The board game faithfully based on the best-selling computer horror classics, The 7th Guest & The 11th Hour.
Tuesday, May 7, is the last day of The Stauf Mysteries Expansion Pack Kickstarter campaign.
So, for all you procrastinators, stragglers, fence-sitters, Johnny-come-latelys, and last-minute shoppers, your time has finally arrived!
Just thought you might want to know...
We have now entered the last week of The Stauf Mysteries Expansion Pack Kickstarter and there is plenty to celebrate and much to be grateful for. We met our initial goal and the expansion pack will be a reality.
There is still work to be done if we want to reach that stretch goal for The Stauf Mysteries Reader App that we are very enthusiastic about. To get there, I’ve been exploring ways by which we can lower the initial development cost of the app by a couple thousand dollars to put it that much more within reach. The goal now stands at $17,750.
I recommend that you take the time today to go out into the Spring weather and dance around a maypole. And once you’ve finished with that, you should join the campaign in a final push to get us and your fellow owners of The 7th Guest Board Game to the stretch goal that literally tells the tale and speaks the unspeakable.
And keep in mind that, even if you only join at the basic $10 pledge level, you will still get the app at no additional cost.
Have a great May Day!
Get the indispensable expansion pack for your 7th Guest board game for only $20.
or...
Join the campaign at the basic $10 level. That would be a big help too. You can decide later if you want to increase your pledge to get the expansion pack.
Either way, if we reach our stretch goal...
You get The Stauf Mysteries Reader App at no additional cost.
When you consider that the app is a sort of graphic audio book that narrates the mysteries surrounding the night of the seventh guest, it's a great value for any fan of the original video game.
And we can do it if we act collectively as the community that we are.
As of this hour, we're standing just outside the little door to that strange little room where many intriguing mysteries await.
In case you missed this “love letter” from a long time fan, published on Medium.
In April of 1993 I was 12 going on 13 but I still remember and hold a great fondness for one of the greatest video games to ever grace the PC. The 7th Guest, created by Rob Landeros and Graeme Devine and produced by Trilobyte Games, is set to celebrate its 25th anniversary this year with a relaunch across both Mobile and PC platforms. It is a game I’ve bought more than half a dozen times through the years, and here I am set to buy it once again, and you should too. If you dare…
A friend and I had pooled our money and bought The 7th Guest at the Post Exchange on the military base near our homes. The box was huge in our eager little hands, the back teasing what was something we’d never seen in a game before, actual actors and video IN the game! It spoke of a creepy old murderous vagrant turned doll maker named Henry Stauf who’d stolen the souls of children and put them into his dolls in order to live forever. His home was the setting for this masterpiece.
After installing the brand new CD-Rom game and anxiously pressing that play button, I awoke as the main character called Ego trapped in the dark, abandoned, old Victorian mansion and was greeted with a shimmering flashback video. A party was being thrown, each guest being offered their wildest dreams, if only they could survive the night in the dark and puzzle filled mansion. A rhyme encountered within the game helps set the tone, “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!”
The setting was perfect to me, a child who’d grown up reading H.P. Lovecraft books and fantasy novels. The atmosphere was heavy, the music was both taunting and haunting. From the opening sequence I was hooked. I spent an entire weekend in the basement of my friend’s house huddled around his computer, the glow cast by the monitor our only light source, working through the puzzles and jumping at the frights in the game, and in the darkness of the basement. It was perfect. In a time before guide books and internet walkthroughs we were forced to resort to old fashioned brain power, and even pen and paper at times. Navigation was done by point and click, a motif familiar from the many games of King’s Quest and similar adventure games I’d enjoyed in the past, only this time your cursor alternately becomes a skeletal hand either wagging a finger, pointing, or even transforming into a skull complete with a pulsing brain and bugging eyes when you’d hover over a puzzle.
