(I played this on the CD-ROM version of the game!)

As we see the logo for Cyberdreams, as they are "developing new ways to amaze", we see some sort of strange alien ship reaching somewhere in a alien world, and then the name Dark Seed appears and the alien world is replaced by the image of a mansion, and then we see Mike Dawson getting impregnated by a alien embryo...

After a horrying nightmare, Mike Dawson awakens to the first day on his new house...

And now its up for Mike Dawson to find out about all the strange events happening in Woodland Hills.

HR Giger is one of the most well known artists in history, particularly when it comes to horror, alongside Junji Ito and Zdzislaw Beksinski. He was responsible for many things throughout his career, whether that thing is, of course, Ridley Scott's Alien, ELP (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)'s Brain Salad Surgery and much more. Giger has a very iconic style for his paintings, in this case his beatifully grotesque industrial hellscapes of flesh and steel, where man and machine were combined while tackling other mature themes like death, suicide, sex and more.

Obviously, other people would be inspired by Giger's paintings to create something equally as "RAD" (insert Darkwood here), but then we have Dark Seed, developed by Cyberdreams, a studio which would go on to develop the cult classic I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, based on the short story of the same name by Harlan Ellison, before that though they made this, and unlike I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, this game has kind of fallen into obscurity over the years, and after playing it, I can perfectly see why...

Because it's BAD, I could even say AWFUL!!!

Before I start tearing through it however, I want to start with the positives (which there aren't a lot to be honest):

First of all, visually it looks really good for its time. Initially the game was going to run on the standard 320x200 resolution that most games adopted, but Giger felt like it wasn't enough to handle his art, so he demanded Cyberdreams to increase the resolution to a higher standard (while reducing the amount of colors to 16 instead of the standard 256 at the time), and it shows. The Normal World and the spritework present in there makes Woodland Hills feel like a truly desolate town, separate from the rest of the world, with all the clashing between different kinds of architecture further contributing to it, and then we have the Dark World, coming directly from the mind of HR Giger, and most of his artwork is integrated astoundingly well, giving this genuinely creepy contrast to the Normal World's sterile but at the same time human town. Although it isn't perfect, the Keeper of the Scrolls is just a poor man's copy of Li 2, and the human spritework is somewhat dated, with Mike Dawson sticking out kind of badly in comparison to the otherwise fantastic background artwork, but in general these are rather minor complaints (especially in comparison to the other awful shit this game does). Like, when you look at a lot of the earlier LucasArts point and click adventure games from the 90s specifically they can kind of blend together, but this game's artwork make it unmistakably Dark Seed (and HR Giger), which is one of the reasons why I love games like Westwood's Blade Runner and Machinarium so much.

The only thing I like about the story of the game is the genuine mystery surrounding the Dark World, where even after beating it we still don't know a lot about it aside from the things we met there, but rather than hindering it, further makes the Dark World all the more ominous and otherworldly than it already is when combined with its art direction.

And speaking of art direction, I will say this: The HR Giger stuff is what truly make this game have even a single bit of ACTUAL ATMOSPHERE (since it would otherwise have probably fallen into obscurity even harder), because almost everything else besides these two things (and a few others) range from mediocre to HILARIOUSLY AWFUL!

First of all, the gameplay is abysmal. While functionally it is pretty simple, you have three different actions you can do with the mouse (walk, interact and examine), the real problem comes from everything else surrounding it, which is the embodiment of everything wrong with point and click adventure games: Pixel hunting? CHECK (out that bobby pin)! Moon logic (or should I say, Dark World logic)? CHECK! Dead ends (at jail)? CHECK! Timed events? Well guess what? CHECK! It's just unbearable, and as I mentioned, there are so many ways to get softlocked for commiting a mistake, whether that is not picking a item beforehand, not using a item at the correct time, or for fuck sake, even PICKING a item earlier will punish you. It's truly the "Dumb Ways To Die!" of point and click adventure games!

