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Humble Weekly Sale: System Shock 2, The 7th Guest, Wizardry 8
It's a fine week for classic PC games as the good people at Humble Bundle have set their price-cutting sights on Night Dive Studios, a developer focused on resurrecting the hits of yesteryear for modern hardware. As with all Humble Weekly Sales, this entry operates on a "pay what you want" basis. Spend at least $1 and you'll receive classic roleplaying games Wizardry 6 and Wizardry 7, as well as voodoo-tinged dark adventure Shadow Man. Throw down $5 or more and you'll also walk away with controversial horror classics Harvester and The 7th Guest, as well as the less controversial but more existentially disturbing I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The final tier of games is only available to those who spend $9 or more, but adds 7th Guest sequel The 11th Hour, epic RPG Wizardry 8 and System Shock 2, a survival horror game with such excellent atmosphere and tone that even waist-high telekinetic monkeys seem a terrifying threat. Best of all, while you're spending a few hundred hours sorting through the handful of classic games you just bought at a huge discount, your money can go to help the less fortunate. Everyone who buys items from the Humble Weekly Sale can earmark their money, either for the American Red Cross or Child's Play. Your third option is to send your money to Night Dive Studios, a move that you could still feel good about given that this week's top contributors tally lists Night Dive in the number one spot thanks to a $1,000 donation of its own. [Image: Humble Bundle]
The 7th Guest 3 materializes with FMV out of thin air
Trilobyte has grand plans for The 7th Guest 3, a follow-up to classic horror puzzle games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour. The team is seeking $435,000 on Kickstarter to craft an HD, full-motion-video game with 20 puzzles at least. If the Kickstarter video is anything like the final product, The 7th Guest 3 will be just as campy as the original games. This time around, the entire mansion of famed toymaker Henry Strauf is a giant puzzle, and its rooms twist, turn, disappear and rearrange themselves depending on the riddles players solve within its walls. It sounds a bit like Hogwarts – or for those with creepier sensibilities, the Navidson home in House of Leaves. The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour recently launched on Steam and they're still on sale, in a bundle or separately, through the end of Halloween. Trilobyte has 38 more days to raise $435,000 for The 7th Guest 3 on Kickstarter, with more than $18,000 gathered in its first day.
The 7th Guest, 11th Hour bundle up for safety on Steam
Classic PC adventure game The 7th Guest and its sequel, The 11th Hour, are now available on Steam as a bundle for $15 or individually for $10. The 7th Guest comes in PC, Mac and Linux flavors, while The 11th Hour comes in PC and Mac varieties. The 7th Guest made it through Steam Greenlight in August, and in March, developer Trilobyte announced The 7th Guest: 3, a follow-up to The 11th Hour for PC, Mac and mobile devices. At the time, Trilobyte was looking for funding partners and had Kickstarter as a backup plan – but now it's Plan A. The Kickstarter campaign for The 7th Guest: 3 should launch around Halloween, Trilobyte says.
Steam gives Satellite Reign, 7 Days to Die and others the Greenlight
The latest round of Steam Greenlight-approved games is headlined by a few Kickstarter successes, perhaps most notably the only-recently-funded Satellite Reign. The Syndicate Wars-inspired real-time strategy title achieved around $611K in backing, and now heads to Valve's portal alongside open-world zombie horror 7 Days to Die and 70s sci-fi god game Maia. 7 Days to Die even-more-recently achieved its Kickstarter goal of $200K and still has six days of its campaign to go, while Maia from indie dev Simon Roth, self-described as Dwarf Fortress meets Dungeon Keeper, was funded on Kickstarter late last year. Other highlights from the round of 15 include The Novelist, in which you play a ghost who observes and shapes the lives of a family, the re-release of 90s horror The 7th Guest, sci-fi janitorial sim (yes really) Viscera Cleanup Detail, and another Kickstarter success in Nekro, which mixes Diablo-style gameplay with the charming art of necromancy. We've got the full list of newly Greenlit games after the break.
