The 11th Hour

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Seventy years after The 7th Guest, Stauf's house is waiting again.

Platforms: PC, Mac
Stores: Steam, GOG
Price: Paid
Rated: Mixed on Steam (41% of 275 reviews); 3.4 out of 5 from GOG players (56 reviews)
Length: about 7 hours
Players: 1
Controls: Mouse: click to move between rooms, look at objects and play the puzzles.
Made by: Trilobyte Games
Released: 1995

On GOG: one of the GOG horror games.

What frightens A reporter searches the rotting mansion of the dead toymaker Henry Stauf for his missing producer, and the house shows him its murders in grim live-action scenes while Stauf's voice taunts him through puzzle after puzzle.
Content: graphic violence, sexual content, disturbing imagery.

The 11th Hour is Trilobyte's 1995 sequel to The 7th Guest. A television reporter goes into the decaying mansion of the toymaker Henry Stauf to find his missing producer, solving Stauf's puzzles and a treasure hunt of riddles while live-action scenes show what happened in the house.

About The 11th Hour

Trilobyte, the studio behind The 7th Guest, put this out for DOS and Windows at the end of 1995. A Mac version followed in 1998. GOG brought it back in 2012, Steam a year later, with Nightdive Studios and Atari as today's publishers. Want to play in German? GOG's copy has German voices to go with the English.

It is set seventy years after the first game. Carl Denning, an investigative reporter, is searching for his producer Robin Morales, who vanished while looking into a run of deaths in a small town and the mansion of Henry Stauf, the toymaker whose house is said to hold a supernatural grip on the place. A portable computer arrives with her call for help, and Carl goes inside. Three mysterious women are his only guides in the house.

Like The 7th Guest, it is played in first person through pre-rendered 3D rooms, with full-motion video of live actors laid over them. Each room hides one of Stauf's puzzles: board games, logic problems and mechanical toys. On top of that there is a treasure hunt: Stauf sets riddles built from anagrams, ciphers and wordplay, and solving them by finding the right object in the house unlocks more of the video story. Its riddles are hard, and players still find some of them very hard today.

What scares you here is the rot of the house, Stauf's mocking voice, plus the grim video scenes of murder and cruelty you get between puzzles. Germany's rating on Steam is 18, for graphic violence and sexual content, so it's not one to play with kids around. Plan for about seven hours to reach the end, going by the HowLongToBeat figure GOG shows, more if a riddle stumps you. Stuck? The GameBook gives you a hint. Players who finished The 7th Guest or its Remake get to go back to Stauf's house. Fans of 1990s FMV horror should come ready to sweat over hard puzzles.

How to play The 11th Hour

Buy and install it from Steam (Windows or Mac) or GOG (Windows).
Click to move from room to room through Stauf's mansion and to look at objects.
Open a puzzle by clicking the object that holds it, then solve it to move on.
Read each new riddle Stauf sets, work out the object it describes and find it in the house.
Watch the video scenes each solved riddle unlocks to follow Carl's search for Robin.

Screenshots

The 11th Hour screenshot: a dim mansion bedroom with a bare four-poster bed frame, a light bulb on its slats and a carved wardrobe against green wallpaper

The 11th Hour screenshot: a puzzle board of wooden discs joined by red bars, with two black and two white bishop pieces on a stained wooden table

The 11th Hour screenshot: a dim wooden attic under sloping beams with a dress form standing by a broken window

The 11th Hour screenshot: live-action video of a woman in black running past a dark wooden wall and green bushes

The 11th Hour screenshot: a dim mansion foyer with a red-railed staircase lit by ghostly light, a checkered floor and a skeleton-hand cursor

The 11th Hour screenshot: a fanged, monstrous baby in a lilac lace bonnet lying on a red and green rug in a live-action scene

The 11th Hour screenshot: a pale woman in a spiked choker grinning with sharp teeth and a long red tongue in a dim red-lit room

Tips

Many riddles are anagrams, ciphers or wordplay; write the letters down and try rearranging them.
Stuck on a riddle? Open the GameBook for an on-screen hint.
Take puzzles slowly: there is no time limit and nothing hunts you.
Play The 7th Guest or its Remake first if you want to know who Stauf is.
Steam players report crashes on some systems; a compatibility mode helped them.

Questions

Is The 11th Hour a sequel to The 7th Guest?

Yes. Trilobyte made it as the sequel, set seventy years later in the same mansion of Henry Stauf.

Where can I buy The 11th Hour?

It is sold on Steam for Windows and Mac, and DRM-free on GOG for Windows.

Is The 11th Hour scary?

It is a slow puzzle game, not one of chases or jump scares. The fear comes from the rotting house, Stauf's taunts and grim live-action scenes. Germany rates it 18 on Steam for graphic violence and sexual content.

Are the puzzles hard?

Yes. Steam players single out the riddles, built on anagrams, ciphers and wordplay, as very hard.

How long is The 11th Hour?

About seven hours for the main story, by the HowLongToBeat figure shown on GOG. Hard riddles can stretch that.