“For the wild narrative for which I am about to tell, I neither expect nor ask for belief. It would be mad to expect such a thing and in a case where my own senses reject their evidence. Yet I’m not mad…and I certainly do not dream.”
I got into video games through my Windows 95 PC as a child, because of that I have a great fondness for the 90's multimedia CD-ROM era. There was a real drive of creativity and experimentation in that time of pushing games as an artistic medium in different ways that sadly went away for some time as the modern AAA industry began to coalesce and calcify in the 2000’s. The Dark Eye is one of my personal favorite examples of that period having first played it several years ago and a game that still shines as one of the medium’s unsung artistic achievements.
The Dark Eye is a wonderfully haunting adaptation of several of classic American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s works, namely The Cask of Amontillado, The Telltale Heart, and Berenice, as it places you in both the perspectives of the killers and their victims. The Masque of the Red Death and the poem, Annabel Lee, are also included, but as narrated cut scenes. The game is a first person adventure game similar to Myst but it has no real traditional puzzles, it’s mainly interacting with the game world to hit/interact with hotspots and progress the stories, so it’s very much like a proto-narrative exploration game that would be codified 15 years later. This mainly works fine, but there are a few parts where it can be a bit obtuse; like how early on in the Cask of Amontillado story as Montresor you have to approach a screen in a certain way diagonally to progress that you don’t need to do anywhere else in the game. The game is a faithful adaption of the stories so there won’t be any surprises if you’re familiar with Poe’s works, but The Dark Eye still does a superb job bringing them to life and placing you into them.
The game’s art design is phenomenal and one can tell straight away from just the cover art alone, which is one of the best. (It’s especially striking seeing it in person, having finally been able to obtain an original big box copy some time ago) The characters are all stop-motion models and while their animation is stymied due to the limitation of 90’s FMV quality they still look fantastically eerie, what with their gaunt and eyeless faces. The music, composed by Thomas Dolby, is hauntingly ambient and also just greatly benefits the game’s macabre atmosphere. The voice-acting is overall quality too; one of the most notable being William S. Burroughs, acclaimed Beat Generation author, who voices the player character’s uncle in the game’s framing device as well as the narrator of Annabel Lee and Masque of the Red Death.
The Dark Eye is just a clear labor of love that stands as legitimately one of the best adaptions of Poe’s work. It’s a true shame that this game has fallen into obscurity as it has not been re-released officially in more than 25 years. Abandonware sites do host the game and I encourage people to play it because it really is an underrated masterpiece if you can tolerate a teensy bit of old school PC adventure game jank. The Dark Eye is the type of game we just don’t really get much of anymore even with the variety and creativity of the modern indie scene and really should be experienced.
“In Pace Requiescat!”
I got into video games through my Windows 95 PC as a child, because of that I have a great fondness for the 90's multimedia CD-ROM era. There was a real drive of creativity and experimentation in that time of pushing games as an artistic medium in different ways that sadly went away for some time as the modern AAA industry began to coalesce and calcify in the 2000’s. The Dark Eye is one of my personal favorite examples of that period having first played it several years ago and a game that still shines as one of the medium’s unsung artistic achievements.
The Dark Eye is a wonderfully haunting adaptation of several of classic American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s works, namely The Cask of Amontillado, The Telltale Heart, and Berenice, as it places you in both the perspectives of the killers and their victims. The Masque of the Red Death and the poem, Annabel Lee, are also included, but as narrated cut scenes. The game is a first person adventure game similar to Myst but it has no real traditional puzzles, it’s mainly interacting with the game world to hit/interact with hotspots and progress the stories, so it’s very much like a proto-narrative exploration game that would be codified 15 years later. This mainly works fine, but there are a few parts where it can be a bit obtuse; like how early on in the Cask of Amontillado story as Montresor you have to approach a screen in a certain way diagonally to progress that you don’t need to do anywhere else in the game. The game is a faithful adaption of the stories so there won’t be any surprises if you’re familiar with Poe’s works, but The Dark Eye still does a superb job bringing them to life and placing you into them.
The game’s art design is phenomenal and one can tell straight away from just the cover art alone, which is one of the best. (It’s especially striking seeing it in person, having finally been able to obtain an original big box copy some time ago) The characters are all stop-motion models and while their animation is stymied due to the limitation of 90’s FMV quality they still look fantastically eerie, what with their gaunt and eyeless faces. The music, composed by Thomas Dolby, is hauntingly ambient and also just greatly benefits the game’s macabre atmosphere. The voice-acting is overall quality too; one of the most notable being William S. Burroughs, acclaimed Beat Generation author, who voices the player character’s uncle in the game’s framing device as well as the narrator of Annabel Lee and Masque of the Red Death.
The Dark Eye is just a clear labor of love that stands as legitimately one of the best adaptions of Poe’s work. It’s a true shame that this game has fallen into obscurity as it has not been re-released officially in more than 25 years. Abandonware sites do host the game and I encourage people to play it because it really is an underrated masterpiece if you can tolerate a teensy bit of old school PC adventure game jank. The Dark Eye is the type of game we just don’t really get much of anymore even with the variety and creativity of the modern indie scene and really should be experienced.
“In Pace Requiescat!”