Horror Soft, 1990

Every movie and TV series got a computer game license in the early 1990s, and these were rarely good. Horror Soft's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark was a rare exception.

It doesn't have all that much to do with 1988 horror-comedy film of the same name, but that's really not a problem. Like the film, Elvira has inherited property and has found a recipe book of spells that she can tap into.

This time, however, it's a castle in England, and instead of being up against conservative US America and a scheming warlock, Elvira is facing off against mediaeval witch-queen Emelda and the unquiet dead that she's brought along with her, conveniently allowing this modern-set game to have the look and feel of a fantasy RPG.

To tackle this, the Mistress of the Dark has... placed a small ad in the local paper and hired the first person to come along and answer it. That's you. You don't get a name, and you don't get to be Elvira, but you do get to interact with her.

This is one of my favourite games that I've never finished. I adore the lush atmosphere, the lovingly rendered B-movie gore, the adventure-game/flick-screen dungeon crawling RPG hybrid gameplay and interface, fantastic soundtrack, and the presence of bisexual icon Elvira.

It is proper hard, though – combat is in real time, enemies respawn, you only get limited magical reagents, and dozens of gory deaths await you.

While all this is going on, you have a series of adventure puzzles to work out, many of them by gathering information from books and conversation. It's not always immediately clear where to use specific items, however, and some are single-use and can be used in the wrong place.

Horror Soft would later rebrand as Adventure Soft and continue making seminal British adventure games, notably the Simon the Sorcerer series.

I'm strongly tempted to throw this on the Steam Deck and officially declare that Halloween 2022 will not be over until I've finished it. Wish me luck with the touch controls.

Buy it for 4.99€ on GOG – https://www.gog.com/fr/game/elvira_mistress_of_the_dark

Or with its sequel for 8.49€ – https://www.gog.com/en/game/elviras_horror_bundle

Either way, play it on more recent hardware using ScummVM: https://www.scummvm.org/ (Your preferred DosBox is also fine. Works fine in FreeDOS on vintage kit, too.)

Screenshots

I have entirely misplaced my extensive collection of proper screenshots, so here it is running on 3DS.

#ScummVM #3DS #DOS #DOSBox #DOSgames #AdventureGames #HorrorGames #DungeonCrawler #Elvira #RetroGaming

Silicon Knights, 1996

This melodramatic, bloody and gothic vampire action-RPG for PlayStation and Windows 95 epitomised the “games for grown-ups” zeitgeist surrounding Sony's console, and is a fantastic reminder that grimdark can (and arguably should) also be fun.

A nobleman murdered and transformed into a vengeful vampire, our antihero Kain is set with the task of restoring peace to the doomed land of Nosgoth by slaughtering the Circle of Nine demented keepers of

Its perspective, puzzles and upgradable stats, spells and abilities always feel to me like someone started by asking “what if Zelda, only metal?”

Exactly how bloody a trail of slaughter you leave behind you is up to you, and there are no significant consequences for putting entire villages to the sword.

Kain never feels overly fragile, and you can restore your health by feed on living, human foes once you get them to the brink of death.

The top-down isometric graphics are dripping with atmosphere and I'm a huge fan of games that use this perspective.

Although you can't get in much casual chat with NPCs, Nosgoth feels like a vibrant, living (...dying?) world, and combat is very satisfying.

The 3D-rendered cut scenes have not exactly aged well, but nonetheless have that hauntingly lo-fi PS1 era charm.

Although it starts by railroading you along a fixed path, the game's plot becomes more convoluted and its world more open as you progress. I'm having a lot of fun with this replay.

Once out of print, Blood Omen was hard to come by for many years, following a legal battle over rights to the game's intellectual property between Silicon Knights and publisher Crystal Dynamics, which ultimately hung to the Legacy of Kain series.

Fortunately, you can now buy it on GOG for 6.99€: https://www.gog.com/game/blood_omen_legacy_of_kain

It works nicely with both joypad and mouse on Pop!_OS Linux via Lutris using the GOG version installer at https://lutris.net/games/blood-omen-legacy-of-kain/ (lutris:blood-omen-legacy-of-kain-gog)

The series would never return to Blood Omen's gameplay or graphical style. Although the sequels retained the setting, characters and atmosphere, the first in the series remains my favourite.

Screenshots

#LinuxGaming #ActionAdventure #Lutris #PS1 #HorrorGames #ActionAdventure #HackAndSlack #Vampires #RetroGaming

Rovio, 2005-2006

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear – https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak – https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare – https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

Screenshots

#Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #Puzzle #RetroGaming #Isometric

Ubi Soft, 1986, 1988, 1990

One of Ubisoft's (née Ubi-Soft) first games, Zombi, was an unlicensed adaptation of George A. Romero's 1978 film, Dawn of the Dead, going so far as to share the film's Italian title.

Originally released in 1986 on the Amstrad CPC, Zombi is a first-person, flick screen action-adventure game, and is absolutely a proto-survival horror game. Combat against zombies and a hostile gang is real-time.

Arriving on the roof of a shopping mall in a helicopter that's now out of fuel, you control Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick and Patrick (named after the dev team).

Every member of the party can and must be controlled individually to allow you to survive long enough to collect fuel and get back to the copter.

Collectible objects are marked blue in the CGA DOS version of 1988, which wisely uses a monochrome palette with coloured highlights. Controls in this version are keyboard-based, and involve using the arrow keys to navigate around an icon bar and on-screen hotspots. This can get a little tense during real-time action sequences.

Download the EN/FR DOS version from Abandonware France – just unpack and run the COM file with DOSBox-X (or your own preferred DOSBox fork).

I actually recommend playing one of the other versions – my personal favourite is the Amiga edition, which gives you the luxury of point and click mouse controls, colour graphics, improved sound and very on-point music.

You can find it at MyAbandonware – this download is EN only. Unpack until you find an ADF file and play using FS-UAE.

The franchise was unexpectedly (kind of, ish) raised from the dead in the form of 2012's ZombiU for WiiU, later ported to Windows, PS4, and Xbox One under the title of Zombi.

Lemon Amiga Walkthu – English: https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1851

Dokokade Walkthru – French: https://jeux.dokokade.net/2017/01/18/soluce-retrocompatible-zombi-amstrad-et-amiga/

Screenshots

#RetroGaming #DOS #Amiga #Horror #Zombie #Zombi #SurvivalHorror #retro #Review