Requires: Any 256 color Macintosh, 4 MB RAM, hard drive with 13 MB free, System 6.0.8 or greater.
Protection: None
 
Futurist artist H. R. Giger is probably best know for design of the terrifying creatures in the movie Alien, though his work extends far beyond that. His most famous work, the book Necromonicon, is a masterpiece of horrific design: in picture after picture, man, woman and machine meld into one terrifying, biomechanical whole. It makes sense that a well-crafted science fiction yarn could explore the origins of his creations, how these horrendous mutations came into existence, and what they say about the future of humanity. Or perhaps it could explore a parallel world to ours, where our rolling green hills are replaced by Giger’s horrific terrains, buildings by his half-living constructs, and humans by his monstrous cyborgs. What better medium to use to tell this story then through an interactive computer game, in which actual Giger art is used? The idea is a good one which shows promise, but unfortunately Cyberdreams’ Dark Seed doesn’t quite live up to the idea’s potential.
In Dark Seed one plays Mike Dawson, hapless advertising whiz turned aspiring writer who is just looking for some peace and quiet. So he purchases an old Victorian house in Woodland Hills, California, where he hopes he can finally get started on that great American novel. But on arrival at his new home he discovers all his possessions, which were supposed to have been moved to his new home — missing. And the real estate agent is now mysteriously absent. Horribly tired, he collapses on a musty old bed and wakes some time later with a horrible headache resulting from a terrible nightmare. Or at least he thinks it was nightmare. In fact, an alien force, hoping to conquer the world, has planted an embryo in his skull which will awaken in three days... unless he finds a way to stop it.
The graphics in Dark Seed are very well done indeed, though they were originally drawn for the PC’s 320x200 screen size. The rescaling algorithm for the Macintosh version, which will size the graphics to either 12” or 13” monitors, is one of the better such algorithms, certainly far superior to the one used in Sierra games. The artwork seen in the normal world is rather pedestrian yet well done, but where the game really shines graphically is in the “dark world” where Giger’s scanned artwork is used. Done almost entirely in gray scale, as was Giger’s original work, the art is masterfully macabre and foreboding, perhaps the most warped and twisted images that will ever appear on your Macintosh’s screen. One can even begin to sympathize with Dawson as he ambles through this mechanical nightmare, trying desperately not to be eaten by “dark fido,” fried by the “dark sergeant,” or entombed by the brain-with-legs, the Drekketh Guard.
Mediocrity Reigns. The animation is also fairly nice though not outstanding, with characters moving around realistically. Background animation is limited, but that is acceptable since there is little call for it. In addition, Mike Dawson actually walks quickly. Dark Seed overcomes the pitfall that befalls so many other Macintosh graphic adventures, in which characters move at a snails pace, making gameplay infuriating. A fairly mediocre, repetitive soundtrack is included, which, though it changes from locale to locale, becomes awfully tiresome awfully quickly. All of the speech in the game is digitized, though the same male actor was used to digitize all the male voices, which becomes rather farcical when the “dark sergeant” sounds nearly the same as the normal world store clerk.
As an adventure game, however, Dark Seed seems to fall flat on its face. The plot never proceeds beyond a recycled B-movie script, and most of puzzles are of the “notice this small inconsistency in the graphics” variety. For instance, in order to finish the game you must notice that there’s a bobby pin lying on the floor in front of the librarian’s desk. Mark Dawson’s fate (and humanity’s, for that matter) rests on three almost unnoticeable black pixels on the ground. And that isn’t the only puzzle of that sort: there’s also a brown watch on a brown floor, and a gray handle in the middle of this mass of Giger art, to name a few. Another key part of the game can only be completed if you choose, out of ten products at the grocery store, to buy scotch. If you buy any three of the other products, you’re out of money and might as well restart the game, though you won’t know that for quite a while. This is not to say that Dark Seed is without clever puzzles. There are some, but they are simply far outnumbered by the half-witted ones.
A Bronx Cheer. The game interface is also fairly poor, especially for a Macintosh game. Entirely point and click in nature, there are three different cursors one can use: one for movement, one for picking up and manipulating objects, and one for looking at items. On the PC version, where the concept of the double-click is virtually unknown, one uses the second button to scroll through the different cursors. On the Macintosh, one must either shift-click or click in a certain area of the screen to change cursor function. This could easily have been accomplished with double and triple clicking, which would have made for a far superior interface.
The graphics are littered with objects that look like one could pick them up, but in reality few of them are mobile. The only way to find out whether one can actually get an item is to move the manipulate cursor over that object. If it then changes into a pointing hand instead of a flat hand, the player can add that item to Mike Dawson’s inventory. This results in one wildly moving the cursor across every inch of the screen, looking desperately for the damned bobby pin. This makes the game frustrating and rather pointless.
