Veil of Darkness

aka: Veil of Darkness: Norowareta Yogen
Moby ID: 1271
DOS Specs
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Description

The vampire lord Kairn has murdered his father and brothers so he could inherit control of the valley. Ever since he's used his powers to cut off contact with the outside world, Kairn has been living it up, torturing the villagers with madness and death, feeding off of them like livestock and turning the village women into his personal vampiress servants. Meanwhile, the villagers are miserable, as every day they face the possibility of either being devoured by werewolves, gnawed on by zombies, driven into stark raving lunatics, or turned into vampires by Kairn and his posse.

A cargo pilot's plane is shot down by a mysterious force while flying over a remote valley in Romania. A helpful village girl named Deirdre rescues him from the crash and takes him to her father Kiril, who informs the pilot that his arrival via plane crash marks him as the chosen one who is prophesied to destroy Kairn. Since Kairn has cut off all ways out of the valley, the only way he is going to leave is, as the old saying goes, over his dead body. That's not going to be very easy, however. Wild animals and unnatural creatures roam the countryside. While some villagers will help the hero to rid them of Kairn, others have been driven mad with despair and by the valley's oppressive aura, causing them to commit unspeakable acts or otherwise act in an unhelpful manner. Even the most trusted allies may turn out to have a few skeletons in the closet...

Veil of Darkness is an isometric role-playing game with action-based combat and adventure elements. Most of the game is dedicated to exploring the game world in a fairly open-ended fashion, gathering information and items. Puzzle-solving is conversation- and inventory-based; many battles are also designed in a puzzle-like manner, with the hero being able to defeat certain enemies only with specific weapons. Heavy inventory management and status ailments contribute to the game's RPG mechanics.

Spellings

  • ヴェイル オブ ダークネス ~呪われた予言~ - Japanese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

26 People · View all

Producer (Event Horizon)
IBM Lead Programmer
Additional Programming
Designers
Art & Graphics
Music
Story Author
Rule Book Editors
Editing Support
Producer (SSI)
Associate Producers
Playtesters
Test Support
Graphic Design/DTP
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 24 ratings with 6 reviews)

this is as close to a vampire movie as possible

The Good
I liked the atmosphere surrounding the different locations (i have to admit this game spooked me a couple of times). The way it draws you in, you don't just stare at the action, you get involved with your character and the NPCs (each of them has a story of their own)

The Bad
The combats seem a little arbitrary for me (even though i had the right weapon it was really hard to kill the enemies) and too difficult at some points

The Bottom Line
This game reminds me of the old Bela Lugosi Dracula film, it has a little bit of everything: mystery, horror (lots of it), blood, action, romance and lots of interesting dialogues.

DOS · by n-n (50) · 2000

Very interesting.. and scary

The Good
Well, to begin with, I'm a fan of horror games, especially adventures. There are not much of them, so I was very glad to get this one. And I must say, it is a very good attempt, though not the best one.

The story is quite standart at first, but it becomes more complicated as the game progresses. As you solve different quests, you find out that everything you meet is a part of the story, it is somehow tied to the characters you already met and to the prophecy you have to complete. Really, the story is very strong and thought-over, lke in a true adventure. The atmoshere is also very nice - dark, scary, you feel somehow lonely in this world, everyone you meet has his own problems and are seemed to be very scared too. As for the other characters - they are very well done. There are quite a lot of them, everyone has his own appearance, manners and has enough topics to talk about. Speaking with them is also well done - while the characte talks, some of the words in his speech are underlined, so you can talk about them later. But sometimes you have to tell the character about another topics, so you have to write the words from keyboard like in old good IF games, and this is very good indeed.

The puzzles are also very good, especcially the final one, where you have to collect several different things to kill the Kairn. In the beginning you got a Prophecy, which consists of all the main quests you have to solve in order to win (though not a solutions to them), so you don't have to think "what shall I do next?" walking aimlessly around. It was said in the other review that the game is very linear. It is not true. Most of the quests you can solve in any order, only a few requires the right order (and they are only in the beginning).

