Now I’ve been gaming a long time, but the one genre I have almost no experience with is point and click adventure games. I’ve never been heavy into the PC as a platform, and we honestly couldn’t afford one while I was growing up. It’s not just that, but the few times I’ve tried to enjoy these games I’ve found myself annoyed at the character movement. I heard about one of these such games called Dark Seed which I absolutely had to try out being the horror fan that I am. I picked up the Amiga CD32 version and jumped right in. Here’s what happened.
The game begins with a video of a man being held down while the skin on his head is peeled back and something is implanted. This man is Mike Dawson, the hero of the story, and the action starts as he awakens with a headache. He’s a writer who has recently purchased and moved into an old victorian home, and it’s up to you to explore the house as our moustache’d protagonist. You come to learn that the dream was real, and he has been implanted with an alien embryo called the dark seed. Your goal is to stop the alien invasion, but really you’re just out to stop the headaches he has.
Dark Seed is a traditional point and click adventure game. You view the action from several different viewpoints with your character on the screen and you guide him by clicking with a cursor on various elements of the environment. You must wait for him to walk to the points of interest you’ve chosen, and right out of the gate the pacing is very slow. Mike doesn’t exactly run wherever he goes. Furthermore he constantly complains about the headache from which he is suffering. Yes, we get it, you have an alien embryo in your head. I’ve never talked to myself that much.
So, after the introduction what exactly do you do? You guide Mike Dawson around his home and the surrounding town searching for clues and gathering items. My main issue with the game right out of the gates was that it doesn’t always lead you down a specific path. Dark Seed requires significant experimentation. There’s no way to tell exactly what you need to do, but there are vague clues strewn throughout the world. You really have to pay attention as you play or you’ll miss a lot.
Progression is vague, and what really drags this one down is that you’re on a time limit. If you don’t complete certain tasks within specific time frames you can’t win. Yes, there’s an in-game clock with events that only happen at specific times. None of the tasks are clear. This means that you’ll have to replay Dark Seed several times to reach the end of the story. I tried, but ultimately lacked the patience. I had to go against my morals and use a guide to finish this one. Anyone who is interested in playing should follow this same route otherwise don’t bother.
Once I finally surrendered to a walkthrough I had a really good time. I found that the world was fun to explore, the characters were interesting, and there’s a downright spooky atmosphere to every corner of this world. The big twist in the game is that there’s a parallel alien world where everything is the same but twisted. You begin each day taking a shower and eating pain pills to make Mike stop complaining. From here you gather items, and interact with a few characters. You start with a broken mirror in your home, and day two get the missing shard of glass from it in the mail. It is through the complete mirror that you travel between the worlds.
So why would you even need to go to the alien world? The answer is simple. Anything you do in the light world has an effect on the dark and vice versa. You will need to take advantage of this duality in order to complete the game. Again, this is an area that is not explained well and when you don’t know what to do you’ll only succeed at random. It’s terribly annoying and I can see why the vague hints would ruin the game for most people. I usually hate resorting to a walkthrough but I just had to see what happens next. That’s pretty rare that a video game would drive me in that way.
While Dark Seed does have it’s problems I found myself oddly enamored with the story, the art, and yes, even Mike’s inane foreshadowing. The game won me over against all odds and even though I found most aspects a chore I absolutely adored the time I spent with it. There’s nothing out there that’s quite like it. The horror elements aren’t for everyone, but I found absolutely every aspect of the story haunting and memorable. Even the pixelated art style of this port is brimming with personality. The vision the developers had is really effective for me. There’s nothing else out there that has made such an impression on me, and I can see why this game has it’s cult base.
The graphics are… well… the game has a face only a mother could love. On the PC this game runs at a very high resolution for it’s time, but this port doesn’t have the same benefit. The graphics are blocky, the color range is low, and everything looks drab. Personally I think this adds to the otherworldly aspect of the game and I soon got over the technical shortcomings. The animated sequences are very well done and will leave a lasting impression with gamers. That opening video is downright iconic in my opinion. The artwork of HR Giger is at its best here. The digitized characters only add to the surreal flavor of this one.
I also really liked the soundtrack. The music is a product of its time and is entirely midi with some fairly low quality samples. That works in Dark Seed’s favor however by complimenting the surreal atmosphere. The voice samples don’t fare particularly well in this version of the game. They sound grainy and there’s actual static. This isn’t bad except you’ll hear Mike Dawson constantly complain about the state of his headache. The voice acting is laughable at best, but I’m fine with this considering it’s basically a B-movie.
