Ghosts N' Guns
What's new on Savvy Gaming Network for the Month of April 2026
Man, I sure did a lot of things related to The 7th Guest this month. It was our Book Club pick, I visited the house the in-game mansion was based and I made one of the recipes. Oh, and I also played through all of Borderlands 4 and Poppy’s Playtime, lets get into it.
The 7th Guest Novel
This is all Myst’s fault. The book of the month last month was Myst and I was looking up games like Myst finding The 7th Guest and in-turn the book version of it. My sister LOVED The 7th Guest growing up so we decided to read the book. This was a mistake.
The novelization for the game The 7th Guest came out, two years after the game release around the same time as the sequel The 11th Hour. While this book is technically a novelization it does add a little more backstory and flavor to the characters present in the mansion. The first half of the book flip-flops between the Mad Toymaker Henry Stauf’s past and the future when he invites all these unfortunate guests to his mansion.
It gives a little bit more insight on the cast’s motivations for coming to the dinner party, most of them thinking Stauf can help them solve whatever petty problem they have. Half way through the book is the real meat and potatoes recapping the story of the ghosts you see while playing the game. Although unlike in your potential playthrough this is now in chronological order. The novelization also seems to add the cut “bad ending” back into the story.
You wont get much out of reading this, it will not enhance your experience with The 7th Guest, in fact the big twist at the end doesn’t work well as written word. Some of the scenes are extremely confusing if you haven’t seen it played out in those FMV cutscenes. I would only recommend reading this if you really have no interest in playing the game but you want to know the plot.
I Went to the Mansion from The 7th Guest
I was in Portland Oregon for a trip this month to see some friends and decided to drive a little bit down to Jacksonville to see the iconic Nunan House that the mansion from The 7th Guest was modeled after.
It was, at the time of visiting, not open to the public. At one time it was an Airbnb and a restaurant but I came at a bad time so I only got to see the outside. It is not on a steep cliff like the game but instead in a quiet wealthy neighborhood. It was also hard to get a head on picture of the house since there was so much shrubbery in the front, I could only get a picture of the side by the gate. I wonder what they are trying to hide.
I thought this would be a fun detour since we are reading the novelization of The 7th Guest for our Book Club, as well as playing the game. Very bummed it wasn’t open; I would have loved to see inside but maybe when the extensive restorations are complete, I’ll take another pilgrimage to the “Stauf Mansion” and get to be a guest this time.
7th Guest Cake Recipe
Finally we made the cake from the game to eat after recording the episode and I put the recipe on SGN but I’ll also leave it here for you <3
Ingredients:
Chocolate Cake Mix (Devil’s Food) 1 Box
White Cake Mix 1 Box
6 Eggs
1 Cup Oil (Vegetable) – For Cake Mix as Directed
2 Cups Water – For Cake Mix as Directed
Parchment Paper
28×8 Pans
1 Cup Powder Sugar
1/2 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream
1/4 Cup Jam (Ur favorite flavor – we picked Strawberry)
1 Can Vanilla Frosting
Blue & Yellow Food Coloring
Dark & White Chocolate Chips
Skulls and Tombstones Mold
Directions:
Mix Water, Oil, Egg + Cake Mix
Put Parchment Paper on Pans, Pour in Cake Mix – 1 Mix per Pan
Bake 350 Degrees for 25-35 Mins
Allow to Cool for 15 Mins, Slice Cake into 2 Layers
Either Refrigerate the Layers Overnight or Freeze for 10 Mins to Help with Icing
Assemble the Cake, Bottom Layer White, Jam Whipping Cream, Then Middle Layer Chocolate, Jam Whipping Cream, Top Layer White
Once Cake is Layered Cut Thinly the Sides to Make it Even
Mix Vanilla Frosting and Food Coloring – 1 Drop Blue, 3 Drop Yellow
Ice the Cake (Once Cooled)
Melt Chocolate Chips and place in Mold, White Chocolate for Skulls, Dark Chocolate for Tombstones
Borderlands 4
I also finished the main story of Borderlands 4 this month. Feels like forever since I started playing it. I’m a big Borderlands fan, always love a good co-op game I can play with my sister. We have played every single Borderlands to date, and were not stopping now.
Borderlands 4 takes place on the planet Kairos, a prison planet run by a dictator named The Timekeeper. Kairos had a protective barrier around it keeping people out but after the “event” in Borderlands 3 Kairos is now exposed causing Vault Hunters to come and look for loot. You are once again one of those Vault Hunters, an exo-solider, a big viking man, an engineer and of course a Siren. Two other Vault hunters are planned to release, as of writing this review one has come out, C4$H a gambling robot that is locked behind an expensive DLC.
The movement and gunplay are very solid in this one. They added things like grabbling hooks to help you traverse the world. You can “catch a ride” at any time with the push of a button. This is a rather large map split into three areas. Each area has a faction that you have to help before facing the big bad. The characters are fun and memorable. I quite enjoyed their bits. This Borderlands seems a lot more toned down then the last few to release, it seems to be taking itself more serious and metering the amount of jokes cracked.