The Bad
Well, the game is still far from ideal. Not everyone will enjoy the RPG elemnts in adventure, fighting with monsters. Though, it is seemed more like action elements to me - the monsters you kill don't ressurrect and their bodies even don't disappear, and that's a nice touch. Also, in order to kill all monsters, tou have to take evrywhere with you a number of different weapons, as usually there is only one type of weapon for one type of monster. But, from the other hand, firstly, you can choose your skill level in the beginning (and on easy level the combat is quite easy), and secondly, you can just run away from monsters - there is really nothing you need from them.

The graphics is not very good, though the isometric view is quite nice.

There are several mazes in the game that can become frustrating, but, again, there is one good feature to help in navigating - a map that is drawn automaticly while you are wondering in the labirinth, which you can look at any time you want - isn't this wonderfull!

The Bottom Line
This is one good horror adventure game with interesting story, nice atmosphere, good puzzles and some nicely implemented RPG elements. For all horror fans.

DOS · by Afex Tween (129) · 2003

Boring and lacking in imagination and excitement.

The Good
Featuring a nice horror theme, Veil of Darkness is a nice attempt at merging rpg and adventure games (to be honest this is more of an adventure game than an rpg), the game places you in an isometric world where you interact with npcs, get some quests and try to save the poor town from the clutches of Kairn, a badass vampire that gets off by keeping an entire valley in 18th century conditions. The game uses a standard adventure game world map from which you warp to each location in the game (locations which are discovered as they are informed to you), in each location there's a collection of npcs that you can talk to and sometimes a dungeon or so filled with non-respawning baddies that you can kick around. The point of the fights is usually to uncover some puzzle elements or location since there is no leveling-up whatsoever. You have your standarized inventory with paperdoll which allows you to quickly equip weapons.... And... well, uh....

The Bad
For starters the story sucks ass. It's so bad it seems like it was pulled off from the early days of videogaming, you are flying around over this valley and since the big bad vampire is bored he decides to shoot you down for no reason. Once there you find out that you are the one that the prophecy says will kill Kairn and save the valley, so... "Fight Megaman!! For Everlasting Peace"! yawn.... of course there's a babe that has the hots for you and that you will have to save, so don't worry! It's all good...

The graphics in the game are crude but effective, what kills me is the poor animation and the effect it has in the game, you need to see this to understand me, but it seems like everytime you press a key everything just jumps a frame!... It's really crappy and slows the gameplay down to a crawl, truly this is one of the slowest games of this type I have played... It's hard to be scared at something that is a mile away in an isometric perspective, but it's harder to do so when it only seems to have 2 frames of animation and moves slightly slower than a snail.

Finally the concept behind the game is promising, but the end results are pretty dissapointing. This is a lame-ass adventure game that integrates some elements of rpg-ing such as status effects, weapons, etc. but doesn't do so effectively. Combat comes down to whacking enemies endlessly and/or escaping and plays so slow that you can go and fix yourself a drink between hits, there's no character development, the dungeon crawling is lame and almost an aftertought, the npcs are all shallow and spout information as if they were signposts instead of characters, and while you can tackle different quests at different times, the game is completely linear.

Oh! And the puzzles aren't good either. They are stupid Fed-Ex quests, Pixel Hunts or lame association exercises that seem taken from Zelda or other early console games. You know what I'm talking about: "Oh! The zombies can only be killed by silver... hmmm so now I know why the smith offered to make me a silver sword!", etc... etc... There are some interesting ones, like burning down a living three so you can resurrect it from it's ashes, but that's as far as things go...

The Bottom Line
Failed attempt at merging two very cool genres under an admitely cool horror theme. It's "classic" image and theme may fool you into thinking how this is an undiscovered gem, but to put it bluntly this is just a very lame game that becomes even lamer when faced with the competition.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

The opening sequence says you fly your plane over a region of Romania: a valley in the middle of the Carpathians. Vlad Tepes (a.k.a. Vlad "the impaler" Dracul; count Dracula) lived and ruled in a region named Transylvania (as I'm sure many of you know) which is located in none other than...Romania.

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  • MobyGames ID: 1271
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Windows added by Plok. PC-98, FM Towns added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: n-n, Rik Hideto.

Game added April 3, 2000. Last modified February 5, 2024.