Heart of Darkness

Moby ID: 262
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Description official descriptions

Andy is a child who likes playing with his dog Whiskey, doesn't particularly enjoy going to school, and has a knack for inventing complicated gadgets. One day Andy and Whiskey are strolling through the park, when suddenly a solar eclipse darkens the sky, and after a moment Andy realizes that his dog has been taken away. But science can solve everything, and Andy heads to his treehouse, which is home to his outstanding inventions, including a spaceship! If you thought it was just a toy, you thought wrong, because Andy boards the ship and pilots it into the heart of the Darklands, a world controlled by the evil Master of Darkness. Andy takes out his gun (another splendid invention of his) and prepares to fight the evil sorcerer's minions. Nothing will stop the boy from rescuing his beloved dog!

Heart of Darkness is a cinematic 2D platformer designed by Eric Chahi, the creator of one of the genre's progenitors, Another World. Though the game has many fast and furious action sequences, including shooting hordes of dark creatures, it is built like a series of tasks, each requiring different approaches, from arcade-style shooting or jumping to interacting with the environment and solving puzzles. Like its spiritual predecessor, the game is linear; completing a section usually takes Andy to a different location, where another task awaits him.

Andy has several guns at his disposal, though in certain locations he will lose his weapons and will rely on the player's wit or quick reaction to survive. Andy will also gain magical energy, which can be used to grow or destroy trees. Similarly to Another World, many hazards are placed on the hero's path; despite the child-oriented premise, the game contains graphically explicit death scenes, which occur if the player is not careful or quick enough to save Andy from a gruesome demise.

Heart of Darkness features orchestral music and pre-rendered animated cutscenes. It comes with a pair of 3D glasses, which allow the player to view certain scenes in the game in 3D.

Spellings

  • ăƒăƒŒăƒˆăƒ»ă‚Șăƒ–ăƒ»ăƒ€ăƒŒă‚Żăƒă‚č - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

188 People (163 developers, 25 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 90 ratings with 8 reviews)

A challenging, atmospheric platformer that's not as well-known as it should be.

The Good
Fantastic animations and presentation for its time. * Imaginative world and level design * Clever, challenging puzzles * Orchestral soundtrack

The Bad
Sluggish controls * Frustrating combat sections * Weak ending

The Bottom Line
Heart of Darkness might be better known for its lengthy, troubled development than for the game itself. Designed by Eric Chahi along with his team at Amazing Studio, it was a spiritual successor to his pioneering cinematic platformer from 1991, Another World. Originally meant to be released in 1995 on the 3DO, it was delayed so much that it ended up being released on the Playstation in 1998. By the time Heart of darkness released, it couldn’t help but feel dated next to games like Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, and Metal Gear Solid. Despite that, and somewhat middling reviews, it has become a cult classic for many who played it.

The two games are remarkably similar in terms of gameplay and plot. You control a protagonist who finds himself in an alien world with strange technology and magic, and must solve puzzles and fight numerous enemies to survive. While Out of This World had a 70’s sci-fi vibe, Heart of Darkness is more in the mold of a Spielberg 1980’s fantasy adventure.

Heart of Darkness follows the adventures of Andy, a typical suburban kid who doesn’t get along well with his teacher and has a fear of the dark. One day after school, a solar eclipse occurs and Andy’s dog, Whiskey, gets sucked up into a black hole. After racing home, he packs his things, grabs his gun and helmet, and hops into the spaceship he invented to head to the Darkland where Whiskey was taken. Along the way, he’ll have to face many enemies, but also make friends. That plot’s a lot to swallow even for a video game, and you kind of have to just roll with it as it plays out.

The plot may be paper-thin, but I actually really like its presentation. For one, the voice acting is actually quite good, and I don’t think there was a single character that sounded flat or out of place. The orchestral score by Academy Award nominee Bruce Broughton, one of the first orchestral scores in a video game, really heightens the cinematic fantasy feeling of the game during the cutscenes. Only a cop-out of an ending keeps me from absolutely loving the way this game tells its story. While I don’t necessarily hate where the story goes and what it suggests, I will say that it seems to cut itself short just as things are getting really interesting, and the way it transitions from climax to denouement will be incredibly jarring for most players.

Fans of Another World will feel right at home once they finally get to control Andy. This is a platformer with step-based movement, meaning that actions are delayed after you push the button in order to accommodate complex player animations. Andy can sprint, jump. Unusually for a cinematic platformer, Andy can also double-jump. This is very useful for dodging some projectiles and getting over gaps.

