"Old Man Stauf built a house, and filled it with his toys
Six guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise
Blood inside the library, blood right up the hall
Dripping down the attic stairs — hey guests, try not to fall
Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen
But Old Man Stauf is waiting there — crazy, sick, and mean!"
It's upon this twisted fairy tale that the mythology of
The 7th Guest
was built. Originally released in 1993, this classic PC game was ahead of its time in several ways. It was one of the first games to use the CD format, even helping to accelerate sales of CD-ROM drives. The combination of pre-rendered 3D graphics and full-motion video was revolutionary back then, and
The 7th Guest
successfully interwove a compelling plot about a haunted house with devilishly tricky puzzles and exploration. Though it might look cheesy and outdated by modern standards, in a time before ESRB ratings, this scary game was giving '90s kids nightmares, and is widely regarded as a cult classic today.
However, the story of Stauf's mansion has been largely left in the '90s. A 2013 crowdfunding campaign for the new entry in the series failed to meet its $435,000 goal, and a fan-made third game calledÂ
The 13th DollÂ
launched last year to little fanfare.Â
The 7th GuestÂ
deserves a proper retelling, and
there's no better place
to introduce this spooky tale to new generations than Netflix.
Come For the Drama, Stay for the Gruesome Deaths
The 7th Guest
begins with a cinematic of Henry Stauf killing a woman in cold blood, and it only gets more disturbing from there. He rises to fame by crafting a series of popular dolls (because of course it's dolls), which then make children die from illness. Once the connection is discovered, he's never seen publicly again.
Again, this is just the
prelude
to the actual events of the game. After Stauf's disappearance, six people are invited to stay at his mansion, and what follows is a night to remember. Infidelity, fear of aging, financial difficulties, and alcoholism are only a few of the themes the six guests experience, all seen through the eyes of the player. As the six adults squabble over a moral conundrum the absent Stauf has presented them with, they slowly turn on each other to their own demises.
Spoilers for a 27-year-old game: the guests do not make it out alive. In 1993, many video game deaths were as simple as stomping on a goomba's head or shooting demons in an explosion of pixels. The FMV recordings that brought
The 7th Guest
to life were genuinely scary: one woman is pulled down into a bathtub, another is turned into a mannequin, and a third is strangled in cold blood. Let's just say this house would not get a 5-star rating on Air BnB.
The Game's Format Translates Well to Episodic Horror
The actual gameplay of The 7th Guest consists of exploration and puzzle-solving. When the player enters the Stauf mansion, very few of its rooms are actually accessible. Throughout the course of the game, as the player solves more puzzles and discovers more of the story, more and more rooms become available. At the same time, completing brain-teasers can trigger FMV video sequences with details on the guests' ultimate fates.Because the interactive portions of the game are separate from the video sequences, The 7th Guest lends itself well to an episodic TV show format. Each episode could tackle another guest's story and reveal more of the twisted house to viewers. This would all build up to a tense finale in which the narrator finally makes it to the attic and the story's terrible twist is revealed.It'd Be Right at Home on Netflix
Video game adaptations are tricky
, but Netflix has established itself as a premier streaming service for nerds. The streaming service has handled its adaptations of
Castlevania
and
The Witcher surprisingly well
. Netflix is also no stranger to original horror, as the recent release ofÂ
The Haunting of Bly ManorÂ
has shown.Â
The 7th GuestÂ
fits right into that lineup and could become a spooky season classic. The showrunners could even revisit sequelÂ
The 11th HourÂ
and the scrapped third game for subsequent seasons.
Though the technology is dated, the scares of
The 7th Guest
linger on. With no new games on the horizon, it's time to bring Stauf's nightmarish game to life in a whole new format. Maybe by next Halloween, horror fans will be binging episodes of
The 7th Guest
... probably with the lights on.