From the very first puzzle encountered I knew that I was in for some true delights, entering the dining room of the old mansion I was greeted by a ghostly vision of the six past guests huddled around an empty cake stand, once the vision passes you are invited to solve the puzzle, a ghastly cake has taken form on the stand decorated with skulls, gravestones, and sickly green frosting. Your cursor becoming a skeletal hand either wagging a finger, chattering teeth, or alternately a blue or green rolling eye. The cake has been cut into 30 pieces in a 6 x 5 grid, each of the six guest must receive five pieces, “Two skulls, and two stones, the rest is just icing…” your character whispers to himself as you attempt your first piece. Throughout the whole puzzle your unseen adversary, Henry Stauf, taunts you “I really don’t think you get the POINT of this…” and other such jibes. Once you’ve served up your grisly desert you are granted another vision of past events, leading you ever further into the house, and madness or escape.
The 7th Guest continues in this vein, doling out story in the form of ghostly apparitions encountering one another, or unseen forces, being spoken to by the crazed and maniacal Stauf and enticed to kill themselves, or even others. These tidbits being your reward as the player for further agitating Old Man Stauf and beating his devilish games. You discover throughout the game that a seventh guest arrived that night, a young boy named Tad who was not invited. The guests were directed to bring the boy to Stauf. Those who fail are, shall we say, not treated favorably. The storytelling was masterful, using a relatively new technique of full motion video captured on a blue screen and acted out in exaggerated fashion similar to a stage performance or telenovela. Written by award winning author Matthew Costello the story and dialog worked perfectly to provide the right amount of impact, and suspense, and drive the whole way through.
Accompanying the fantastic performances, brilliant story, and brain wracking puzzles, was the musical arrangement of George “The Fat Man” Sanger. Sanger had composed musical pieces for a dozen games before tackling the soundtrack for The 7th Guest. He has since gone on to compose countless more soundtracks and singles, and garnered several awards. His music accompanied the game disk on its own separate CD-Rom which could be listened to without the game. His music for The 7th Guest is so popular he recently held an online concert in 2018 within the virtual world of Second Life. An event which was a huge success and helped to rekindle interest in this old gem of a game.
The 7th Guest received amazing praise for its innovation and story, becoming the #1 Best Selling game in July of 1993, and maintaining a spot as the 13th best selling game between the years of 1993 and 1999. As recently as 2011 it was even named one of the best adventure games ever released by online gaming community Adventure Gamers.
Here we are in April of 2019 and Trilobye Games and Mojo Touch have already released The 7th Guest 25th: Anniversary Edition across iOS and Android gaming platforms with some much needed polishing and updates to make the game a bit more accessible and pleasing to the eye. The story and puzzles remain the same, and Stauf still cheats a little in the end, but it is a brilliant addition to the world of touch screen gaming. The PC remaster becomes available April the 9th on both Steam and GOG. I for one have already been enjoying my iOS version on the go but look very forward to a weekend drawn close to the phosphorescent glow of my laptop monitor revisiting a piece of my childhood and once again battling Old Man Stauf in his creepy old house.
-Jarred Schulte
Since The Stauf Mysteries expansion pack campaign kicked off Monday, we’ve added a few items you will find of interest and also have some good news to share.
We are happy to announce that have secured a partner for distribution to the European Union countries and the savings on shipping at taxes will be significant!
For instance, whereas shipping just the expansion pack alone to the EU would have cost $30, we now reckon the cost will be $18. And whereas the cost for the base game plus the expansion pack was a whopping $94, we calculate the cost will “only” be $34. (It’s a 4kg package.)
Best of all, there is no VAT charged to you. We assume the VAT for importing to Europe.
As for other destinations outside the U.S., we hope to have new information about that in the near, so stay tuned to this channel.
While you play the 7th Guest board game, have the story cards revealed on your mobile device screen and listen as they are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The app will be compatible with the Android and iOS platforms. It’s the audio book equivalent companion piece to the expansion pack that you and your fellow guests will love. If the campaign reaches this $20,250 stretch goal, all backers of this campaign will get the app for free.
This expansion pack is indispensable for any board game owner. We invite you to click here to take a look at and then join the campaign.