While Andy has invented an lightning gun, its not something that you’ll be using for most of the game. Instead, Andy’s primary means of attack is magic, which he acquires by touching a glowing rock at the bottom of the lake. You can either fire single shots or charge up for a more damaging shot, which is really only useful on certain enemies. The charging shot can also be used to manipulate certain objects in the environment, such as making plants grow from seeds, or destroying obstacles in your path.

The game’s puzzles are very well-designed, often forcing you to come up with clever solutions to get past obstacles. You’ll frequently need to manipulate the environment and the creatures inside of it to find ways around them, or take advantage of Andy’s size and agility. Admittedly, though, there were a few times when the game just flat-out gave me the answer because I was dying on a particular screen so much, but its understandable since the game wants to keep up its pace. Still, I wish that the hints were something that could be optionally turned off.

Where the game falters a bit is when you have to actually start fighting the darkness. Much of the game’s combat encounters can be completed by standing in one place and simply firing away until all enemies are dead. You’ll occasionally need to jump and duck to dodge projectiles, but most of the time its about making sure that any enemies on all sides of Andy are killed. Enemies seem to take an inconsistently long time to kill, and there’s no cancel button for firing animations, meaning that quickly dodging something can be a challenge unless you see it coming from fairly far away. It doesn’t help that the frame rate is only about 15 frames-per-second to accommodate the game’s animation. All of these flaws are exemplified by the game’s combat-heavy final chapter which features numerous such encounters, including a unique enemy type that respawns two more of itself after you kill it. It was quite a slog throwing myself against this wall over and over again, and at times it felt more like luck rather than skill when surviving some of these combat sections, even after I got reasonably good at it.

Another issue is the game’s lack of scrolling. This is a flaw that many cinematic platformers unfortunately have, and Heart of Darkness does absolutely nothing to solve it. Screens can sometimes take some time to actually load. As a result, some of the more fast-paced sections of the game have to be replayed over and over again until you beat them, because you cant see a deadly monster or gap coming up after the screen flipped.

The graphics were a major selling point for Heart of Darkness. While the pre-rendered graphics and environments may look similar to games such as the Donkey Kong Country series at first glance, the lighting, textures, and animations are far more detailed than in the SNES platformers. It’s honestly amazing how fluid and realistic the animations for Andy look, and it still impresses even to this day.

What really stands out is the art design. The tone of this game is truly eerie and otherworldly. These environments are simultaneously beautiful and frightening to behold, and there’s quite a bit of variety. You’ll traverse canyons, swamps, caves, and volcanoes to track Whiskey down. Similarly, creature design is fantastic, with some genuinely creepy and foreboding enemies to face and friends to meed.

One of the things that contributes to the game’s atmosphere is also arguably Heart of Darkness’ most notorious feature. You see, despite having a family-friendly rating from the ESRB, this game has some of the most shocking deaths you are ever likely to see in a game rated as such. There may be no blood or guts, but that doesn’t make the deaths any less disturbing. The first time you see a flying creature pick Andy up and snap his spine in twain, complete with a loud crack, it’s hard not to wince and question how this could have possibly slipped past the ratings board. You’ll also see Andy get incinerated, crushed, and eaten alive by numerous creatures, leaving behind nothing but his shoes. Even some of the villains characters have painful-looking deaths. These deaths make the “darkness” of the game something that feels like an actual nightmare, giving the game the feel of a dark fairytale.

While the gameplay flaws are frustrating, I have to say that I really enjoyed Heart of Darkness while it lasted, which admittedly wasn’t long. There simply aren’t enough games like this that get made today, and Heart of Darkness is overall an excellent, if dated example of its genre. One of the most underrated games of the 32-bit era, this dark, atmospheric title very much deserves a re-release or even a remake on modern platforms. Despite its initial kiddie appearance, this is a game with some real bite and challenge, and will appeal to older gamers arguably more than children.

PlayStation · by krisko6 (814) · 2018

Grade-A platformer.

The Good
Heart of Darkness is an excellent game, disregarding 3D accelerated graphics, complicated interfaces and all that mumbo-jumbo, Heart goes back to the basics and delivers a gaming experience based only on the ingenious and inventive machinations of these 2D gods that used to be Delphine soft. It truly is one of those cases when it's "so old, it's new"

The story is inconsequential (which is unfortunate, see "the bad") but the gameplay is nothing but genius. It combines excellent level design with simple yet interesting puzzles, and some of the most beautiful 2D artwork ever to grace a platform game. The game uses the time-honored super-fluid animation Delphine was known for in their previous games, and also includes breath-taking animated backgrounds which makes the game stand firmly as an example of how great, detailed art can enhance a game experience. The music too is top notch, with an impressive arrangement of orchestral music that is so good it rivals some of the best orchestral music found on feature films.

