The Dark Eye is a computer game of the horror genre, released in 1995 for the PC by the now-defunct software company Inscape. Upon its release the game attracted little attention from either critics or consumers, though it has received some attention since and, arguably, cult status. The game featured combined 3-D graphics, stop motion animation and video segments. With its unconventional interface, storyline, and characters, the game's peculiarity became its selling point. The characters are largely lifelike in appearance except for their clay-modeled faces, which are often distorted or feature grotesquely exaggerated features. This near-realism, sometimes referred to as the uncanny valley, contributed to the game's ambience of unease and anxiety. The character animation is stop-motion. Inscape did the art design of the puppets (lead artist Bruce Heavin) and had a Hollywood house actually make them. Inscape then hired two stop-motion animators and Russell Lees spent many, many hours in a hot, dark warehouse directing the animations. The working hours were from 7 am to 7 pm for about a month. They created computer-generated screenshots of the environments and shot against blue-screen, and they had a director of photography light them to match the environment. Also notable was the use of author William S. Burroughs as a voice actor: Burroughs provided not only the voice for the character of Edwin, but also voiceovers of two slide-show sequences illustrating the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "Annabel Lee". Another story, "The Premature Burial", can be found while reading the newspaper during "The Tell-Tale Heart", and the poem "To Helen" can be read while playing the victim in "Berenice". Thomas Dolby composed the game's music. ------------------- Structurally, the game was a point-and-click adventure fueled by the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The player could experience three of the stories ("The Cask of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart", and "Berenice") from the perspectives of both murderer and victim. The game presented no choices to make, no life-or-death decisions, and no points; similar to other point-and-click adventures like Myst, the game simply waited for the player to find the next hotspot or location, at which point another video would play to advance the plot. During the portions that were direct interpretations of Poe's stories, the player was constrained to follow the actions of the stories' characters. The player could carry only one item at a time. Much of the animation in The Dark Eye consisted of QuickTime movies, either full-screen or smaller looping segments framed by a static background. -------------------------
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What truly drew me in was the fact that it is based on stories from Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most well regarded authors in horror literature history alongside the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Junji Ito, and from what I heard of his stories, they are in fact really good, with The Black Cat being my favorite. And combining this with the really cool artstyle and how it is one of the great examples of video games as art despite being so obscure, I decided to give it a shot, despite me generally not liking games that are more so interactive museums. And damn was it worth it.
Let me start with the most obvious thing, and that is... In terms of presentation, this is an absolute marvel of a game, and it becomes clear just looking at the box art, and especially as you start a new game. The puppets for the characters all look cool, having this uncanny feel to them where they look realistically unsettling and terrifyingly stylized at the same time, contrasted with the rather primitive but still great looking tridimensional environments, and that's because I haven't mentioned the astounding slide-show sequences showcasing Annabel Lee and The Masque of Red Death (the latter in particularly singlehandedly made me give a 4 star rating for this game). And if those things weren't enough, the sound department is just as spectacular, with really great music that all really fit the scenes well, elevating many moments from it (honorable mentions to The Tell-Tale Heart and, again, The Masque of Red Death), as well as the voice acting which is very good, with a special praise going to William S. Burroughs, who alongside the visuals and music, make the slideshow sequences hit even harder, but the rest of the cast is just as good, especially when considering the time it was released, as voice acting in video games wasn't really taken seriously to begin with barring a few exceptions.
All of those things bring the stories, in this case The Cask of Amontillado, Berenice and The Tell-Tale Heart, to absolute life and make them a delight to see fully realized in a medium different from either books or movies, but the main story involving the house where the game takes place in is just as compelling and manages to be as good as the stories Poe actually wrote back then, every single one of them is very cool and the story involving Henry and Elise (and Uncle Edwin, the owner of the house) is great and when combined with everything else I mentioned before, make it even better.
Now as far as the gameplay, many people hesitate in calling this a proper game and more so a interactive story, where you have to click on things on a specific order to progress the story, it is even simpler than most point and click adventure games from the time, and here, unlike everything else, is perfectly fine, nothing spectacular and sometimes it can be rather difficult to tell what exactly you have to do to progress the story forward, but for what it is, its far eclipsed by the amazing everything else not related to it.
And that's the thing, The Dark Eye is not really something you play for its gameplay, much like other games like Gadget, you play for the experience, and its really something I actively recommend for someone if they are very into games as a art form and obscure stuff or even Edgar Allan Poe, but if you do, you should absolutely check this out, this game is one of the best examples of combining video games with other artforms outside of gaming in more direct ways, I may not like it as much as Blade Runner and Clive Barker's Undying, but I still really wish more games like this were released today.
A very obscure point-and-click horror from the mid-90s, I never would have even heard of The Dark Eye were it not for a recent article in PC Gamer. This is available to play in-browser but due to performance issues I decided to download the DOSBox version.
Heavily inspired by the works of Edgar Allen Poe, the game has you play an unnamed protagonist visiting his uncle's house whilst experiencing vivid nightmares. These nightmares are essentially retellings of some of Poe's most famous works, including The Telltale Heart, which you weave in and out of whilst an equally sinister original narrative unfolds in the waking world.
A "point-and-click" in the truest sense, there are no puzzles or any real choices involved in the gameplay; you essentially have to move around and click the right objects in order to make progress in the stories. While that may turn off a lot of people from the game, I didn't mind it at all since the storytelling on display is so strong.
Where The Dark Eye truly excels is in its visuals and audio. Sparse 3D environments are mixed with physical models using stop-motion animation - with how intentionally creepy the models are the effect is incredibly bleak and unsettling. Without spoiling anything, I will say that the final image of this game will haunt me for quite some time. Combine all this with some truly excellent writing and voice acting and you have one spooky story.
Since The Dark Eye is so difficult to track down legitimately, I feel this would be the perfect game to get a port or even a remaster from a company like Limited Run Games. A hidden gem in the truest sense, I highly recommend you find this creepy curio.
Scary Rating 5/10 - Overall Rating 8/10
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!”
