Dark Seed

aka: Dark Seed 1
Moby ID: 302
DOS Specs
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Special Edition

Description official descriptions

Dark Seed is an adventure game which capitalizes on the drawings of famous horror designer H. R. Giger as a source of background artwork and inspiration.

You play Mike Dawson, an ad company manager who, in pursuit of his goal in life to become a writer, purchases a solitary mansion in a small town called Woodland Hills. Although the low cost and hush-hush transactions when purchasing the house do raise your suspicion, the solitary environment and sheer beauty of the house crush common sense and you decide to buy the house. That's when trouble begin. Upon reaching the house, you suddenly feel tired. You find a bed and fall asleep...

... and wake up from a terrible dream, only to find out that your life has just become a worse nightmare: an unknown source has implanted a seed of darkness in your mind, and you only have three days to find a way to stop it.

Spellings

  • Darkseed - Alternate spelling
  • זרע האופל - Hebrew spelling
  • ダークシード - Japanese spelling
  • 黑暗之蠱 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

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Credits (DOS version)

46 People (40 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 67% (based on 32 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 80 ratings with 5 reviews)

Good concept and graphics for its time....Although there are programming glitches!

The Good
Graphics by HR Giger, always cool. Probably one of the most challenging "puzzle adventure" games I have played. Actions and events are time sequenced, meaning that certain actions must be performed at exactly the right time. Just installed recently on an old PC, fun to go back and play the games I did when I was younger.

The Bad
Several programming glitches, game is notorious for crashing and/or restarting during certain game sequences. After installing the software on more than one machine, I have learned that the software is extremely sensitive to the setup of your computer-must almost be exactly right.-for help email me at [email protected].

The Bottom Line
If you are into early science-fiction games then this is for you. I bet you look though a walkthrough guide before solving.

DOS · by bill bradskey (1) · 2005

One of greatest and memorable game in the world

The Good
Firstly, I liked the games story and idea: You are writer named Mike Dawson, who have just purchased old Victorian house from Woodland Hills. Mike just wants peace and quiet, for writing. But first day in the new house something happens; Mike dreams that aliens are implanting something to his head. And on next morning, he wakes up with terrible headache. You have 3 days to solve mystery. Also, graphics are good for old game like this. Sounds are excellent. There is also excellent voice actors! And i cant say anything bad about playing. You gonna enjoy this game!!! Game is not hard, but puzzle game, that needs a bit a skill<br><br>**The Bad**<br>If you do something wrong, or miss something, the game could require you to start game from beginning.<br><br>**The Bottom Line**<br>Its great fun for hours!!!

DOS · by MDawson (6) · 2003

Gorgeous, but not exactly playable

The Good
As you'd expect from a game with name of a world-renowned artist situated front and center, this game is visually wonderful. The eerie, disturbing, fascinating nature of Geiger's work is lovingly rendered despite the limitations of the PC hardware of this game's day. If this game doesn't make you think of the Alien movies, you've never seen them. It's gorgeous.

The Bad
The game play is much more problematical, in two basic ways.

First, this is a point-and-click adventure of the most frustrating kind. You will make no progress unless you patiently and painstakingly move the mouse over every pixel of every screen. If this style frustrates you, you will quickly grow to hate this game.

Second, the overall setup of the game is unusual. The game will last exactly three game days, and time is rigidly accounted for. The only way to win the game is to figure out exactly what your character must do in exactly what sequence at what times each day. If you don't realize this, or again if this is not fun for you, you will hate this game. OTOH, I must admit that the idea is very innovative, and hasn't been done many times since; the other case I can think of is a console game and nowhere near as deep.

The Bottom Line
A landmark game in many ways, and really worthy of the artist's name it bears. But for many players, it will be an exercise in frustration to actually play it.

