Trilobyte (company)

Trilobyte is a computer game developer founded in December 1990 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros. They are well known in the video game industry for The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour games, and to a lesser extent for Clandestiny and other titles.

This article is about the computer game company. For the prehistoric creature, see Trilobite.

Trilobyte Inc.
IndustryVideo games
FoundedDecember 1990
FounderGraeme Devine
Rob Landeros (CEO)
HeadquartersMedford, Oregon, US
Key people
John Fricker (CTO)
Charlie McHenry (COO)
ProductsThe 7th Guest series
Websitetrilobytegames.com

The company was recently reformed by co-founder Rob Landeros, with some of its original titles being re-released.

The official company logo consists of a trilobite superimposed on a pyramid. The design for the logo went through many changes, from the simple, to celebrating holidays on their original webpage.

History

The 7th Guest

The company is most famous for creating the PC game The 7th Guest, one of the first computer games for CD-ROM. Most of the footage for the game was filmed with a US$35,000 budget, Super VHS cameras, and blue butcher paper as a background that would later be removed to help insert the actors in the game, a process called chromakey, or bluescreen. The game was a puzzle-solving game similar in style to Myst. However, most of the puzzles in The 7th Guest were based on versions of real puzzles invented by people such as Max Bezzel, while the puzzles in Myst were largely fantasy-based. Unlike Myst, which used static screens, The 7th Guest was the first game to use full rendered 3D animation and navigation. For the time, it had state-of-the-art graphics by Rob Landeros, Robert Stein III, Gene Bodio, Alan Iglesias, MIDI music by The Fat Man, and a full-fledged story by established author Matthew J. Costello. During planning, a sequel was already being considered in anticipation of success. The final version of The 7th Guest was released in 1993. 60,000 copies were snapped up overnight, and a bevy of requests for reorders arrived days later.

When the game was released, some CD-ROM manufacturers registered up to a 300 percent increase in sales for CD-ROM drives. Overall, the game proved to be a turning point in CD-ROM based technology. Bill Gates called The 7th Guest "the new standard in interactive entertainment."[1] If not for the popularity of The 7th Guest and Myst, a similar-styled adventure game, the CD-ROM would not have been as popular and would have taken longer to gain a foothold in the marketplace.

The 11th Hour

The 11th Hour was released in the winter of 1995, after missing its original release date by more than a year. It was one of the first games to support 16-bit color. Graphically, the game was superb for the time. It featured detailed environments and fluid motion. However, the game drew criticism for several reasons. The game was released in DOS when Windows 95 had already been out for some time. The company was flooded with callers trying to get the game to run on their machines. The game still used MIDI for music, instead of CD audio. In addition, the gameplay was not well received by some, with players getting angry at the puzzles and riddles they had to solve, ranging from abstract logic to anagrams. Despite the massive amount of pre-orders from vendors, sales ended up being far below the expected amount, and the game did not recover its production costs, a key factor in the company's financial downfall.

Subsequent projects

The next projects for Trilobyte were published by Trilobyte itself. Clandestiny, with gameplay similar to the previous The 7th Guest, and The 11th Hour, though using cel animated (cartoon) video rather than live action, and Uncle Henry's Playhouse, a re-packaging of a number of the puzzles and games from The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, and Clandestiny. However, neither of them did well commercially.

It has been reported that the relationship between Landeros and Devine became so strained that they last spoke to each other at a board meeting in November 1996.[2]

After Clandestiny, the company effectively took two different internal directions. Landeros led a project called Tender Loving Care, while Devine started a Massively Multiplayer project, Millennium. Tender Loving Care (starring John Hurt), often referred to simply as TLC, was completed in 1998.

About the same time, Red Orb Entertainment, a division of Brøderbund, signed on to publish two titles on Devine's "side" of the company – Assault!, a top-down multiplayer action game, and Extreme Racing, a racing game, which ran on a shared game engine. Red Orb was also publishing the games Riven and Prince of Persia 3D at the time. Assault! was later renamed Extreme Warfare and changed from top-down to a first person perspective. Extreme Racing was likewise retitled Baja 1000 Racing and attached to a SCORE International racing license. Both games made appearances at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show that year.

Closing

The Learning Company purchased Brøderbund in 1998. The Learning Company then canceled many of the current Red Orb game projects and Trilobyte. With "both eggs in the Red Orb basket", it was unable to find new publishers for the titles and cut payroll on 15 September 1998.[3] However, the company stayed afloat for several more months in the hopes of being acquired by Midway Games. The company closed in early 1999 after being evicted from its office and not hearing any further news from Midway Games.

A third part of The 7th Guest series, not developed by, and unknown to Trilobyte, was rumored to be in development using the Unreal engine. Only a few screen shots of this canceled game exist, with few details existing about it except for a proposed introduction storyline. Later, Rob Landeros also developed a proposal for another first-person sequel in The 7th Guest series – The Collector.

