By Kurt Kalata - 10/1/2010
Dark Seed revolves an unfortunate young man named Mike Dawson (named after and played by one of the designer) who discovers a portal to an alternate dimension called the Dark World. This terrifying realm consists of the H.R. Giger artwork, and is like a negative image of our own world, which is dubbed the Normal World. (But wouldn't the denizens of the Dark World think their world is normal? These questions are not answered.) Despite the generally horrifying environments and its equally ghastly inhabitants, the folk of the Dark World aren't necessarily evil. Some of them are quite friendly, in fact, but they've been taken over by a contingent of aliens calling themselves the Ancients. These guys, on the other hand, are legitimately evil, and conspire to suck the Normal World of all of its life. The catch is that they are unable to cross dimensions themselves, instead relying on other methods to launch their invasion. This is where Mike Dawson comes in, apparently being one of the only ones who can switch between worlds using mirrors. Like all great psychological horror stories, there's some ambiguity to whether the Dark World is real or merely a hallucination of an extremely ill person, although solid answers are never given, and neither theory is completely airtight.
Although there were some attempts at horror games in the realm of interactive fiction, Dark Seed, along with Infogrames' Alone in the Dark, comprise the first wave of computer games that tried implementing the genre in an interactive setting. Games such as these help paved the way for the modern survival horror games that became popular in the 32-bit console generation. So while Dark Seed might seem quaint today, given their technological constraints, it was incredibly unsettling in the early 90s.
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed - Amiga /Amiga CD32 / IBM PC / Macintosh / PlayStation / Saturn / Famicom (bootleg) (1992)
American Cover
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
It's undoubtedly a cool premise, one which draws generously from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and the whole "dual world" aspect is an interesting precursor to Konami's excellent horror series Silent Hill. But the proceedings are actually quite sparse, seeing how there's very little storytelling outside of a handful of expository scenes. There are a handful of characters in town, but they never speak more than a line or two. Each room has a text description at the bottom of the screen, a remnant of the days of text adventures, but the writing is astoundingly juvenile. "My house seems somehow out of time," Mike explains when in front of his abode, "a relic of a dark past or perhaps a dark future." The foreshadowing cannot possibly get more ham fisted.
At least Dark Seed delivers on the promise of H. R. Giger artwork. The palette in the Dark World changes to an unsettling grey, and the landscape is warped into frightening bio-mechanical horrorscapes the Swiss surrealist is known for. While it looks cool, it just doesn't feel as shocking as it should. There are a few guards which will kill you if you get too close to them, and all of the switches will electrocute you if you grab them, but otherwise there's no danger, no tension. Mike can stroll along freely and the horrifying inhabitants just don't seem pay much mind.
While the game runs in high resolution 640x480, it's limited to 16 colors, perhaps due to the limitations of VGA, but what it does with that small palette, it does damn well. Mike is a digitized sprite, played by one of the designers, also named Mike Dawson. While his animation is exceedingly jerky, it actually doesn't completely clash with the scenery due to the decreased color palette. The nightmare scenes, much like the head-rape at the beginning, are also memorably gruesome. Unfortunately, the game window only takes place in a window about half the size of the screen - the rest is simply an overly elaborate frame, with the dialog window at the bottom.
While the visuals do a decent job of building a suitably creepy atmosphere, the rest of the game is undone by the extremely haphazard design. Dark Seed takes place over the course of three days, and runs in real time. There is little direction or purpose beyond the occasionally cryptic clues that stumble onto. It is very possible to waste too much time and miss events, which is troublesome, of course. There are numerous actions you need to take on the first day, but none of that will even be evident until you visit the Dark World, which isn't even possible until the second day. It is practically guaranteed that you'll get stuck in some kind of unwinnable situation at some point, as these scenarios are poorly telegraphed. Late in the game, you become wanted by the police, who stand guard outside your house. There is no way back in, unless you tied the rope to the gargoyle on the balcony earlier in the game. This is one of the least cruel moments - they are some absolutely infuriating ones.
For example, the human world and the Dark World are connected to each other, in vaguely defined terms. Sometimes these make sense, like opening a secret passage in the human world will trigger its counterpart to open in the parallel world. Others are more bizarre, like how starting the car in your garage back home will then activate the power generators of the alien starship in the dark world. But the most maddening involves your run-ins with the police. The clues tell you that the police station is important, for some reason, but won't tell you why. When you're arrested in the human world, you can leave three, and only three, items beneath the pillow. Later, when you get in the same exact scenario in the alien word, all of these items are mysteriously retrievable. This leap in logic is frustrating enough, in that it's this one arbitrary location where items can apparently teleport objects between worlds, but there is never any suggestion of what items you should be bringing. (For a quick bit of advice, it's the bobby pin, the wad of cash, and the glove. Never mind that two of these three items were used in solving earlier puzzles, and by standard adventure game rules, should no longer be useful, but those are frustratingly disregarded here.)
