What you need to know
- 30-year-old cult-classic puzzle adventure game The 7th Guest is getting a VR remake for the Quest 2.
- One of the first CD-ROM games, The 7th Guest has the titular guest trying to escape an evil murderer's haunted mansion while solving its mysteries.
- Ported by Vertigo Games (Arizona Sunshine), The 7th Guest VR ships in October 2023.
If I had to pick a classic point-and-click adventure game to get a VR treatment, I'd consider Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Maniac Mansion...really dozens of other options before I would have thought of The 7th Guest. But that's what is coming to the Meta Quest 2 later this year.
Despite selling millions of copies in the early 90s, and Bill Gates calling it "the new standard in interactive entertainment" at the time, The 7th Guest didn't have the same cultural impact as other classics like Myst (which already has a fantastic Quest port). Unpopular sequels and failed crowdfunding campaigns proved this.
Still, it's a fascinating game that experimented with putting real-life acting into games in the form of ghostly guests, and plenty of 90s FMV and adventure games followed in its footsteps. And this new port, produced by Vertigo Games, will give it a modern touch thanks to interactive touch controls and enhanced graphics.
"The team is using volumetric video capture to recreate the FMV (full-motion video) storytelling of the original game, bringing the classic adventure to life like never before," Vertigo Games explains in its announcement. "And for the first time ever, the iconic mansion is being recreated in full 3D."
At the May Sony Games Showcase, we saw footage for Vertigo Games' other upcoming title, Arizona Sunshine II. It's the irreverent follow-up to the 2016 action zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine, considered one of the best early VR games.
Several other Vertigo titles number among our favorite Quest 2 games, including After the Fall, Unplugged, and Another Fisherman's Tale. So we're optimistic that the developer will handle this remake with due reverence — while also avoiding some of the notoriously obtuse puzzles that made some portions nearly impossible to solve.
