We cross over to the world of ‘Dark Seed,’ a creative, if not problematic, point-and-click horror game that used the art of H.R. Giger for inspiration.

“These nightmares are giving me a mean headache.”

Game development can be grueling for tiny independent companies, especially when they’re just getting started and looking to stand out amongst the herd of competitors. CyberDreams’ approach of tackling mostly psychological horror adventure games was unique in itself for the early 90s, but what made the developer even more interesting is that they paired a renowned name from horror or science fiction, whether an artist or a writer, with each of their titles as the main hook. This strategy wasn’t always effective, but it led to some highly experimental games. One of the most interesting examples of this was CyberDreams’ premiere game, Dark Seed, which banked off of the haunting imagery of Swiss artist, H.R. Giger. Dark Seed and its sequel are far from perfect games, but they’re fascinating chapters in the evolution of horror gaming that deserve some love.

The general mind bending qualities of Dark Seed and its exploration into the duality of man has been played around with in other horror titles from the ’90s like Phantasmagoria, Harvester, and even the video game adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Half. However, Dark Seed and its sequel explore these ideas in a much more serious manner than these other games and absolutely has the most striking and impressive imagery of the lot. Just looking at screenshots from these titles makes you want to play them, which isn’t always the case with point and click games from the ’90s. It’s in the convoluted story and beyond clunky execution where the Dark Seed titles truly suffer and lose their shine.

Dark Seed was designed by Michael Cranford and Mike Dawson of CyberDreams Interactive, a company that would only make four games in their brief time in the industry. It’s also a little crazy that the game’s protagonist is named Mike Dawson and uses the developer’s likeness, something that Dawson claims initially started as a joke. All of the game’s artwork came courtesy of H.R. Giger and he was the influence behind the game’s Dark World and also had approval calls over the game, like how his artwork could only be used if the game was presented in high resolution 640 by 350 mode, rather than the standard 320 by 200 approach for VGA Mode point-and-click games (although this does limit the colors down to 16 from the typical 256, but it still works for Giger’s sterile artwork). Designers were accordingly given access to Giger’s entire library of artwork. After all of Giger’s artwork was scanned for use, all the graphics had to be manually recolored since this process made the artwork look flatter than intended. This work took six months to complete and demonstrates the level of effort that went into this project to properly capture Giger’s voice.

Dark Seed was initially developed for MS-DOS and Amiga, but it also had releases on Sega Saturn and PlayStation in Japan and nearly had an American Sega CD port (it got as far as magazines writing reviews for the game). Giger’s had many interests throughout his lifetime and played around in many arenas, but the Dark Seed games are his only video games, yet they’re very much representative of the ‘90s’ approach to the point-and-click video game genre and its dalliances with horror. It’s essentially Dark Seed and Alone in the Dark that helped set the path for horror on PC gaming.

In terms of its presentation, Dark Seed features that weird mix of real-life photography in a point-and-click setting where it’s not quite FMV sequences, but somewhere in between. The title’s music is pretty unassuming, but it does get appropriately tense at times, too. It’s also admirable to get full voice acting in this game and it’s not even that bad. As Mike searches the community, he must put scattered clues together before the aliens hatch the embryo that’s been implanted in his brain to take him over. The game embraces ambiguity in its conclusion where it turns out the librarian is the real world counterpart to Dark World’s “Keeper of the Scrolls” and that Mike has perhaps not overcome this problem.

Dark Seed’s dominating light and dark concept feels like an earlier version of Stranger Things’ Upside Down, or a considerably creepier take on A Link to the Past’s Light and Dark Worlds. Usually, the puzzles in the game involve you doing an action in the real world that corresponds to a change in the Dark World, but these things are often obtuse and don’t always make sense (like how turning on your car in the garage leads to the alien’s power generator activating). There’s also one bizarre exception that involves a pillow in a jail cell where the two worlds are literally connected that never gets properly explained and just feels like lazy design work.