And even amidst the terrible framework, the events that are occur are simply bizarre. One important event, for some reason, is to meet your new neighbor Denny for a get-together. When you do meet him, all he does is play fetch with his dog, almost infinitely. This is a scenario that, if you miss, will render the game unwinnable, but the only thing you need to get out of this is the stick he's playing with. This is then used to distract the dog's Dark World counterpart, which is a gigantic canine-thing. That's all kind of ridiculous, but it gets worse. The first time you enter the Dark World, you can't actually do much other than explore. Sure, there's the important plot revelations and all of that, but the only tangible thing to obtain on the first trip is a shovel. Not a fancy, futuristic shovel with mysterious properties or anything, just a regular old shovel. Let's break this down - your character wandered into a immensely hellish landscape, faced off against beings the very thought of which would drive lesser men to complete insanity, and it was all just for a shovel, the kind of which you should have been able to buy at the general store down the street? It's a common trope in adventure games that you need to go through tremendous length to get every time items, but this is just silly.
Dark Seed was originally released on both the Amiga and IBM PC platforms. Visually they're practically identical, although the PC version runs at a slightly higher resolution. Mike's movement is sluggish in the Amiga version, but the MOD music is appropriately creepy. In comparison, Mike is much speedier in the DOS version but the FM synth music almost completely ruins the atmosphere. The CD versions on both platforms include voice acting, but since most of the script is simply Mike talking to himself, it's pretty sparse. It was also ported to the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, but released only in Japan by GaGa Communications in 1996. No effort was made to improve any the visuals, and as such, it looks tremendously dated compared to its contemporaries. While the text was translated into Japanese, the voice acting is still in English.
Far more bizarre is the Famicom version, which is an unofficial cartridge published by Asian outfit Mars Production. Visually, the palette had to be pared down more than it already was. Nearly everything is the Normal World is one of two shades of orange, while practically everything in the Dark World is some kind of pea green. But the room design is still more faithful than the NES port of King's Quest V, which was an official product, and even the nightmare scenes actually look fairly decent for the system. Movement is awkward and glitchy, as you still control the movement with a cursor, but it's functional. The music is awful though, as there's only one extraordinarily abrasive song that plays through the entire game. Surprisingly, the developers sprung for a battery backup, allowing you to save your game, although there's only a single slot. All of the text is in Chinese, but most of the puzzles are remarkably faithful, other than some chunks cut out here and there. A few screens were removed, and the ending is massively truncated. The meeting with Delbert is missing too, as well as the confrontation with the alien dog, completing removing that set of puzzles, but most of the rest of the game is on key. It's vaguely impressive for what is essentially a bootleg product, especially compared to most other dodgy software of its ilk, although on its own terms, it's still only barely playable.
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Dark Seed (PC)
Comparison Screenshots
IBM PC
Playstation
Amiga
Famicom
Dark Seed II - IBM PC / Macintosh / PlayStation / Saturn / (1995)
European Cover
Dark Seed II
Dark Seed II
Their plan, this time, is to hatch a monster called the Behemoth to literally suck the life force out of the Normal World. However, this abomination can only be hatched with life energy from humans. As the first game established, the denizens of the Dark World cannot normally cross over into the Normal World, but they've created a being called the Shape Shifter which can skirt these rules, temporarily taking human form and mutilating its subjects for its mission. It's clear that the Shape Shifter was responsible for Rita's murder, but how will Mike solve this when he's not only dealing with the murder investigation in the real world, but also his own psychotic breakdowns?
Dark Seed II makes such tremendous improvements over its predecessor that it practically feels like a whole new game. Gone are the time limits and dead-end events, in favor of a more straightforward mystery. There are actual characters this time around, with plenty of background and dialogue, and the story is much more intricate than simply going into the Dark World and stopping the aliens, even though the basic goals are the same. The Dark World itself benefits the most from the improved narrative, as you actually get to talk to its denizens to further understand its culture, its government, and how the invasion of the Ancients has totally ruined their civilization. While it does take away some of the disturbing mystery of the first game, the narrative depth definitely makes for a more involving experience.
The investigations in the Normal World have been substantially fleshed out too. The first Dark Seed had a bizarrely entrancing atmosphere, but that seems to emerge out more out of ineptitude than anything else. In contrast, the town of Crowley, Texas has a carefully telegraphed Lynchian vibe. Mike may have had good memories of Rita, but nearly everyone in town seems to have something against her, and there's something deeply unsettling beneath the seemingly normal small town exterior.
The technical improvements make for a much better looking game, even though it still has its quirks. The digitized sprites are back, and the animation is still incredibly choppy and unnatural, but the backgrounds in the Normal World look decent enough. Some of the scenes are peppered with images from the Dark World, visual clues that suggest Mike's descent into madness. The Giger artwork much more varied and detailed than it was before due to the greater color depth, making it freakier than ever before. That being said, some of the intended effect is lost, because digitized sprites are always going to look kinda weird when placed against what is clearly a painting. The voice acting is pretty uneven, with Mike having a clearly different voice, although a similar looking actor. (The real Mike Dawson had no part in this game's development.) The music is much better though, as the main theme is appropriately creepy, with some light jazz peppering in during the trippier moments, another homage to Twin Peaks.
