5 Days a Stranger

Moby ID: 11795
Special Edition

Description

The freeware horror-themed point-and-click adventure 5 Days a Stranger is the first part of the The Chzo mythos. It tells the story of a cat burglar named Trilby who sets out to steal the family valuables from the manor of the recently deceased Sir Roderick DeFoe. But once Trilby gets inside, all the doors and windows are locked, and he cannot get out.

Soon he realizes that four other people are trapped in the house as well and the house has a reason for keeping them there - a truly sinister one. Together with scavenger Philip Harty, TV reporter Simone Taylor, the youngster Jim, and the secretive AJ, Trilby has to delve into the family history to solve the secret the manor is hiding.

The game is controlled through five mouse-controlled actions: walk, look, use, and talk. These can be selected from the bottom of the interface, from the inventory screen, or by cycling through them with the space bar. The entire game takes place over the course of five days, introducing a whodunnit theme when some characters go missing. Most puzzles are inventory-based, but some also rely on conversations. It is also possible to die during certain sequences if the player does not react quickly.

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Credits (Windows version)

Programmer
Designer
AGS Engine

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 51 ratings with 7 reviews)

The Tale of DeFoe Manor

The Good
Tribly is a gentleman thief, a master chief when it comes to robberies. Today, he'll search the DeFoe Manor, whose owner just deceased. But he doesn't know that once he'll put a foot into the mansion, he'll never go out of it. He doesn't know that there are four others prisoners: Philip Harty, the treasure hunter, James "Jim" Fowler, a teenager, Simone Taylor, a BBC journalist and A.J., a mysterious man. He doesn't know that something will make the five following days bloody time...

5 Days A Stranger is a free game made with the AGS Engine, released in 2003 and made by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the developer behind the Rob Blanc Trilogy and the Trials of Odysseus Kent. It's also the first "chapter" in the Chzo Mythos Quadrilogy (with 7 Days A Skeptic, Tribly's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice). As for the AGS Engine, it's also the engine behind Yahtzee's games but also the Ben Jordan series, Larry Vales or Barn Runner.

The storyline isn't weak, twists are present and well, the history behind DeFoe Manor is also interesting but you can only guess the events when you find Sir Roderick and Matthew Defoe's diaries and there, you can have an idea of what happened between the father, first owner of the manor and his son of fifteen. Fate can be cruel sometimes.

The gameplay wasn't changed by Yahtzee and will be the same for the rest of the quadrilogy except with Tribly's Notes but that's a story for another review. It's a point and click game. Players take control of Tribly and can make him interact with his environment. For making him move, they had just to select the "walk" action and then click on where they want to see him. He can also talk, observe or pick up objects by doing the same scheme: choosing the action and then clicking on the chosen person or object. Tribly can also combine objects in his inventory. For making the menu with icons appear, you have to move your cursor at the bottom of the screen. However, I found one problem during my play.

As for enigmas, they're simple to solve: using common sense is what I advise you to do. Don't forget to observe your environment, you can find the key to your problem by doing so. However, I found two tricky parts that I'll explain later.

Don't read me wrong, it isn't because I found, in my opinion, three negative points that 5 Days A Stranger doesn't have an efficient gameplay. No, it's easy to understand how to control Tribly and you don't have to do some complicated manipulations in order to advance. I'll even say that if you're used to play the AGS games like Ben Jordan for example, you'll be in your shoes.

As you can imagine, AGS Engine isn't the best engine in terms of next-gen graphics. Yes, it's "pixelised", yes, it's an old-school adventure engine but still, the graphics are good. Details are present even if the green wall on the second floor is... disgusting for me. Too much green for my eyes... But still, the engine is well-used. Don't forget that it's an horror game, so, some representations can be shocking... even if I don't find any shocking scene. The game is rated on Abandonia Reloaded as 18+ but for me, it should be 15+, after all, with all the games or the movies much gore than 5 Days A Stranger, I don't see why this little free game can be so shocking, even for 2003.

I wish that the soundtrack was present all the time. It's so good that I wanted to hear it. It's only present during important (and dramatic) sequences. Yet, the absence is contributing to maintain a certain ambiance and the music is announcing something bad that you'll fear what will happen (well fearing isn't really the word if you're used to games like Resident Evil, Doom 3, FEAR or other Dead Space).

The replay value can be high because you want to know all the secrets, if you missed something, like in Simone and Tribly's discussion at the beginning of day five but keep in mind that 5 Days A Stranger lasts no more than 2 hours (more if you're not used to that kind of games, but it can't be more than 3 hours), after all, the days are really short except for the second and third days but it's only for a couple of minutes.

The Bad
As I've said, I've found three little problems in terms of gameplay/enigmas.