What’s even worse is that the game’s most immersive feature is also the most controversial aspect in it. There’s a strict time limit on when certain puzzles or events need to be completed by, otherwise the game will get stuck in an unwinnable loop. There’s no clear indication that your experience is ruined either and that you need to start over, which makes it frustrating to ascertain if you’re just stuck or if it’s game over. There’s also a good deal of pixel-hunting over necessary items that you wouldn’t know are even there. A lot of this is a pain, like how if you don’t visit your neighbor and watch him play fetch with his dog, then you won’t be able to later distract the dog-like creature in the Dark World. Most adventure games operate off of this insane logic, but they at least won’t “break” the game if they go ignored.

This approach is certainly ambitious, but it’s also one that got attacked in many of the reviews and turns the title into a more frustrating experience than is necessary. Even Dawson himself expressed regret over this gameplay design when reflecting on the title with GamaSutra. “In retrospect, I think some of the elements put into the game to make it more challenging weren’t fair to the player. For example, I think there were critical events that, if the player missed by being in another part of the world, would make the game impossible to win.” Dawson also admits that he doesn’t remember exactly where this concept came from and if it was done to purely make the game more difficult or if there was a more practical programming explanation for it. That being said, these faults in the gameplay are worth getting past because Giger’s artwork lends itself to such a chilling, nightmarish world that’s very unique to the genre.

A lot of Giger’s intentions come to life in the game’s horror, which are brief, but memorable. A baby doll gets dropped off at Mike’s house and then mysteriously shifts into an alien. Giger’s Necronomicon is a major inspiration for the Dark World’s architecture and the game’s effective introduction where Mike’s alien embryo is implanted pays respect to Giger’s The Birth Machine, too. Even the fanged monster that Mike sees in the mirror seems like a nod to Giger’s work on Poltergeist II.

Giger’s eerie aesthetic may be all over Dark Seed, but the artist has also revealed that he really wasn’t involved with the game other than donating his library of artwork. In fact, the experience may have soured Giger from doing any further work in the gaming industry. “I didn’t have much to do with that [Dark Seed],” Giger claims to Imagine FX magazine back in 2008. “That was done without my real involvement, they just used my name. I didn’t create any new stuff for it. I wasn’t very pleased with that…”

Despite Giger’s indifference towards Dark Seed, the title was praised upon its release and Computer Gaming World famously said that it’s “the most integrated and effective feel for a horror adventure yet.” It’s also since gone on to have quite the legacy and still tops a number of scariest games of all times list. And that’s all for a title from the early ‘90s, which shows you the influence it’s had towards other psychological horror games, which was hardly even a genre yet. The title also gained some strange notoriety after the urban legend that Mike Dawson had a mental breakdown from the stress and pressures of designing the game and left the industry, but he actually just left the gaming industry and moved on to other fields (and even went on to write for Family Matters).

Dark Seed’s partnership with Giger was such a success they’d try to keep this sci-fi run going by partnering up with Syd Mead (Blade Runner, Tron) for their next title, CyberRace, and then enlisting Harlan Ellison’s help after that. It’s an admirable, unique strategy for game development, but unfortunately, one that they couldn’t continue to explore. Dark Seed was still enough of a critical darling that CyberDreams’ first sequel went into production.

There was a lot of turnaround at CyberDreams around the time of Dark Seed II’s production and the company was starting to face the financial trouble that would eventually take them under, but they still had the success of the first Dark Seed to build off of. David Mullich (of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream… and The Prisoner game fame) came on board as producer, which was a major asset this time around, and this time Raymond Benson (who would later become a James Bond novelist) took the duty of designer and writer, drawing a lot of his inspiration from Twin Peaks, interestingly enough. The game’s alternate Dark World can be tuned into via the radio and electronically in a way that very much feels like it would make Lynch smile. H.R. Giger’s artwork is again used for the inspiration and characters within the game’s Dark World, but he doesn’t actually contribute any new, original artwork to the game this time. However, the step up to SVGA graphics now makes everything look even better than it did in the original.