There aren't very many puzzles in Dark Seed II, as most of the game is spent talking to the denizens of both worlds to uncover their respective mysteries. As such, there's also a whole lot of tedious walking around. Even with the map screen acting as a hub, some kind of quick travel option would have been welcome. The few puzzles that do exist tend to revolve around the interplay between the Normal and Dark Worlds. Their implementation makes more sense than some of the stupider parts of the first game, but they're still vague. A good chunk of them revolve around winning games at the local carnival, which award you with teddy bears. These adorable fluffy creatures become hideous monstrosities in the Dark World, and are used to solve a few problems for reasons that aren't entirely clear.
The worst puzzle is the mirror maze at the carnival, which is where you'll find the portal between worlds. It's frustrating because you can see whole maze at once, broken up into hexagonal rooms, but there's quite a bit of visual trickery to determine whether you can move between spaces or not. One has a locked door which is nearly impossible to see, others are one way doors which are equally hard to pick out. It becomes a tedious exercise in randomly clicking until you find your way through. Thankfully, once you've navigated the mazes - once in each world - you can skip right through them every time you transport between worlds. That is, until a segment late in the game where you need to race the Behemoth to the exit. In this case, you better have memorized the most efficient route through the maze, or else you'll have doomed humanity.
For the most part, Dark Seed II is fairly solid, up until its climax. It's not the only horror adventure game where you play a mentally unsound protagonist, and it certainly won't be the last, but how the story handles the border between reality and delusion is incredibly important. There's an extraordinarily funny bit where one of the characters claims they will explain everything, then their head suddenly explodes, explaining precisely nothing, and effectively messing with the player in the process. But then the ending goes out of control and just becomes crazy for its own sake. There's a difference between ambiguous and being intentionally obtuse, and Dark Seed II takes the latter route, ending on a "what the hell just happened" note rather than one which inspires internal debate. But while this execution is sloppy, it shouldn't sour the whole experience though - there's still enough freakiness to justify accompanying Mike through his descent into lunacy.
Dark Seed II was also ported to the Playstation and Saturn, much like its predecessor. The resolution is halved, resulting in jagged visuals and there are more load times. Most of the voice acting is cut out, except for Mike's lines, which have been redubbed into Japanese.
MP3s
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Dark Seed II (PC)
Let's Play - Dark Seed Lots of pics from the first game.
Dark Seed (PC)
Ridley Scott's 1979 movie Alien still ranks as one of the scariest movies ever made. There are at least a dozen reasons why it's still so effective while other horror movies of the day seem like child's play, but a huge chunk of credit goes to H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist (or, rather, "surrealist") who developed the eponymous xenomorph. His works combine nightmarish biological creations with dark, mechanical imaginary, combined with plenty of immensely disturbing psychosexual imagery. It's all very distinctive, and many video game developers of the 80s copied his style wholesale, as evident in arcade games like Contra and R-Type. Outside of the officially licensed Aliens games, Giger also supplied artwork to the Dark Seed series, two adventure games developed by Cyberdreams.
Dark Seed begins amidst a nightmare wherein our hero, new homeowner Mike Dawson, envisions an alien gun ejaculating into his forehead. He awakens, understandably shaken up, and with an astounding headache. After spending a day or so exploring the neighborhood, Mike discovers that one of the mirrors in his house leads into the Dark World, the place of its dreams. It should be no surprised that that aliens have impregnated Mike with one of their gruesome offspring. Its birth will kill Mike, obviously, but it also potentially spell the end of humanity. Their plan must be foiled, but Mike is not alone, as he is guided by the Keeper of the Scrolls, the creepy female-esque figure on the box cover, who holds no love for the Ancients. Furthermore, the houses' previous inhabitants were aware of the connection between the human and the so-called Dark World, and much time is spent following their tracks.
Dark Seed II picks up a year after the ending of the original. Mike has had the good sense to sell that old haunted house of his, but experiences in the Dark World have left him disturbed and psychologically disabled, forcing him to move back in with his parents. His dreams of the Ancients continue, and neither the hypnosis nor the drugs from his therapy sessions seem to be working. The only light he has left in his life is a rekindled relationship with his former high school sweetheart, which abruptly ends when her headless body is found outside their school. Mike was the last person to be seen with her alive, and has no recollection of any of the events, leaving him as a prime murder suspect. Perplexed by the mystery, he once again finds his way into the Dark World, which has once again been subjugated by the Ancients.
Links
Let's Play - Dark Seed 2 More pics, plus a quick interview with one of the developers.
Dark Seed - Adventure Gamers A 2.5/5 star review.
Pirated Games Central A full look at the bootleg Famicom version.
