The concept of Dark Seed is far better than the game itself is. The novel idea of utilizing the art of the surreal Swiz artist H.R. Giger makes Dark Seed infinitely more memorable than it would otherwise be with its timer-based world and clairvoyance built puzzles.
Since moving into his new house, an old gothic mansion, Mike Dawson (who also happens to be the producer and designer of the game) has been plagued with headaches and sinister nightmares. Each night he is haunted by images of terrifying alien creatures and vistas. In his latest dream, the creatures crack open his forehead and fire an embryo into his brain.
With a thumping headache, Mike clambers from his bed and chugs a couple of painkillers. As the doorbell rings, he answers to receive a parcel with a doll inside it. In front of his eyes, the doll turns into an alien creature. A little more digging reveals old diary pages written by the former owner of the house. These writings reveal that the late owner suffered from nightmares and headaches as well.
The biggest secret of the house is the dark mirror in the living room. After the post brings Mike yet another parcel, he can repair it in order to open a portal to a dark counterpart of the town he lives in. This dark counterpart is inhabited by alien creatures, looking to enter our world. The visions and messages he has been receiving were sent to him by the Keeper of Scrolls, who has a vested interest in keeping the aliens where they belong.
The things Mike does in his own world are reflected in the dark world. The doors left open are open on both sides. A car left running in Mikes garage ignites the engines in the dark world and so worth. This is a good setup for puzzles, but sadly enough, probably because of the short length of the game, this is never really utilized beyond a couple of points.
It's really a shame, that the bad puzzle design drags the game down. The most annoying aspects of the whole thing are the timer-based puzzles and events you can miss if you are elsewhere. And if you run out of things to do, you have to wait for the in-game time to reach a specific point before you can go to sleep in order to get to the next day.
There's also a huge sparsity in how the story is told. There's very little text and the town has barely a handful of people you can interact with. And with most of them, you can hardly talk beyond a couple words. The same goes on in the dark world as well. It's all a bit of a shame, as the game doesn't feel very fleshed out beyond the graphics. It's more like the story is an afterthought for using the art of Giger.
Considering Dark Seed was made in 1992, the most surprising aspect of it, that the little text and dialogue it has is almost fully voice acted. This is rather remarkable considering the game itself is only around 40 megabytes in size. And it isn't half bad voice acting either, although it is heavily compressed.
In more ways than one, Dark Seed is an annoying game. It has bad puzzles, the way it tells the little story it has is unsatisfying and the use of a timer as a pivotal game design point is to be damned in the lowest pits of hell. But thanks to the use of the artwork of H.R. Giger there's still more appeal about it than many other games with similar issues. It might not make the game good, but it does make it intriguing.
Dark Seed is not sold anywhere at the moment. I'd guess the biggest issue in front of releasing it is the licensed artwork it uses. But those who look will probably find it easily enough.
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