Heart of Darkness is truly a game too good to be true. One wouldn't think that someone would actually do a game like this in this day and age. But it's simple yet inventive gameplay, it's attention to detail, and it's great production values make it a timeless jewel.

The Bad
Well, essentially the resolution is too small. The game uses only 80% of the screen and the graphics sometimes produce a startling amount of "pixelitis" which is a real shame considering how beautiful the art in this game is. Aside from that you have the fact that the game is too short, which isn't necessarily bad, but since it's so damn linear it makes the game take a real value hit. You can't really expect to pay more than 20 bucks for the kind of value you get here. Also the final confrontation seems downright cheap, it's "shoot everything and get to the last screen!"...

But those are mostly small gripes. The only real problem I have with the game is that sometimes it seems like a waste. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but I don't exactly enjoy the fact that it is so kiddie-oriented. I mean, remember Out of this World? If you look at both games they are essentially the same: character trapped in strange world, trying to get back (or simply survive) and who gets involved in native problems. Gameplay is the same. So what makes "World" better than "Heart"? The underlying maturity that was present in it. "World" had a clear message in it, and created an emotional storyline, with great characters and somewhat deep connotations without a single line of dialogue (well unless you count your alien buddy's grumbling). I can't help but think that if "Heart" had dared to be mature it would have been elevated to the category of all time classic like it's predecessor, now it is simply an excellent inspired platformer.

All that wouldn't imply a change in the game itself, the game can convey a somber and serious tone sometimes, which make it contrast a lot with the cutesy cutscenes. In fact, I often thought when playing it that those who made the game and those who made the cutscenes must have been thinking of different games altogether. In the game itself you have a more dark and moody conception of the gameworld, and you have some downright mature details like some exceptionally gory death animations (ps. If anyone wants to know how to convey gore and death without the blood just check this game and enjoy Andy's many deaths). But whenever you go back to the cutscenes, it's back to cutey-land, and if you told me that they told a nice storyline then yeah, I guess I could accept it, but the story here is nothing to remember.

...Ahh tsk, tsk. Well I guess you just can't have it all, huh?

The Bottom Line
Regardless of all my grumping this is a great-great-great-great game. Just don't dream about what it could have been and you'll be fine... or if you have no problems with the kiddie factor then dive right in!

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2001

Watch it for the moon in the time of noon!

The Good
Just when all the hopes went away, and we started thinking how platform level-based genre was extinct, we're blasted from the past with another touch of classic. This game can easily be compared to good old rule called Another World, in both story and graphic quality for its time, as well as animation and music quality. Once I started this game, I was like a glued to my computer side of me. It showed me the history, and unraveled longly forgotten part of meback when I enjoyed a perfection under the a name of Blackthorne.

You're playing a waggish li'l boy whose only fear lies in the bottom of the darkness. The scene opens as you're sleeping on the class, and your terror-like creature of a teacher is trying to punish you by closing you in a small closet, but, as the ring went off, you wriggle down below, and run out as fast as the wind carries you. There you find your faithful friend and a dog, start wearing your baseball hat, and you run yelling 'freedom!'. Just as you found a nice spot on the grass to spend your rest-of-a-day vacations, sun eclipse approaches, and with a nice eye-darksun effect, your dog disappears, and you end up only with his hat.

No matter the fears you confront as a young man, your dog is more then a reason to surpass those fears, and free him the darkness. You enter your tree-hut cabin, take your gun and stuff like that, and fly sky to find your dog captured. As you come to some canyons right from the clouds above, you strike some black creature and stuck in some nearest cleft. Thus your adventures begin.

As much as it took the game maybe too long in development for such a shortness of playing, it holds really breathtaking stunning effects and graphics, and the animations are worthy playing. Just if you know how funny they can be... hehe, I'll leave that to you for discovering. Controls and playing skills are more or less all taken from Out of This World and Prince of Persia game types, so it'll be easy to adjust and settle as in home if you've played any kinda platform game of similar style.