Double Fine music game, Dungelot 2 and 7th Guest 3 all coming soon to iOS
There was big news this week of three different high-profile games coming to the App Store soon. First up, Tim Schafer's great Double Fine studio is working on a music game called Dropchord, which will be available for Windows, Mac and iOS at launch. The game is set to work with the Leap Motion Controller, which tracks your hand movement in the air above it, and then turns those movements into gestures on a screen. No idea if that means Leap will plug into iOS devices (perhaps via Bluetooth?), but we'll know soon: The game is set for a reveal at SXSW later on next week. Second, the excellent puzzle-esque roguelike Dungelot is getting a sequel called (duh) Dungelot 2, and it features some updated graphics, a few new tiles and lots of other tweaks and improvements. You can see screenshots of this one above, and it looks solid. Developer Red Winter is hoping to have the game done by May. And finally, The 7th Guest 3 is currently in development, according to Trilobyte co-founder Charlie McHenry. Just like The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, the game will feature lots of original puzzles that tie into a mysterious backstory set in a giant, creepy mansion. It sounds like the game should be lots of fun for fans of the series, and it's set to be done in about a year, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign coming soon. So that's a longer wait than the others, but we'll definitely keep an eye out for all three of these.
The 7th Guest: 3 coming to a PC, Mac or mobile device right behind you
Trilobyte has lured The 7th Guest: 3 out of hiding (yes, it was under your bed) and onto PC, Mac, iOS and Android, possibly within the next 18 months. The 7th Guest: 3 is the 3D, puzzle-licious sequel to Trilobyte's The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour."In the world of The 7th Guest: 3, you will re-enter the mysterious and magical mansion, newly restored with games, puzzles and artifacts," Trilobyte co-founder Charlie McHenry tells Polygon. "But it is still haunted, as players will soon discover. You will learn more about what happened on that terrible night, and discover the real story and previously hidden secrets of the gaming world's most mysterious toymaker."Trilobyte is talking with potential financiers and plans to launch a Kickstarter in April, should funding fall through via other channels, McHenry says. The game could be done in 12 - 18 months, with some of the original development team working on The 7th Guest: 3 alongside new puzzle designers. If the actual game is as unsettling as having a colon before "3" in the title, Trilobyte is on the right track.
PSA: The 7th Guest free on iOS and Mac App store today
In 1993, we were too busy getting our chat room trolling on to play classic adventure games like The 7th Guest. Thankfully for us, modern technology lets us revisit older works via new platforms. The 7th Guest, for instance, has been available for quite some time on iOS and OS X.But hey, maybe you – like us – have yet to purchase Trilobyte's seminal work? You'll be glad to hear, then, that the OS X and iOS versions of The 7th Guest are totally free today in celebration of May Day. We're not second-guessing it either! Free game!
The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour re-released for PC
Retro-game host DotEmu has released, in classic horror-puzzle form, The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, further supporting our theory that both titles were an extensive viral ad campaign for red Slurpees at 7/11. Both titles are $10 each and available for download here and -- look out there's something over there!
TUAW's Daily App: The 7th Guest
You might have missed the fact that this classic adventure game was released on iOS, but just in case, here you go: it's available now for iPhone and iPad. According to reviews on the store, this is a faithful recreation of the old full-motion video game from back in 1993. The game has you wandering around a mansion trying to solve puzzles, with a story slowly displayed through video clips featuring real actors in a real setting. The game was quite innovative for its time, being one of the first games to be distributed on CD-ROM. Unfortunately, the main reason for that was because the videos took up so much memory, and weirdly, iOS device owners are currently facing that same problem -- the game needs 623 MB free on your device to install. But it is an interesting game from the start of the modern PC gaming era, and if you're already a fan of The 7th Guest, you'll definitely want to pick this up and play it on Apple's platform. The game is US$2.99 on the iPhone and $5.99 on the iPad. Andy Williams actually sings about "spooky ghost stories" for Christmas, so if you need one of those to play through this holiday week, try your turn at being the 7th Guest at Old Man Stauf's house.
The 7th Guest launches on App Store
What? Oh, yeah ... yeah, just hold on, we'll be with you in a sec. ... Now, where were we? ... But wait, that can't ... Huh? Oh, yeah, the post, right, sorry. We've been staring at the frigging "letter can puzzle" in The 7th Guest for like an hour now and we're honestly this close to snapping our respective iPads and iPhones over our knees at this point. ... Wait, maybe if ... no, that won't work! Dammit! You know, we're actually a little busy with this to write a post right now. Hey, why not go to the App Store and get The 7th Guest ($2.99 on iPhone, $5.99 on iPad) for yourself while you wait for us to figure this out? Now, if you'll excuse us, we're gonna watch the video of the chubby ghost lady for like the hundredth time to see if we missed a clue.
