Description
A playthrough of Cyberdreams' 1992 graphic adventure for PCs running Dos, Dark Seed.
For this video, I played the updated 1994 CD version (ver. 1.5D) that added voice acting.
Dark Seed is a horror-themed point-and-click adventure game that follows three days in the life of Mike Dawson, a successful executive who has just bought a big, creepy mansion on the edge of town. His first night in the house, he dreams that he has been violated and impregnated by an alien biomechanical monstrosity, and he wakes up the next morning with a splitting headache. As he begins exploring the house, he quickly figures out why he got such a good deal on the place. If he doesn't want to meet with the same fate as the previous owner, he needs to do something. Fast.
It was the first game from Cyberdreams (also known for https://youtu.be/56GxQVfXbQI), and it gained a lot of attention for the way it incorporated H.R. Giger's artwork to shape its nightmarish tone. Dark Seed's looks are striking: the low-color, high-resolution backdrops are effective at conveying the unsettling parallels between the two worlds, and the body horror elements manage to be uncomfortable without resorting to being gross and excessively graphic. The FM music lends to the mood nicely, too, and the voice-acting is generally passable enough to not detract from the experience.
I really liked the premise, and though the writing is tonally inconsistent - Mike is a total putz and the jokes stick out like a sore thumb ("Great! Now I have cousin Gary all over me!") - it carries the game well enough. I just wish that the puzzles didn't rely so heavily on trial-and-error and trapping you without warning in dead-end states.
Dark Seed is in no way a masterpiece of adventure game design, but it does succeed at being a solid horror game. If you like Giger's work, it's worth checking out.
Finally, I should note that Dark Seed was released across several platforms. Between 1993 and 1995, it was ported to the Amiga, CD32, and Mac, and in Japan, to the Playstation and Saturn. There was also a Chinese bootleg demake for the Famicom, which isn't nearly as bad as that description implies.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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