5 Days A Stranger

5 Days was my introduction to the genre of point-and-click. I stumbled across the game at Game Hippo, and was intrigued enough to download and play it through my lunch-breaks for a few days. To my shame, I did use the walkthrough once, although it was at the very end so I don’t feel so bad.

The game puts you in the role of the self-proclaimed gentleman thief Trilby, who breaks into the Defoe Manor one night in search of bounty, but instead uncovers a horrific legacy that leaves him battling for his sanity as well as his life. You control the movements and interactions of our antihero as he pounds the rooms of the mansion with growing desperation, looking for the way out.

In the grand tradition of such games, you can Look, Use, Speak etc. to people and inanimate objects alike, enabling you to gradually unravel the story through five days. It can get a bit gruesome, but due to the fairly basic nature of the graphics there’s nothing that should give you sleepless nights.

The game holds a special resonance for me, given that it was the first game of its type that I downloaded, and it basically lead to my obsession with the fan-created genre. Having played it through again recently, it still holds up pretty well and is, arguably, the writer’s best work.

The author, Yahtzee, went on to produce a further 3 games in the series which we’ll dissect at a later date.