Relaunch

In November 2010, Trilobyte was resurrected. The 7th Guest was relaunched for the iPhone and iPad in December 2010. In April 2011, The 7th Guest: Infection—a stand-alone version of the popular Microscope Puzzle from the original 7th Guest—was released for iPad.

The 7th Guest 3

On Halloween 2013, Trilobyte launched a Kickstarter campaign for The 7th Guest 3: The Collector, which failed to meet its funding target of $435,000.[4] Another crowdfunding campaign was started at Crowdtilt with a smaller goal of $65,000 to build the first story of the haunted mansion[5] but that too, failed, and the 7th Guest 3 was officially cancelled in June 2014.[6]

Released games

The 7th Guest – the first title released by Trilobyte Software. It sold over 2 million copies, making more than US$50 million for the company in the 1990s. It was re-released for iPhone and iPad in December 2010, and re-released for PC by DotEmu in February 2012 as an updated version to be fully compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.[7] It was also re-released for PC by GOG in a smaller package.[8] On 13 March 2012 The 7th Guest for MacIntosh was released on the Mac App Store.

The 11th Hour – the sequel to The 7th Guest. Many production problems and release date slipped by a year resulted in lost profits and sales of only 1.7 million units. This game was also re-released in February 2012 for PC by both DotEmu and GOG.

Clandestiny – a cel animated child-friendly puzzle game. It sold only 2500 copies in the United States, bringing in a profit of just US$500,000. The game is currently available in the Mac App Store and published by GRL Games[9]

Uncle Henry's Playhouse – a compilation of some of the puzzles from The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, and Clandestiny. It sold 27 copies in the United States, and 127 worldwide.[10]

The 7th Guest: Infection – a stand-alone version of the Microscope Puzzle from the original release of The 7th Guest, which was excluded from the re-released iPhone and iPad versions due to technical issues. Released as an app for iPad in April 2011.

Unreleased games

Cybernet – Little is known about this game, but The Fat Man has listed on his website that he composed the music for this game.[11]

Dog Eat Dog – an office politics simulator. At a cost of over US$800,000, it was scrapped halfway through production.

Tender Loving Care – Rob Landeros' R-rated psychological thriller interactive movie. It would later be produced by Rob Landeros' new company, Aftermath Media and released by Funsoft in Europe to critical acclaim (in Germany under the name Die Versuchung, or "The Temptation"). The DVD-ROM version was distributed in the U.S. by Digital Leisure and the DVD Video version distributed by DVD International.

The 7th Guest III – a highly rendered and media-rich game where the house would be back to its original form and all forms of media were to be controlled by Satan. US$500,000 went into production. Only a few highly rendered screen shots were created before Landeros inexplicably cancelled the project.

Extreme Warfare – Graeme Devine's online top-down perspective 3D tank game, originally named Assault. Red Orb Entertainment was sold to The Learning Company, who had no interest in the project and cancelled development funding.

Baja Racing – originally called Extreme Racing. It was shelved due to the lack of development personnel, as already meager resources were assigned to Extreme Warfare.

The 13th Soul – a 3rd-person real time game inside the Stauf mansion. A few rendered rooms were all that were made. The sale of Virgin Interactive killed the project.

Trojan Planet – a role-playing game set in a parallel universe where all the world is Troy. The company went under shortly after the concept arose.

The 7th Guest III (3rd Version) – Another version in which the town was abandoned and Tad (the young boy from the 7th Guest) was grown up and a writer, coming back to stop Stauf. The company went under shortly after the concept arose.

The 7th Guest III: The Collector – A completely new version of 7th Guest III where the events took place in a German museum rather than the Stauf house. Lack of funding and interest by the producer Lunny Interactive caused it to be shelved. Trilobyte later sought crowdfunding for a different concept bearing a similar title, but it was cancelled in June 2014.[5][6]

References
  1. Wolf, Mark J.P. (2007)The video game explosion: a history from PONG to PlayStation and beyond, Greenwood, page 129. ISBN 0-313-33868-X.
  2. "GameSpot:Video Games PC Xbox 360 PS3 Wii PSP DS PS2 PlayStation 2 GameCube GBA PlayStation 3". web.archive.org. 7 December 2006.
  4. "The 7th Guest 3: The Collector". Kickstarter. 8 December 2013.
  5. "The 7th Guest 3: The Collector". Crowdtilt. 20 February 2014. Archived from the original on 26 March 2014.
  6. "The 7th Guest 3: The Collector – CANCELLED". Kickstart Ventures. 4 June 2014.
  7. DotEmu.com re-launches "The 7th Guest" and "The 11th Hour
  8. Trilobyte Games Joins List of GoG Partners
  9. "Clandestiny".
  10. "Haunted Glory: The Rise and Fall of Trilobyte" article, Page 5 from GameSpot
  11. "The Fat Man – FAQ's".
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