Music is clearly enough for you to realize some heavy orchestar compositions are involved, as with that kinda music, it's no such wondering that there is a soundtrack for this game available. Since you'll meet many friend and foes during the game, not all will be clear to understand, but they sure holds the ability for fun and are adjusted to that world's settings, so everything actually comes to the right place. Wether the sound is distance, or is there yelling or begging involved, wether your laser is on, or some mountain creeks, wether you fly or swim, talk or fight, the sound and background and story music are perfectly combined to work as one.

As I noticed here, there were some major efforts in making many different, and highly detailed places, and yet having only one or two of each specific different place. I believe I also noticed that in Another World as well. The thing is, developers usually once they do the level frame, and all the wall and ground and background images, pump that to volume of like at least twenty levels all of the same type and look, but only difference lies in the level net and scheme output. On 'Another World' aka 'Out of This World', and this game, 'Heart of Darkness', levels are really detailed, and the traps and enemies are almost unique on each levels, with different puzzles to cross to, and even though they coud've make ten levels with each graphic elements, they still didn't misuse their quality, and that's the main reason why both games, AW and HoD are actually rather short to play, but unique in every aspect from player's viewpoint.

The Bad
Well, the fact that game is actually short wouldn't be a minus, as that's the way it is. Just imagine if you'll have to spend a year of playing on any game, where would that lead? I'll tell ya. That would lead to the point that you coul play about 80 games in your lifetime... hehe, and we don't wanna live like that, now want we!? :)

Also, both of the games, this one, and Another World have concentraited their main strength on the last level. Why? We all come to the end easily, thinking how the game's short, and then stuck on the last level. It's not impossible, you'll manage to end it once you play it couple of extra times, but think it this way. If they directed the final strength of the level through the whole game, we would automatically play each level longer, getting the feelings as the game's a bit longer then we thought so.

Here's great example of game using that think on us. Whoever played, and finished Eye of the Beholder, he or she will know that the game was hard enough on the every level, and finally, when getting to the end, that Xanathar creature was as easy to kill as every other creature, and you even got plenty of space to do the fight. That way, the game gets longevity a bit extended, and nobody has to try more then once the final fight, and end animation, if there is any :)

The Bottom Line
As good as Out of This World, as fatal as Blackthorne, an adventuristic as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, funny as Secret of the Monkey Island, and addictive like none of the mentioned. This game will w/o a doubt give you hard time on some places, but reward you decently, and give you some of the best elements you can find in game - easy controls, fine story, nice music, great adventuristic spirit of action, and well done animations. Can you trully ask for more knowing the game crawled from the dust of our 2d memories we were always happy to dealt with :) Except that, this whole mumbo-jumbo about 2d is actually oriented a bit more to 3d then I've spoken during this review, so there's another reason why you should try this game out.

Windows · by MAT (240759) · 2012

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
european publisher pierre martin (5) Feb 19, 2021
Willy Beamish? John Peterson Oct 1, 2009

Trivia

Aliens

The friendly aliens Andy runs into in his adventure are called "Amigos", this is Spanish for "friends". In fact they all speak in Spanish in the English version, although they do so in loose, unconnected words.

Copy protection

This game is one of the early users of CD-based copy protection.

Development

Eric Chahi (main creator of Heart of Darkness) worked on the game from September 1992 to June 1998 (5 and 3/4 years). The game is based very loosely on the Joseph Conrad novel of the same name.

DirectX

Although the installation program insists that you need DirectX 6.0, the manual says HOD will run on NT 4.0 with SP3.

Extras

  • The game comes with a small pair of 3D-glasses with which you can check the after-final animation which is black and white until you put those glasses and see the depth and get a feeling of what you see as real 3D picture.
  • Some releases of this game on CD-ROM contained a Making of Heart of Darkness video documentary, which had interviews with the development team.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for this game is performed by The London Symphony, and composed by Bruce Broughton. Release date is 1999. The CD also contains a Demo of the game.

Tracklist: 1. Main Title 2. Andy's Mission 3. Big Mistake 4. Andy's Friend 5. Space Island 6. Vicious Servant 7. Back to the Lair 8. Meteor Destroyed 9. The Plot 10. Andy's Victory 11. End Credits

This soundtrack was available on the Intrada label (www.intrada.com).

Story

Though the game is not a sequel, add-on pack, nor spin-off, the game has a striking similarity of story to 1990-1992's Commander Keen series.

Information also contributed by B.L. Stryker, Garcia, MAT, Narushima, Swordmaster, Yeah No and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: MAT, DreinIX, Zeikman, Patrick Bregger, Bart Smith, finsterhund.

Game added September 5, 1999. Last modified February 24, 2024.