In 1992, The 7th Guest released to critical fanfare and large sales, selling over two million copies in total. A point-and-click horror PC game in which players explore and solve puzzles inside a haunted house, the series continued with a sequel, 1995’s The 11th Hour. Then…nothing…that is, until now. The 13th Doll is a fanmade sequel that sees you returning to the Stauf Mansion in order to rescue your friends and stop the evil toymaker Henry Stauf once again.
Fans are excited and the game looks good, but there’s just one thing: point-and-click horror isn’t for everyone. Like most other games of its kind (at least at the time), The 7th Guest featured a lot of Full-Motion Video. While some people might like that in a point-and-click game, many gamers who didn’t grow up with it might be put off. FMV can be taken seriously, but more often than not, it just comes across as being kind of cheesy—and that’s not always good for sales. That doesn’t mean the game is doomed, though. There are still a lot of people that play FMV games (Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure earned almost $7 million since its launch in 2014). But will it sell well enough to encourage future installments? That remains to be seen.
