Many horror fans have braved the world of Scorn, a video game inspired by the biomechanical artwork of H.R. Giger, but an officially licensed video game based on Giger’s art released 30 years earlier – the 1992 cult classic Dark Seed. Despite sharing the same disturbing aesthetic, Scorn and Dark Seed took very different approaches to creating a game around biomechanical horror. The Serbian developer Ebb Software designed Scorn with the idea of being thrown into the game’s world, as players see their character awaken in a hellish, alien landscape without any context or explanation. This lack of backstory or rationalization lends to the nightmarish feeling of Scorn. Despite using official Giger art, Dark Seed presented a more coherent story set in modern-day America, with Giger’s imagery used to illustrate an alien invasion.
Despite its eight-year development cycle, fans could tell from the earliest previews that Scorn would deliver a true “Gigeresque” world of horrors. Although it is only inspired by Giger, rather than using his actual art like Dark Seed, Scorn arguably delivers a truer H.R. Giger video game experience. Dark Seed was the first game developed by Cyberdreams, a company that went on to make other point-and-click adventure games which include the beloved gaming adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Following the conventions of other popular adventure games, Dark Seed contained liberal doses of humor. This helped offset the chilling Giger artwork, and made the game memorable for many, but it did pull the focus away from horror and dread, unlike Scorn.
Unlike Scorn, Dark Seed Offered Humor To Offset Its Disturbing Imagery
The story of Dark Seed is closer to the works of Stephen King than most other narratives based on Giger’s art. It follows Mike Dawson, a writer who has moved to the town of Woodland Hills. Where Scorn is the most horrific video game in years, Dark Seed’s content was less terrifying than its menacing Giger cover art led many to believe. The game begins with Dawson experiencing a nightmare of an alien embryo being injected into his head, and the player is then left to investigate the mysteries of the mansion and the eerie town surrounding it. Some truly gonzo moments follow, which straddle the line between horror and absurdity, but they did give the game a unique character.
Dark Seed used a quasi-real-time system, in which Dawson has three days to unearth the truth and prevent an alien invasion. Eerie images of biomechanical horrors from another dimension are contrasted with humorous adventure game tropes like amusing names on gravestones, or whimsical elements like a lawyer who gives Dawson a literal “get out of jail free” card. Much of the logic behind Dark Seed’s puzzles seem arbitrary and opaque. When juxtaposed with the convoluted process to solve Scorn’s very first puzzle, involving sliding cranes, however, Dark Seed could be seen as simple and straightforward.
Dark Seed involves the hero giving his neighbor Scotch, so he can steal a stick that was being used to play fetch with a dog, and then using that stick to distract a hulking alien sentry beast in another dimension. Opening doors in his home creates passageways in the alien ship in the parallel world, much like the puzzles seen in the recent horror hit The Medium. Though the logic of many of the required actions is baffling, like Dawson tying a rope to a gargoyle to climb down from the second story of his own home, it is still easier to follow than progressing through Scorn, where there is no traditional narrative to speak of, much less any story-based hints or directions.
Dark Seed’s Parallel Worlds Design Is Clever, But Ambiguity Makes Scorn A Scarier Game
Clever design elements, like hiding objects in a cell in the Woodland Hills police station, and accessing them in the otherworldly prison, are reminiscent of games that followed the third Zelda’s Dark World model, where making changes in the “real world” impacts its dark counterpart. Following hints found in diaries, along with cryptic messages and objects delivered to his home each morning, Dawson can eventually send the invader’s ship away and destroy the mirror that connects the worlds using a specially energized hammer. This made Dark Seed’s horror manageable and definable, where Scorn’s ambiguous terror is the unsurmountable stuff of nightmares.
