The main title screen of the special edition of 5 Days a Stranger
5 Days a Stranger is the first game in the Chzo Mythos series. The protagonist is Trilby, a cat burglar.
Plot[]
A cat burglar named Trilby goes to a large mansion called DeFoe Manor, in hopes of an easy score of expensive loot, as the owners had died shortly beforehand. However, Trilby finds himself inexplicably sealed inside the house, along with four other people, who had come to the manor for various reasons of their own.
As the five prisoners seek answers to their predicament within the house, two of them are murdered in two different instances. The killer (in the second case) is found to be Trilby, possessed by the vengeful ghost of the second son of Sir Roderick DeFoe, the house's original owner. Sir Roderick blamed his deformed son for causing his wife's death and chained him to a wall in the basement, regularly abusing and neglecting the boy (which Trilby speculates to have resulted in mental retardation and violent insanity.) Fifteen years later, Sir Roderick severely beat his son with an African wooden idol. His other son, Matthew, attempted to help his twin brother, but John (a name given by Trilby to the younger DeFoe for convenience) murdered both his brother and his father with a machete before dying of his own injuries. John's ghost still haunts the mansion within the tribal idol which killed him, possessing anyone who touches it and murdering anyone he encounters, wearing the same blacksmith's apron and welding mask he did when he killed his father and brother.
Trilby performs a magic ritual to rid the house of the John's ghost; he gives Jim a teddy bear from Matthew DeFoe's old room and gives Simone a large rifle from the mantle, he is able to force John's spirit into his remains which by a side effect causes Jim and Simone to be possessed by Matthew and Sir Roderick and they kill John. John's body falls into a fire and catches the house alight, Trilby and the other two escape before the house burns down. Trilby allows the other survivors to believe he died in the fire so as to avoid the inevitable police interest and assumes that John DeFoe is finally at rest.
Gameplay[]
5 Days A Stranger is a point-and-click adventure game in which the player takes control of Trilby.It has four basic options:walk,look,use and talk(one can be chosen from the bottom left corner of the screen,but it is possible to switch them with hotkeys(F1,F2,F3 and F4 for each function respectively(although in verson 1.3 it is not neccessary to switch to walk button to walk as clicking with any cursor on anywhere on the floor will make the protagonist walk to the selected spot))).After choosing the function,the cursor will change appropriately,and then left clicking on desired object will triger an action(clicking talk will start a conversation,clicking use on item will cause it to be picked up etc.(as mentioned earlier,clicking anywhere on the floor with any cursor will cause movement)).
There are also many items that can be collected and used later on in the puzzles.They are collected with use key and are immediately added to the inventory.Inventory can be checked anytime by pressing the right mouse button.Right clicking on them will provide player with some additional information about the object(or entire pages if the player right clicks on the book)).Items are used in-game by selecting them with use cursor and then left clicking on desired object(in the same way items can interact with one another in the inventory)).