The 13th Doll a fan game of The 7th Guest
Pretty much every adventure game fan in the Nineties with access to a computer remembers being terrified by the evil toymaker Henry Stauf and the horrors he hid in his Victorian mansion in Trilobyte’s groundbreaking puzzle adventure, The 7th Guest.
“My grandpa got me into it,” says Matt Gottshall, the lead programmer of The 13th Doll: A Fan Game Of The 7th Guest. “We tried to solve the puzzles together. It was a fun experience and I was young enough for the game to scare me, even though it was cheesy horror.”
The 7th Guest, designed by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros and distributed by Virgin Interactive, received attention for its effective mix of full-motion video and stunning 3D rendering following its release in 1993. It took almost two years to release a sequel, The 11th Hour, and even longer just to get an enticing trailer for The 7th Guest 3: The Collector. Rob Landeros tried twice to raise money through crowdfunding through his newly reformed Trilobyte brand but both campaigns failed to meet their goals – even with over $200,000 in donations – leading instead to two tabletop board games based on the games.
Back in the early Noughties when the third game failed to get greenlit, one dedicated fan, Ryan
