Part 1

Inspired by the Clock Tower and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" LP threads, I decided to take us on a virtual tour of a rather creepy game that always bothered me when I was a kid.

Let's play Darkseed!

Darkseed is a hard adventure game - notably for its time limit and puzzles that require you to play through the game a few times to solve them. Furthermore, there's a lot of ways to render the game unwinnable, which is annoying. The voice acting is pretty bad, but the graphics were good for their time.

But most notably, the art in Darkseed is done by the disturbed vision of H.R. Giger. If you don't know who that is, well, Wikipedia can tell you more.

He's best known for designing the Alien from that movie with Sigourney Weaver and the alien whose title I can't recall. The music from Darkseed is creepy and as soon as I can figure out how to take movies ripped from Dosbox and put them on youtube, I'll post video from the game as well.

Just as a note, this is probably the creepiest game involving an alternate, horrific universe that doesn't rhyme with "Silent Bill".

But without further ado:

A rotating spaceship flies in from the horizon and lands next to this alien construction.

The title screen - the alien backdrop cuts into the real world, and this scary looking mansion.

"Slowbeef, why the fuck are you showing us the credits?"

"You'll see. Have patience, my pet."

Just in case you didn't believe me about H.R. Giger.

And now, the game's intro! Enjoy it in full video!

Uh...

Oh fuck...

Uh...

Well, that's the last time I eat a whole box of Steak-ums before I go to bed.

...Wait a sec, Mike Dawson? Isn't he one of the game's designers and producers? Yep, he also stars in it.

Well, good thing you slept in your clothes, Mike - that will save us the time to run to the hospital and get a fucking CAT scan right now.

Alright, that's not an option, so let's do something for Mike's headache. Head through the door on the right...

You're going to keep getting this messages until you take some aspirin from the mirror on the right.

Alright, let's take a shower. Maybe it was a bad dream after all.

Alright, now that that's over with, let's explore our creepy new house.

Hmmm. My adventure game sense is tingling. There's gotta be something significant about that coat... let's examine it...

I'm not convinced. Let's examine it again.

Aha! Let's manipulate it now.

Weird. The previous owner must have left it behind.

Ah, the study! And are those blueprints I see...?

They are! And helpfully, they even show the secret passages in Mike's new house! One in the library and one in the bedroom. Let's go exploring!

This is the world's easiest secret passage to find. Simply touch the right wall of the bedroom or library after reading the blueprints and voila!

Kind of a boring secret, though...

Oops! No time to explore! Someone's ringing the doorbell!

Hey, it's a postman with a package for Mike! What could it contain?

Oh, a baby doll...

What the...

...

...

...

Mike, we are NOT keeping that in our inventory.