Have You Played... Dark Seed?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Dark Seed spliced H. R. Giger's art with a point and click adventure game to uneven but memorable effect.

When I was compiling our list of the 25 Best Horror Games on PC earlier this year, I had Dark Seed on the longlist. As I chipped away at the titles on that list, Dark Seed somehow remained, always lingering at the lower levels but hanging on around position 25. Right before drawing up the final list, I dipped into the games under consideration that I hadn't played recently. Replaying Dark Seed is the best way to knock it off any list of the Best Anything.

It's a bit of a stinker and that's such a shame because the parts that work really fucking work. The oh-so-ordinary setting that flickers into the most uncanny and horrifying alternate reality is pitch perfect, and Giger's contributions are superbly menacing. Sadly, in what appears to be an effort to make the horror all the more real, developers Cyberdreams decided that it should be possible to find yourself in an unwinnable state. Repeatedly. Time ticks away and if you don't complete specific tasks to schedule, you'll be forced to restart.

Despite that annoyance, and some poor writing, Dark Seed is worth a look for horror adventure completionists because it really isn't quite like anything else out there.