Another week of big iOS releases: Real Racing 2, World of Goo, lots more
As expected, the App Store has released another round of new apps, and since we're right in the middle of the busy holiday season, there are a ton of great and long-awaited games to play either out today or coming this evening. Telltale has released the first episode of its Tales of Monkey Island series on the iPad, continuing the storyline from the classic game. Gameloft's Uncharted-like Shadow Guardian will be available this evening, as will NOVA 2, the sequel to last year's popular FPS. We saw a preview of both a little while back. Sega is bringing the old Altered Beast game to the App Store, and it's probably just as bad as you remember. Eidos has surprised us with a release of the Xbox Live and PSN title Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, arriving on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad tomorrow. Should be a good one -- reviews were excellent on the previous platforms. Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD is a really impressive fully 3D action RPG to play through, available for $6.99 on the App Store soon. Real Racing 2 is coming out this evening. I got to play an early build, and I can tell you that it's fantastic -- one of the best racing games on the App Store. Riven: The Sequel to Myst arrived on the store last night. Classic adventure title The 7th Guest is now out on iPhone for US $2.99 and iPad for $5.99. World of Goo is also due out on the iPad tonight, and this version is supposed to be one of the best. EA's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is arriving on iOS in a streamlined version, but it's going to be on sale for just 99 cents, so that's nice. Duke Nukem 3D isn't a new game, but it (and the iPad special edition) has gone free recently. A few apps are updating for the holidays: both educational astronomy app Star Walk and destructive worm simulator Super Mega Worm have special Santa-related updates out now. Man oh man, that's a whole lot of great games to play. Most of these apps aren't quite out on the App Store just yet (though some of them are available in New Zealand, where it is already tomorrow), but they should all be live on the US store by 11:00 PM Eastern time.
Trilobyte's Charlie McHenry on 7th Guest and FMV's mobile future
As I've admitted more times than I can count, I'm part of the narrow subset of gamers who loves FMV games. It is, in fact, such a narrow subset that I'm the only game critic I know who's a member of it. It was with an understandable amount of incredulity then that I reported the news that one of my favorite FMV devs, the long-dead Trilobyte, was returning to relevance with an iOS port of its classic The 7th Guest. I reached out to new COO Charlie McHenry to try to find out if this new Trilobyte was just interested in a one night stand, just playing with my heart or in it for something more serious.
The 7th Guest coming to iPhone in December
Retro games continue to make their way to the iOS platform. One of the latest early-'90s games about to make its way to iOS is Trilobyte's FMV adventure/puzzle game, The 7th Guest. The company says it is due to come out sometime early next month. When it debuted in 1993, The 7th Guest was one the first computer games to come out on CD (CD!) and was originally priced at US$79.95. For the iOS version, you'll only have to fork over $3.99. It seems this won't be a universal app, as it's labeled as an "iPhone" game. Perhaps an HD version will be in the works if the iPhone version is a winner. Are you a newcomer to The 7th Guest and interested in picking this one up? Or are you an old 7th Guest veteran who wants to try the app out on your iPhone next? Give us your thoughts in the comments. [via Joystiq]
The 7th Guest coming to iOS ... from Trilobyte
OK, so we don't have jet packs or the ability to vote through our DVRs (you did remember to vote, didn't you?) but at least you can say this of 2010: A game that once required CD-ROMs to work is now available on your iPhone. Or more specifically, spooky FMV gem The 7th Guest will be available this December on the iOS platform. We've put a trailer for you after the jump if you're completely in the dark (i.e. younger than 25). Oh, oh, but we haven't told you the best part! Guess who's bringing the game to market? None other than a reformed Trilobyte Games, the original house behind not only The 7th Guest but other oddballs like The 11th Hour and (at least in part) the supremely odd Tender Loving Care (starring John Hurt). Can you believe it? ... C'mon, where all my FMV nerds at? ... Anybody?