It's in the menu appearing at the bottom of the screen that difficulty can be present. Indeed, I've had an hard time to change action. I mean, my cursor was an eye for the looking action and I needed to change for the interacting action or if you prefer, the hand. Well, it wouldn't change. I assure you, I needed to change by the menu/inventory by right-clicking. Fortunately, it wasn't during all the game. But I can say that when it's happening, it's very frustrating. Choosing action via the menu/inventory can be tricky: move your cursor out of the interface and it's gone.

The first flaw for the enigmas is about the pool. If you don't look at it during the second day, you couldn't know that something was in it and that you needed to drain it for closing the day. It would have been nice for players to have Tribly made the comment by a script, as he did when looking to the map and noticing that there was one more room.

The second flaw is the "search a person with one of his possessions". If the concept is great, the problem appear twice because well, you need to do it twice. When you're in the right room, where the corpses are hiding, the problem is that you need to follow the indication of southeast, etc etc. Well, it's hard to locate it. It can be a matter of millimeters. It can be frustrating sometimes.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line is that I wanted to play it since my first Ben Jordan experience in april/may 2008 but never got the courage to download a mythic game in the AGS universe, fearing to be deceived by it and fearing to be so easily killed. Well, it's not the case, so I'm happy to have play it. Little did I know that it will Tribly's Notes that will deceived me by its gameplay. That's another story though. Anyway, 5 Days A Stranger is a game that you have to download because of its quality, its storyline and its soundtrack.

Enter DeFoe Manor for a bloody trip... if you aren't afraid of it.

Windows · by vicrabb (7272) · 2008

Trilby. Rocks.

The Good
I could ramble on about it for quite some time. The graphics are not groundbreaking, but quite nice. The setting reminded me more than a bit of "Maniac Mansion", to which it can be compared with some justice: "5 Days a Stranger" may not be as rich or imaginative, but it wins by miles in the atmosphere department.

The characters. Trilby is the kind of character I would have wanted to marry when I was younger. His witty remarks and unshakeable style are high points of the game. The other characters are more or less well-developed, certainly no one-adjective stereotypes, but even so they pale slightly next to Trilby. The dialogue is generally good to very good.

The greatest kudos, however, goes to the atmosphere. To bring up "Maniac Mansion" again, there is a similar finely-balanced mixture of humour and horror in both games. However, "Maniac Mansion" (in my opinion) is a comedy game with horror/science fiction elements; "5 Days a Stranger" is a horror game with some humour. I am not going to call it comic relief, because most of the time, the acerbic wit actually serves to sharpen the sense of fear. There are some scenes (notably when Trilby is locked in the shed) where comedy and horror seem to weld together into a fragile, but very sharp, edge. I really didn't know whether to laugh or feel sick. I intend this as high praise. The whodunit plot kept me at the edge of my seat, whatever my problems with the backstory (see below). I swear I was hardly up to going upstairs in the dark afterwards.

The music is not an original work, but it is well used, and the sound effects are quite good.

I must also mention the excellent ending sequence.

The Bad
Some niggles: it's very short, puzzles are nothing special, it can be hard to figure out what to do next, objects turn up in rooms when the plot demands them. That's out of the way. My main problem is with the plot, meaning some spoilers.

I enjoyed the "possessed killer" part of the plot, and liked the idea of the house that lets no-one out. However, the backstory of the DeFoe family felt strangely hackneyed for an otherwise inventive game. I guess no-one but me is to blame for the fact that "Anchorhead", my favourite text adventure (1997, if I remember correctly) also features a mansion vacated by a madman who shot himself and his family, as well as a hideous backstory involving a freak twin brother. It's not as if the plot was original back then.

Unoriginality aside, some parts of the plot didn't seem to connect. I'm not quite sure what the idol had to do with the ghost - OK, that might have been me missing some text. But what the heck was with Trilby's car?

The Bottom Line
While "5 Days a Stranger" is not perfect, its strengths well outweigh its flaws. With a charmingly sarcastic (anti-)hero, a throat-clenching plot, and atmosphere like few other games, it should be solidly recommended. The golden age of adventure games never ended.

Windows · by Christina Nordlander (24) · 2005

5 Hours a Fun

The Good
With the last of the DeFoe family dead, the ancestral manor is sealed off from the world while the law determines what should happen to the estate. Tipped off by his fence, Trilby the infamous cat burglar decides to investigate DeFoe Manor and see if there is anything worth taking. Entering a second floor window with the use of grolly, his umbrella-disguised grappling hook, Trilby doesn't find anything of interest. When he leaves, though, he finds the window he entered is sealed shut. Suddenly Trilby hears footsteps in the supposedly deserted manor, footsteps coming closer to the door.

