Seven
Days and Seven Nights,
hereafter referred to as 7D7N,
is by no means a well known game. In fact it’s quite obscure, and
unquestionably set to remain that way. Published in 1994, it is one of
the very first Czech commercial adventure games. It reflects the humble
beginnings of the Czech gaming industry, which is nowadays known for
titles such as Operation Flashpoint,
Hidden and Dangerous, Mafia, or Pterodon Software’s own Vietcong; adventure gamers are
likely to be familiar with Black
Mirror or Nibiru.

Since most readers
of this review are extremely unlikely to play 7D7N, seeing as the game only
exists in Czech language version, I will describe the game’s plot (such
as it is) in
more detail than usual. For those who wish to avoid spoilers, please
read the next few paragraphs at your own peril.

The main character and
hero, and I’m using that term very loosely, of 7D7N is private dick named Venca Záhyb (his name could
loosely be translated as Jack Cheat). Venca lives in a nondescript
small Czech town, and he’s not exactly what you’d call an upstanding
citizen. He’s a drinker, he’s a womanizer, he’s always behind on his
payments, he doesn’t appear to be all that smart, but he does possess
certain level of animal cunning. He’s perhaps in his late twenties (not
easy to tell with cartoon characters), has a blond pony tail, thinks
smoking is cool, and he
swaggers.

One rainy Friday
the 13th, Venca gets a visit from a very promising new client,
a Mr. Smiht (not a typo). Mr. Smiht introduces himself as a
wealthy businessman and has an unusual task for Venca. Mr. Smiht is
leaving for a week on a business trip, and
wants Venca to guard his seven young daughters.

Now if you look back at
the name of this game and phrases such as “fox
guarding the chicken coop” spring to your mind, rest assured that you
are entirely on the right track. Winning the hearts of seven young
ladies is presumably beyond the skills of even the most accomplished
speed dating Casanova, so Venca decides to go for the next best thing.
Later that day, while drinking beer in the local pub with his buddy,
Venca bets that he can spend a night with each of the Smiht daughters
before
the week is over.

The next morning is when
the actual game starts; you take control of Venca and start working
on his arduous week long quest.
The Smiht
daughters for some odd reason live in a downtown hotel. You can start
talking to them right away, but early in the game, only a few doors
are unlocked. The game is split into seven days; the required tasks
for
each day may be accomplished in any order, but the overall sequence
is predefined and unchangeable.

The daughters of Mr. Smiht
are all in their twenties and single (an educated guess on both
counts),
but
that’s about all they have in common. They all have unlikely names
such as Jasmína, Karmína or Rosalína. Each of them has a specific “weakness” –
one likes pets, one likes jewelry, one likes good food, one likes
sports. From
a purely adventuring standpoint, some of them are easy while others
are quite hard to get. The trickiest is Hermína, who likes
girls. Venca has to jump through a few hoops, not to mention amass
a sizable
collection of female clothing plus fake breasts, in order to get
past Hermína. After each day of the game,
there is a monochromatic image that may not be very artfully drawn,
yet makes it quite clear what happened at night, and why Venca
complains of
exhaustion the next morning.

Each Miss Smiht gives
Venca her necklace after the night is over. Together, the
seven necklaces form a key to Mr. Smiht’s very large safe that
holds a very large and very fabulous blue diamond. Obtaining
this diamond is a
condition for Rosalína’s
consent and Venca’s last objective in the game (or rather next
to last). Unfortunately for Venca, Mr. Smiht returns very shortly
after
Venca’s
mission is accomplished. Predictably, Mr. Smiht is not too impressed
with Venca’s work and gives Venca a good punch on the jaw. So good
in fact, that Venca takes off on a nine month orbital trip (remember,
this
is a cartoon game). Venca returns to Earth only to discover that
he is a happy father of seven lovely babies. Or maybe not so happy,
but it’s
hard to tell because that’s where the game is over.

The game has a sequel, called Six
Grooms Plus One, which was released as a freeware Flash game in
2004.

7D7N feels like a commercially published indie game, and I
suspect that’s exactly what it is for all intents and purposes.
The graphics are plain 320×200 VGA, which was nothing special even
in 1994.
The style is cartoony, and fits the game well. 7D7N is a third person point and
click game, and the puzzles are purely inventory based. The
game is of medium length, neither too short nor too long,
just about right.

Since the game was published on floppies,
there is no speech. That
means no amateurish and grating voice acting. The music
is a little tricky to get
working on modern hardware, but it’s nothing special anyway.
There are several soundtracks that aren’t bad, but get repetitive
rather quickly.

The puzzles are a mixed lot and two or five
are the kind that give adventure games a bad name. Some are logical,
at least
in hindsight. Others are not. It might be politically correct
to
say that they
require thinking outside the box, but it’d be so far
outside and the box would be so tiny that there’s no point in even
mentioning
it.
Here’s an example with unavoidable SPOILERS:
In the game there is a well where, Venca is told, a lot
of junk lies at the bottom. Lowering a magnet in a wooden
bucket in the hope of
collecting metal objects might be called lateral thinking.
However, there is no magnet in the game. On the other
hand, there is a dead dog
in your inventory, and there’s a live electrical socket
in your office. If your lateral thinking is so well developed
that you immediately
realize that inserting the dead dog into the socket will
turn it into a temporary electromagnet, I truly fear
for your sanity. Compared to
this, floating out of a ditch on a vaguely balloon-shaped
object manufactured from very thin rubber (possibly ribbed,
flavoured, and/or
lubricated, although the game is unclear on this point),
filled with gas leaking from a nearby pipe, is a completely
logical and very
sensible thing to do.

The writing and dialogue is roughly
in the style of Leisure Suit Larry games. Most of
it is funny, some of it is lame. Or the other way around,
depending on your taste. On the whole the game would
work reasonably well as a
lighthearted and naughty romp – if it wasn’t for the
insane puzzles. There’s no saving the world, no secret
conspiracies, no murders, and only cartoon violence.
Compared
to LSL there’s also less innuendo and double entendre
– 7D7N is more open and direct in its
approach; one might say less sophisticated.

Seven
Days and Seven Nights is definitely not a classic, and
even calling it a good game might be pushing things a bit. At the same
time I
feel that calling it a bad game would be unfair because it is
entertaining (at least for certain values of “entertaining”), and its
authors clearly had fun making it. Besides all that, it’s a piece of
history.
I’m giving it a D+. The D is
for execution, plus is for effort.

Final Grade: D+
(find out more about our
grading system)