I liked the Vault Hunter I played as, but if you are doing co-op then be warned that the game only acknowledges one of you. That means that only the one hosting will appear in cutscenes and will have most of the dialogue with other characters. Sometimes if you get to mission or NPC first the character you personally are playing as will speak to them but this was rare. Took me out of it as the second player, felt like a ghost.
This game has a lot of performance issues. I have noticed throughout my time playing that they were getting better with each update, but they shouldn’t be there in the first place. I had to restart a few fights because it would glitch out and not let me complete the quest which always gets on my nerves. The game is open world with (supposedly) no loading screens, spawning a vehicle causes a lot of frame rate drops. It also crashed while trying to boot up for me a few times but (to give it credit) It always acknowledged it and tried booting up again and usually the second time was the charm.
I think this is the best Borderland to have come out in a while. It’s not as good as one or two but it is better than the Pre-Squel, Three, & Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. It has a solid cast that didn’t overdo it with the silliness. The Timekeeper is not as memorable as Handsome Jack but I honestly don’t think we will get another Villain like Jack again. The Timekeeper is fine but he does get overshadowed by his lieutenants. They were much more interesting characters. I think they really fumbled the character of Arjay, he had so much potential and they threw it all away and for what? To bring him back in a DLC later? We can only hope. If you enjoyed Borderlands at any point in your life, then I would recommend checking this one out. It is quite pricey so I would wait for a sale, and I would also recommend ignoring anything Randy Pitchford says.
Poppy Playtime
So I decided to get caught on on PP time this month. I played the first two chapters a while back and the fifth one had just come out so this just a review for the most current chapter.
Poppy Playtime chapter 5 does a lot, it reveals the series’ big bad, it brings back beloved characters and it resets your gear. You are supposedly at the lowest level you could be at the Toy Factory, underground where all the Toyified people have set up a little community run by The Prototype. I really enjoyed the fact that they have a little community newspaper down there letting people know what’s going on around Playtime Co. It answers the questions I had as to how does everyone know the players business so fast. You meet some new little guys this chapter, friendly and of course unfriendly. My favorite being your new flashlight friend Glowby.
Glowby has some fun mechanics where you can use its blacklight to reveal writing on the wall to help you navigate around and find secrets. It also has a cute little face that will react to your environment letting you know when you’re near the invisible ink or even when enemies are nearby. It can be used to play tapes as well. Instead of just VHS tapes around where once found you need to find the correct player, you can grab cassettes around the factory and instantly play them with Glowby. It’s a classic way to be able to give us more lore.
They added collectable little freak dolls around the environment that add really nothing and caused me to solve extra puzzles. There were quite a few puzzles in this one, and they definitely made the game feel like it was padding for time. This chapter isn’t that long but the puzzles combined with the trial and error I had to do with the chase sequences really dragged out my gameplay. There are also a lot of long documents in this one, you are finding so many notes and little objects to collect like statues. I had this issue in the previous chapter as well but I wish you could backtrack a little more because when given two locations I am forced to pick one and if it is the correct way the game wanted to railroad me then the door closes behind me on that previous location forever. If I wanted to see what was over there I would have to restart the game because it checkpointed.
Personally, I don’t like the new hands you get. I don’t mind in a game when you lose your gear and its scary stealth for a while but it wasn’t even that it was wandering around warding away little guys with your flashlight. There was no tension. You lose your flaregun, bouncy hand and more importantly that master unlock hand you worked so hard for in chapter four. It is replaced with a gas pressure hand to push things a little bit harder and a weird elemental hand that takes elements like fire and ice and electricity so you can put it somewhere else. You use it mainly to burn hair and chill goo so you can explode it with the pressure cooker hand.
That being said, I did enjoy chapter 5. While it isn’t my favorite chapter it isn’t my least favorite chapter. The characters they added like Giblets, Chum Chompkins and Lily Lovebraids were fun and I liked their shtick. I do look forward to what the next chapter brings and I did enjoy the ending twist. I hope Mob Entertainment finds a balance between puzzles and chase sequences in future installments.
Swarmdustry: First Impressions
I got reached out to in my email by the dev of the game Swarmdustry so I decided to play the demo this month. Swarmdustry is an automation-building game where you play as bugs that are industrializing. I played through the demo and it looks really promising. I haven’t played that much Factorio but from what I can tell it’s heavily inspired by it. Instead of machines you play with bug swarms, hatching workers and using bug colonies instead of conveyor belts.
The demo shows you a small slice of the tech tree you can use to upgrade your bugs. You upgrade them using genetic codes to specialize the workers. Seems like the game has a lot of replay value, it even has free play mode so you can build to your hearts content. It also has an integrated mod tool which is always a plus.
As someone new to factory building type of games the demo was a little difficult to understand. The text was teeny tiny (bug sized) and I need better instructions on what to do, like for example where and how to harvest lumber. Regardless I still enjoyed my time with the demo, the game is launching in early access soon and I would be interested to follow its development.