Trilobyte's Games (The 7th Guest)

Trilobyte is one of those companies that fell by the wayside as the video game industry evolved, but through some of its games, it left its mark on the industry as we know it today. The name Trilobyte might not ring a bell for many, but without a doubt, you know its first and most successful game, the adventure and puzzle title The 7th Guest, a cult classic remembered by many to this day.

Although today there seem to be many established game developers that are here to stay, many others were left behind along the way. One of those is Trilobyte. The company, founded by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros in late 1990, didn't have a long track record, but its first attempt in the industry was its best mark, with The 7th Guest, one of the first titles of the CD-ROM format.

The company was not only recognized for that, but also for being one of the pioneers in the use of rendered 3D graphics, since that was the way to navigate the world of The 7th Guest. They are also remembered for creating a game intended for adults, when at that time the medium was still considered children's entertainment. Finally, they used a lot of videos with FMV (Full Motion Video) for their cutscenes, as American Laser Games had begun to do a few years earlier. In any case, this was not so common.

The 7th Guest (1993)

Without a doubt its most popular and successful game, The 7th Guest placed the player in the shoes of a character who appeared in a haunted mansion, built by a killer named Stauf. There, you solved complex puzzles and saw ghostly images of past events that happened in those rooms, when six people were invited by the owner of the mansion, with the objective of finding the seventh guest, a boy named Tau, who would complete a collection of dolls created by Stauf, to fulfill a supernatural pact. The striking thing was not only the strange and captivating story and its atmosphere, but also the complex puzzles that the player had to solve. The player had freedom to navigate the mansion with a point and click system and thus had to solve 21 puzzles, in different rooms, which became more complicated each time, with the ghostly voice of Stauf challenging each of your actions. What a great game of that era, without a doubt!

The 11th Hour (1995)

Using the same gameplay as the previous title, this sequel took place 60 years after the events of The 7th Guest. The player took the role of Carl Denning Jr., an investigator for the television program "Unsolved Cases", in search of the show's producer and lover, who was investigating the murders in a small town near Stauf's Mansion. Denning heads to the mansion to find his beloved, but only finds parts of her investigation and, of course, many puzzles. Eventually, he begins to be visited by old guests from the previous title, who try to persuade him from his objective, knowing that - unknowingly - he was fulfilling Stauf's wishes, as had happened to them years before.

Clandestiny (1996)

Although Clandestiny maintained the essence of solving puzzles as the main element of the adventure, it was designed to attract not only adults but also young people, which is why it was created as a cartoon. The story revolved around a young man named Andrew J. MacPhiles, who inherited a haunted Scottish castle, which he visited with his girlfriend Paula. Through puzzles again, Andrew had to solve the mystery of the family curse.

Uncle Henry's Playhouse (1996)

This title could be considered Trilobyte's last gasp, with the aim of obtaining funding for the several games they had planned but lacked funds to make real. This title was basically a compilation of puzzles found in The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, and Clandestiny. Without any story connecting these puzzles, the title was a disappointment and only sold 27 copies in the United States and 176 worldwide, thus sealing the end of Trilobyte.

The reasons for Trilobyte's death were not purely economic; there was an internal fight between the two founders. After the game Clandestiny, in 1996, internally the company split in two and each founder took the project they believed was the right decision for the company. On one hand, Rob Landeros began development of Tender Loving Care — better known as TLC — an interactive movie starring John Hurt, while Graeme Devine began an MMO called Millennium. While the latter never saw the light of day, TLC came out in 1998, but it's hard to consider it a video game.

Past, present and future of The 7th Guest

The impact that The 7th Guest had on the industry is clear, given the short trajectory of Trilobyte and the fact that they had more games in the pipeline than they managed to bring to market. Before its closure, they had planned at least a total of seven games — Cybernet, Dog Eat Dog, Extreme Warfare, Baja Racing, The 13th Soul, and Trojan Planet — in addition to three versions of The 7th Guest III, with totally different concepts.

History gave them some revenge, as the name Trilobyte rose from its ashes in 2010, to launch at the end of that year The 7th Guest for iPhone and iPad, under the name The 7th Guest: Infection. In 2013, Rob Landeros launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring the long-awaited The 7th Guest 3: The Collector to life, raising only $121,318 of the $435,000 needed. The 7th Guest 3: The Collector, then, was canceled. Much better it went in 2017, with another Kickstarter campaign, to bring The 7th Guest to the board game world with The 7th Guest Board Game. This time the campaign was a success, raising $61,933 of the $57,611 goal.

The 13th Doll: A Fan Game of the 7th Guest

The story doesn't end here, fortunately. In 2015, developer Attic Door Productions managed to license the classic from Trilobyte and launched a Kickstarter campaign for the development of The 13th Doll: A Fan Game of the 7th Guest. As its name clearly indicates, The 13th Doll will be a kind of fan-made sequel, and will have 20 puzzles in 35 rooms, fully respecting the atmosphere and gameplay of the game that inspires it. As it could not be otherwise, it will have video sequences with real actors to tell the story.

The project was supposed to be completed by October 2018 but it has been delayed a bit, as usually happens with everything from Kickstarter. The release date for The 13th Doll, for now, is set for July 2019. You can follow the news from its official website.