But if there is one point in the game which is like the EPITOME of bad in this game, what is it then? Well, there is one point in the game where you are sent into jail (because the aliens from the Dark World are controlling the police force in the Normal World, somehow), let me count all the times you can get softlocked just because of all the sections involving the jail (both the Normal World and Dark World ones):

1 - Not getting Delbert's business card (because you didn't buy the Scotch at the shop using the money that you probably forgot even existed).
2 - Getting the gun before getting sent into jail (straight up punishing players for doing certain steps earlier, wowie).
3 - Not putting atleast one of the three items under the pillow (one of those items aren't even twenty pixels large).
4 - Not putting the rope in the gargoyle statue at the Balcony (remember that chest and that crowbar).
5 - Using the invisibility headband at the wrong time (if you use the invisibility headband and reach the entrance to the alien jail, you're toasted).

The first three examples can happen just at that ONE moment you visit the jail in the Normal World ALONE. And a lot of those are plagued by the other problems like pixel hunting or moon logic.

I think that the way the game was designed is that you would ALWAYS lose the game atleast once when trying to beat this game (if you don't use a walkthrough or didn't get spoiled on the """""puzzles""""" beforehand), and you would need to bash your skull against the biomechanical walls of the Dark World over and over and over again until finally beating it, combine this with the slow movement and the atrocious comments Mike Dawson says when entering certain screens for the first time, restarting the game to get back at where you lost is made all the more agonizing by them. Though if I were to praise one thing about the gameplay, is that conceptually the idea of doing certain things in one dimension affecting the other is really creative, even if one of the few puzzles involving this idea present in this game is completely ridiculous and riddled with moon logic and dead ends, but other games such as.... UUUUUUUHHH... I guess The Messenger? (I know that's an nonsensical game to use as example in comparison to Dark Seed, but its one of those games that used a similar concept in much better ways).

Well, finally moving on, while the mystery and intrigue about Dark Seed's setting is certainly interesting, it could have been further enhanced if every single character wasn't thinner than an ant. While I can give the Dark World inhabitants somewhat of a pass since the Dark World does have the benefit of being an inherently mysterious setting (even if they are still shallow) plus their cool as hell designs (barring Keeper of the Scrolls), the characters from the Normal World unfortunately don't get that same treatment, but the worst offender for all of the characters is the unholy Mike Dawson.

Who the fuck is HR Giger?! Mike Dawson is the REAL draw to this game! His character is so asinine it makes the game almost hilarious to watch (NOT PLAY, JUST WATCH), his comments on almost everything is like the most obvious shit imaginable drawn out to multiple lines of nonsense, like, NO SHIT DAWSON, of course that is the inside of a police station!!! And who would have known that books manage to be scarier than a baby doll turning into a biomechanical monster? Well, I guess Mike Dawson is the one! Mike Dawson is somehow more otherworldly than the actually otherworldly creatures from HR Giger's paintings, and the voice of Mike doesn't help at all, even when he is facing those monstrous amalgamations of flesh and steel in the Dark World, he acts like nothing interesting is happening, he is just that much of a dorky chad!

I am almost reaching the end of this review I swear, I just want to talk about the music and voice acting, music is a mixed bag, sometimes ear damaging songs that feel like they came out of a baby show but make even System Shock 1 sound like exploring relaxing soundscapes in a Frutiger Aero world, sometimes they do manage to integrate pretty well into the game, the Dark World ones are thankfully not the Baby Shock (a mix of baby shows from the real TLC and System Shock 1) nonsense of the Normal World bar the cemetery (even that is ear bleeding though), but that's all par from the course at this point. The voice acting is mediocre (aside from the Dark World ones, which may not have good voice ACTING, but they do sound ominous for once, except the cop one, he sounds like a 65 year old man), but so was most voice acting from most games in the early 90s so I can give it a pass, Mike Dawson is GOD though!

I do acknowledge I was perhaps a tad too harsh on this game (heck even my rating is rather harsh), I had just beaten Blade Runner again the day prior to beating this, but one thing I can say for sure, I do not recommend playing this game, even if you want to play it for the HR Giger artwork or the ironic enjoyment of hearing Mike Dawson babbling about stuff, its not enough to redeem the infuriating gameplay this game generally suffers from, and in fact when I think more about this game, this reeks of a case where they had the cheese and knife at their hands, but they threw the cheese in the trash and put their knife in the ass, it may have been great at its time despite all the issues, but nowadays is just a spoiled relic of its time.

Truly a rough start to the studio that went on to make I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream!

EDIT: You know what? I was not harsh at all! Dark Seed is that bad!