DOS · by weregamer (155) · 2004

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Win 3.x evidence? eXo (346) Oct 12, 2016
RIP HR Giger Pseudo_Intellectual (66274) May 13, 2014

Trivia

German version

The German version of Darkseed suffered from its translation. There were lots of spelling and grammatical mistakes (the first one on the very first screen of the intro, written in big letters), the rendering from English into German was clumsy and inapt, and sometimes English idioms, which are unknown in their respective form in German, were translated literally, which made them sound unintentional ludicrous or rather stupid. And there were points in the game, when several of these things came together, where it was hard or even impossible to comprehend the meaning of some sentences at all.

Graphics

  • There isn't a single Giger design made especially for this game. Giger looked through all of his past work and chose those which he thought would fit better for Darkseed.
  • It is one of the first (if not the first) point-and-click adventure games that used higher resolution (640x350). Giger agreed to lend his artwork, provided Cyberdreams used only high-resolution graphics mode, in order to avoid the "square and jagged" look of low-resolution.

Mike Dawson

Mike Dawson, the main character of the game, is based on the game's producer and designer Mike Dawson. Acting and voice acting was also provided by him.

Rumour has it that Dawson, went mad after that game was produced. In an interview with Gamasutra, he comments this myth: “Actually, I have no idea where it came from. In fact, I’d never heard that urban legend until just now. But frankly, I like it – and so do my six other personalities.”

Manual

There was this strange advice in the manual (translated from the German version): "Think logically. We tried to give all puzzles in the game a logic meaning. Only sometimes the logic may seem hard to comprehend. If you are stuck anywhere, try to use everything that you already carry. That may be successful." That doesn't sound too confident in the own game design, doesn't it?

Packaging

The cut-out in the front of the box holds a small, removable diamond shaped box that originally contained the floppy disks. The small box shows a portrait of H. R. Giger's beloved wife Li who passed away in 1975. This painting (Li II, 1974, Work no. 251) measures 200 x 140 cm and contains a number of elements symbolizing death. The oversized head is decapitated and fed intravenously.

References: Cybersoft

Not only Mike Dawson, refers to (a member of) Cyberdreams: * Mike Dawson lives, according to the manual, in an old Victorian house on Ventura Drive, Woodland Hills. The first office of Cyberdreams was located at 21243 Ventura Boulevard, Woodland Hills. Moreover, that’s the same address as printed on Delbert’s business card, Mike’s neighbor in the game. * The store in the game is called "Klug’s Food Market". Rolf Klug was the owner of Cyberdreams (so he provided “the food”). * The clue on the microfiche card that you examine in the library on day 3 is signed by Ryan Ketchum. Pat(rick) Ketchum was the President of Cyberdreams. * However, Pat gets his own signature. The cracked mirror note in the DOS version is signed by Timothy, but in the Amiga CD32 version it is signed by Pat.

References

In the real side, at the graveyard, read all tombs. You will find one for G. Threepwood, the main character of The Secret of Monkey Island.

Differences between Amiga and Amiga CD32 version

  • Amiga version bears number 1.0 while Amiga CD32 version is marked as 1.1.
  • Amiga version is running in 640x400 resolution (in fact its 320 unique pixels -doubled to achieve 640 pixels- x 400 unique pixels) while Amiga CD32 version was downgraded! to low-res 320x200 and it still does not make full use of AGA chipset.
  • Amiga CD32 was enriched with Mike Dawson's voice.

Awards

  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1994 – #3 Best Adventure in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1993 – Best Packaging in 1992

Information also contributed by Der.Archivar, game nostalgia, Itay Shahar, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker, Roger Wilco and xcom1602

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Related Sites +

  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Dark Seed, examples of voice-overs, credits, a demo of the game, details about the game, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews, including a "nostalgic "review.
  • IGCD Internet Game Cars Database
    Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.
  • Playing Dark Seed in Windows XP
    Inferno tells you how.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 302
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Amiga added by POMAH. Macintosh added by Foxhack. Amiga CD32, PlayStation, Windows 3.x added by Kabushi. SEGA Saturn added by j. jones.

Additional contributors: MAT, n-n, Jeanne, B.L. Stryker, formercontrib, martin jurgens, Crawly, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Victor Vance.

Game added October 3, 1999. Last modified February 28, 2024.