other hand, it is now considered Abandonware and can be downloaded from Lost Treasures, here (the site is in French, but the game itself is the English-language version).