5 Days a Stranger is an adventure game created with the AGS software. The interface hearkens back to the days of SCUMM: controlling a sprite-based character by pointing and clicking on hotspots around a 2D set. Trilby, the player's character, soon learns that he is one of five strangers trapped in the DeFoe Manor. Even though these five individuals found five different ways into the manor, there is no apparent exit. Doors and windows are sealed, a surrounding wall extends deep into the earth, impenetrable terrain makes vaulting over the wall impossible and, needless to say, there is no means of communication with the outside world.

Each stranger has their own theory on what's happening. One person points out that they are obviously on a reality show. Others think that whoever occupies the manor must be lonely. Someone else thinks that the supernatural is afoot. Regardless of the reason behind their imprisonment, the four other strangers have been there for a few days and have taken a "we'll wait for rescue" attitude. This changes when one of them goes missing on Trilby's first night and later turns up dead.

As mentioned above, players control Trilby by clicking on hotspots. Players click on an appropriate verb icon: feet for "walk to", a hand for "use", a word balloon for "talk to", and then click on the appropriate item or person. Trilby also collects inventory which is accessed through right-clicking. In the inventory screen, Trilby can read articles, examine items, or combine them.

DeFoe Manor isn't overwhelming, but there are many rooms to explore and every room has items which can be examined closer. Trilby can converse with his fellow occupants and typically has a decent conversation with them each time he finds them. The occupants are noteworthy for having different personalities: there's a BBC newsreader who was working on a documentary about the DeFoes and is convinced there's a mystery to crack, a local school kid who entered the house on a dare and now hero-worships Trilby, a skittish man who goes by the name of AJ, and a treasure hunter who doesn't see Trilby as an equal, but does see him as competition.

While many accolades have been heaped on 5 Days, and it certainly deserves the awards it won for its use of AGS, in terms of graphics, use of sound, and puzzle design it simply doesn't match what's coming out commercially or match the innovation found in the independent games being released. I'm not taking away from Ben Croshaw's creation, but if you approach this game expecting anything beyond a terrific single-person produced adventure game you'll be disappointed.

Having said that, 5 Days a Stranger is a terrific adventure game. There's really no logical reason for five strangers to be trapped in a house, but once you get them there, you can have a lot of fun with them. On the first night Trilby has a horrific nightmare with a twist that isn't much of a surprise. However, the other inhabitants had the same dream and Croshaw adds another twist which is surprising. There are other dream sequences which punctuate the game and these blend in so well that you forgive the convention because they are so effective. I also appreciated that Croshaw wasn't afraid to be wordy, transmitting important parts of the story through conversation, books, and television broadcasts.

The Bad
Aside from being unable to leave DeFoe Manor, there really doesn’t seem to be any way to survive in it. The only available source of water is a heavily chlorinated pool and the only thing in the kitchen is an ungodly amount of salt. Meanwhile some of the characters have been there well before the game’s five day span. I’m not even sure where they are sleeping; thankfully Trilby has snagged a couch. Back to the absurdity of not being able to leave the manor, it might be a fun side game trying to think of obvious ways to escape.

The game’s main villain is The Welder: a hulking figure wearing a leather apron, a welding mask, and wielding a butcher’s knife. Aside from being an effective villain, you have to wonder where the accessories came from—especially since The Welder’s origin story doesn’t show any metalworking connection. Also, the name seems a bit off—kind of like calling Jason, The Goalie.

The Bottom Line
5 Days a Stranger is a fun adventure game with a spooky atmosphere and a few real jolts. In design, it’s very similar to classic LucasArts or Sierra style adventure games. Clocking in around five hours, it has a respectable length especially since the game itself has a download size of 1 Mb. Is it as good as current commercial ware? No. But Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw shows real talent and makes excellent use of the AGS software. This is definitely worth checking out.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2005

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

July 28th

The later games of the DeFoe series occur on (at least in part) the date of July 28th frequently, as that is the date when the links between the real work and the world of magic are weakest (for a variety of reasons).

However, in 5 Days a Stranger the date for when this occurrence takes place is not July 28th but is instead June 28th!

This inconsistency is retconned in Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice, where John DeFoe's fate and the events of the first game are both respectively moved forward one month later to the proper date.

Lockpicks

The lockpicks Trilby uses have the identical appearance as those used by Garrett in Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age. These two games are among Croshaw's favourites.

Music

The game's music is taken from RPG Maker 2000.

Awards

  • AGS Awards
  • 2003 - Best Game Created with AGS
  • 2003 - Best Gameplay in an AGS Game
  • 2003 - Best Dialogue Scripting in an AGS Game
  • 2003 - Best Puzzles in an AGS Game
  • 2003 - Best Scripting in an AGS Game

Additional information contributed by Jeremy Johnson and Sciere

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Zack Green.

Additional contributors: Indra was here, Jeanne, Patrick Bregger, Plok.

Game added January 25, 2004. Last modified December 5, 2023.