Dark Seed II is technically more “advanced” than its predecessor, which helps it accentuate the dark nightmares and bent reality that Mike faces, but it’s arguable if this actually improves the game or not. The game’s introduction is very cringe-y for example, and almost looks like it’s out of South Park or something. The game’s voice acting makes an interesting shift in quality and Mike now strangely sounds like he’s a decade younger. There are also dialogue trees to work through now, which are a nice step forward, plus the time limits and dead ends from the first game are also thankfully gone, too.

Dark Seed II is set a year after the first game. Mike Dawson’s mental state is still a mess and he suffers from lots of memory lapses from his trauma in the first game. He’s moved back to his hometown to live with his mother and he’s plagued over the death of Rita, his librarian ”girlfriend,” but he’s the main suspect in her murder. Mike exposes the town’s corruption in its various institutions and shines a light on the lowlifes as he tries to clear his name and find the real killer.

Mike’s journey leads to him spending some time at a creepy carnival, which makes for a fun location, but there’s a very frustrating hall of mirrors labyrinth puzzle that you need to work through multiple times. There’s a warped look at the Ancients’ court and justice system and an unexpected dating show parody segment towards the end within Mike’s subconscious. However, the best moments are the little glimpses of the weird residents of the community, like how Paul perpetually waters his lawn so it will look nice when the Ancients finally invade. There are some perplexing sequences that also really feel like Cooper’s “dis-tor-tion” journey in Twin Peaks: The Return. The duplicitous nature of Rita and her hidden dark side is also a very obvious shout out to Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer.

This time the Ancients have enslaved the Dark World and are hoping to do the same to the real world through the use of a massive beast known as a Behemoth. There’s also a Shape Shifter that’s been sent to Earth to behead individuals and use their heads to properly incubate the Behemoth to fruition. This is a stronger premise than what’s in the original game, but there could be more urgency and focus on catching the Shape Shifter and to reinforce the ticking clock element, but it never gets that much more intense.

The moments in the game that are actually horrifying remain few and far between, but there are still sequences that land. There’s an unnerving mirror at the end that distorts your appearance into several other characters from the game, which also acts as some disturbing foreshadowing, since it’s heavily implied that Mike’s friend is all in his head and he’s just a reflection of his craziness (as well as another Twin Peaks nod). It’s appreciated that you actually get to fight the Behemoth at the end, but it’s a very non-fight. Dark Seed II’s crown jewel is without a doubt the infamous head explosion sequence towards the end, which is genuinely upsetting, but really the only moment that goes that far.

Dark Seed II’s ending feels like it almost tries to be as complicated as possible. Evidently, Mike’s the crazy one and his one friend is just the Dark World equivalent of his other half. It’s this imaginary dark side of Mike that wins out and defeats him in the end. It’s an overdone kind of ending nowadays, but it works for the time. Plus, that final visual of Mike’s dark half riding away from Giger structures on a motorcycle is too damn good.

There’s also a rather chilling theory that perhaps gives both of these games too much credit that looks at Mike’s devolution between titles and justifies it by saying the entire first game was in Mike’s head. It would explain how Mike is ultra competent in the first Dark Seed, yet in the sequel he’s a weak man-child who lives with his mom. It’s even a reason for the character’s much whinier voice this time around. It helps that in the final ten minutes of the game, Mike is less sure of his actions and it feels like everything starts collapsing, almost like a mental self-destruct sequence that’s meant to protect his psyche. It’s a major head-trip of a theory that kind of justifies the whole experience. It’s also the trippy direction that most of CyberDreams’ titles go down.

The influence of Dark Seed and Dark Seed II can be felt by other games of the same time, like Harvester, as well as horror titles that came decades later, like Eternal Darkness. These games handle similar themes and then try to push them even further, but Dark Seed makes for a pretty ambitious open-ended experience for the early ‘90s. It was interested in challenging the gamer and to have them confront darkness, not just play a video game. Dark Seed II improved the formula of the original in many ways and a third entry in the series conceivably would have been even more polished. CyberDreams’ Interactive may no longer be in the business, but their few offerings to this niche sector of gaming have made ripples that are still reverberating through horror titles today.

Now, I must go tend to this headache. It’s just awful.