The British cover.
Faust: The Seven Games of the Soul (shortened to Seven Games of the Soul in North America) is a 1999 point-and-click adventure game developed by Arxel Tribe and published by Cryo Interactive, the same team behind the previous year’s Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen. Like Ring, Faust is a unique spin on a centuries-old legend, adding in a dose of Mind Screw, obtuse puzzle-solving, and bizarre graphics along the way.This adaptation sees the player take on the role of an old man in the mid-20th century by the name of Marcellus Faust, who appears with no memory in an abandoned theme park called Dreamland. The demon Mephistopheles (Mephisto for short) appears to him to explain that he and “the boss” have been disagreeing over the cases of seven deceased souls who were involved with Dreamland, and so he tasks Faust to act as an objective arbitrator and determine who among the seven deserves to go “up” or “down”.
Across seven of the game’s chapters, Faust must travel through what remains of Dreamland, his interactions with the environment showing him glimpses of the past, so that he may put the pieces of the seven souls’ complex motives and interactions together; but, as his journey continues, it becomes clear that Mephisto’s request is not as straightforward as it seems…
This Video Game contains the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual: The manual includes overviews of each chapters’ central characters, their motives, and what happened to them in Dreamland, each written from Mephisto’s POV. These writings somewhat help to put the nonlinear storytelling into perspective, though not by a whole lot.
- Casanova Wannabe: The real man was Frank Barnes’ personal idol whom he desperately wished to emulate, but his failure to attract any women spurred him to make his deal with Mephisto. This was lampshaded by a woman who wrote a letter to Frank pointing out that the real Giacomo Casanova was also a soldier, diplomat, and adventurer in addition to being a womanizer, which made him a very interesting person to be around, while Frank is more focused on getting laid than anything else.
- Circus of Fear: Dreamland operated normally in front of guests while it was open, but behind the curtains, child labor, murder, stalking, abuse, and more took place, eventually causing it to become abandoned (although in truth, Dreamland is a combination of a circus and a theme park, but it doesn’t qualify as an Amusement Park of Doom because guests didn’t get hurt there).
- Conjoined Twins: Jody and Lily, the former taking the lead and being more aggressive, the latter being more naïve.
- The Dandy: Mephisto was referred to as this in an interview with the game’s developers at the Games Domain website, though the only real indication of this in-game is his repeated claims of greatly appreciating style.
- Deal with the Devil: Some of the characters had made contracts with Mephisto, and as usually happens in these stories, the contracts had terrible consequences.
- Jody accepted getting magically surgically separated from her twin, Lily, and giving up romantically pursuing Hannibal, in exchange for a winning lottery ticket; however, she was so greedy that she killed Lily to avoid having to share the money with her.
- Averted with Nathaniel Meister, who was offered immortality and access to the secrets of the universe but would never be allowed to involve himself with human affairs ever again. Nathaniel declined the offer.
- Frank wanted to become irresistible to women, and so he was given telepathic abilities for the price of only being able to create one artistic masterpiece in his lifetime, after which his creativity would be exhausted.
- Hannibal desired to become the ultimate predator over others, but Mephisto, knowing full well that Hannibal would use the results of the contract to further bully people, neutralized him as a threat by having him mysteriously disappear from Dreamland, possibly never to be seen again.
- Theodore More, the founder of Dreamland, offered to take Mephisto’s place as a demon while the latter would be free from his position, and Mephisto would see to it that Faust takes More’s place as the caretaker of the park.
- Death Seeker: Due to a combination of her parents being dead and struggling with her weight, Giselle once asked Mephisto if he could fulfill her wish to reunite with her mom and dad. Mephisto refused, telling her that even if her time on the earth was limited, she should spend the rest of her life continuing to be kind and do things that she could be proud of in the afterlife. It’s heavily implied that Giselle was fully aware of what Frank wanted to do with her skin, and accepted this fate thinking that her body being turned into an artwork would be the “good thing” for her to do before her death.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Mephisto wouldn’t consider himself to be fully evil, but he can be rather manipulative, and his contracts end up causing a lot of pain. Regardless, he has a better moral center than some of the human characters, warning Frank to not use his new seductive powers to hurt women, fulfilling Hannibal’s contract in such a way as to keep him from being a real threat to others, and forming a genuine bond with Giselle to bring her some happiness.
- Frank, womanizer and eventual flayer of human skin though he may have been, was shocked that Tod would use children as labor in his bootlegging operation, and he warned Theodore about it.
- The Freakshow: Some of the characters were part of this, with Jody and Lily as the Conjoined Twins, Hannibal as The Strongman, Tod as the Dwarf, Frank as the the Deformed Man, and Giselle as the Fat Woman.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Hannibal’s bigotry towards anyone who wasn’t like himself was greatly influenced by his abusive father who passed his beliefs down to his son, but Theodore’s comments on the matter in his notebook make it clear that he believes it’s no justification for how Hannibal treated his fellow humans.
- Friend to All Children: Subverted with Tod, who takes in many orphaned children, having been an adoptee himself, and would do anything to make sure they’re provided for, which leads him to get into the bootlegging business during the Prohibition and to unfortunately use the children as labor.
- Genuine Human Hide: Frank’s “masterpiece” turns out to be a depiction of Ishtar using Giselle’s skinned flesh as a canvas, which he then sent to a gallery anonymously behind glass, instructing that no one take the artwork out from its frame, lest they discover the truth of what it’s made of.
- He-Man Woman Hater: Hannibal called any woman who wouldn't bow down to him a slut, such as Kalinka and a woman he knew from his past who chose a clown over him.
- Interrupted Suicide: Frank attempted to burn himself to death to spite Mephisto in despair over believing the women he was seducing were only using him, but Mephisto extinguished the flames before he could die, leaving him with horrible burns.
- Ladykiller in Love: After regretting his contract with Mephisto, Frank got into a relationship with Kalinka, and together they had a boy named Alexi.
- Lorre Lookalike: Not really a lookalike, but Tod’s voice is probably supposed to be an impression, albeit one that sounds more like Ren Hoek.
- Meaningful Name: Tod’s name is the German word for death (Tod himself is Austrian) and his adopted family gave it to him as a symbol of good luck because they had rescued him “from the arms of death”, I.E. they saved him from dying after he was abandoned by his birth family; plus, he happened to be born on the Day of the Dead.
- Milking the Giant Cow: The motion-captured models will often gesticulate wildly with their arms and torsos, with Mephisto’s being the biggest offender since it mostly doesn’t match his calm, smooth vocal delivery.
- Mortality Ensues: Happens to both Faust and possibly Mephisto at the end when the contract with Theodore is fulfilled.
- Nice Guy: While most of the characters Faust has to judge are on the grey or black ends of the morality scale, Giselle and Kalinka were both genuinely kind people, the former being nice enough to touch Mephisto’s heart and the latter gladly providing the others in the circus with clothing and accessories.
- Obsessed with Food: A dark example with Giselle, who had an eating compulsion brought about by the trauma of seeing her parents starve to death while the family were trapped in their farm during a heavy winter.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Mephisto’s English voice actor plays the American gangster Frank Nitti during a flashback in Tod’s chapter, and the fake accent comes off as stilted. It may be an example of this in-universe, since Nitti’s model in this game looks pretty much exactly like Mephisto, meaning it’s probably him taking on the persona of Nitti in this flashback while Faust is taking on the persona of Tod. When Mephisto speaks to Giselle and doesn’t tell her exactly who he is, he also puts on an American accent, and it sounds a lot more convincing, though not perfect.
- Our Homunculi Are Different: During the second chapter, Faust completes the creation of Nathaniel’s homunculus, who is a campy sounding snarker who will provide hints for the player.
- Parental Abandonment: Tod was born into nobility, but his family discarded him due to his dwarfism. Fortunately, he was Happily Adopted by his Romani nanny’s family who instilled a strong sense of justice into him.
- Pet the Dog: The seventh chapter, “The Masterpiece of Giselle”, explores how Mephisto befriended Giselle, a girl who had lost her parents and lived a lonely life as one of Dreamland’s freak show attractions. Mephisto considered himself to be Giselle’s godfather and guardian angel, going out of his way to ease her suffering even if it broke the rules.
- The Reveal:
- Faust was once previously an angel (though one who was born a human) who had his powers stripped and his memories wiped as punishment for helping Mephisto break the rules by befriending Giselle.
- At the end, Theodore and Mephisto inform Faust that he wasn’t sent to Dreamland to judge the souls there; in actuality, his endeavors there were all part of a secret test of character to see if Faust was worthy of inheriting Dreamland after Theodore fulfills his contract with Mephisto and the two switch places, with Theodore taking on the role as a tempter and Mephisto finally getting out of his job.
- Rejected Marriage Proposal: Hannibal tried to pressure Kalinka into marrying him, but she refused because of his cruelty and because she was already with Frank.
- Secret Relationship: Frank and Kalinka had a child together, and Frank asked Kalinka to never tell anyone who the father was so the child wouldn’t be rejected for being born from a “monster”.
- Self-Imposed Exile: After the woman he loved was killed during Operation Fortitude in WWII, Nathaniel became disillusioned with the war effort and left England for America, where he would help Theodore design Dreamland and act as a teacher for some of the employees.
- Sequel Hook: Faust’s ending narration has him state that after he became the new owner of Dreamland, he would encounter things that he didn’t expect, but that story would be for another day. With this game’s commercial failure and the eventual shuttering of Arxel Tribe, this other story was never told.
- Shout-Out:
- After Mephisto karmically fulfills Hannibal’s contract, he sings the lyrics “sometimes it’s hard to be a woman” from the song “Stand by Your Man” by Tammy Wynette.
- At one point, Mephisto quotes the famous “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” line from The Shining to poke fun at Faust.
- Voice of the Legion: Mephisto’s voice sometimes takes on this effect when he’s angry or acting manipulative.
- Would Hurt a Child: At one point, Hannibal hit one of the orphans that Tod took in, leading the latter to blackmail him.
