Dark Seed

pretty simple game

This game is frustrating, but it was too atmospheric for me to give up. Going further into the story it becomes more and more captivating.

I played every version of this game, simply to see the difference between them. The Amiga (both floppy and CD) version isn't the best, since it was in low resolution but it beats the DOS versions adding some animation in the background and adding the dog, which is a nice touch because a part of the story becomes more coherent.

The Italian patch for the floppy version was made badly, since it doesn't match the actual English speech and the words "going mad" were translated using swearing words (there's no swearing in the entire game). The patch for the CD is better though.

It's really easy to get softlocked in this game.

Has anyone got the Win 3.x version to work?

A very impressive graphics and unique sound effect (with sampled voices - CD32 version is fully "talkie"). Unfortunately when it comes to the gameplay, the game suffers from typical basic conceptual mistakes. The story is linear and time is crucial making some important events easy to miss thus completion of the game without a walkthrough might be a problem and many activities needs to be repeated. However the game is not long so maybe some players will not be repelled by its disadvantages.

El Noble Pueblo Español Te Desea Muchas Las Gracias. Ahora Podremos Disfrutar La Grandeza De Miguel De David Y Las Ilustraciones De Juan Rueda Ginés.

¡Sí!

Amiga
Spanish floppies :
https://archive.org/details/amiga_darkseed_spa_kfraw

DOS
French floppies :
https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=75&fic=liens

German CD :
https://archive.org/download/redump_pc_D/Darkseed%20%28Germany%29%20%28En%2CDe%29.7z

Spanish CD :
https://archive.org/details/dark-seed-pc-cd-es

Japanese Windows 3.1 CD :
https://archive.org/details/darkseed-namco

Macintosh
English floppies and patch :
https://macintoshgarden.org/games/dark-seed-floppy-version

English and Japanese CD versions and patch :
https://macintoshgarden.org/games/dark-seed-cd-version

Good old horror classic game with svga 16 colrs graphics , with a strange color palette, or in black and with the style of the writer. The colors mode should not exist but it was for differentiating the two world. Overall graphics are good, sound and voice ok, music nothing to remember. One point are the digital sound too much loud over the midi music. frustration is on time, which i think is very short (perhaps my computer is too fast), but you have just the time to do all actions in days without loosing it examinating all possibilities or whatching the graphics. It's more a try again one, when you know what to do you do it straight. PS: no luck with 1.5p version, but cdrom 1.5 is OK.

Ez a játék a kedvencem!

A classic point n click body horror, i got it to work via dosbox, but the setup took much longer to setup.

anyway the game itself is huge nostalgia ride for me however, because of it's old school approach to point-and-click, you can easily get lost, due to how the directios, item and clues can be vague at times, at the beginning of the game after walking around the house and the neighborhood, i can't seem to know where im suppose to go or what items i have to pickup do, after almost 2 hours of dead ends, i gave in the a simple walkthrough, and my reaction was "YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!", it was here in plain site, blended in the background, no wonder i didn't spot it on my first try.

it's not the first game that did this to me but at least the puzzles are not stupidly difficult unlike "Monkey Island" or "Discworld" wIth it's BS logic puzzles that almost made me go insane. point and click games from the day 1 until maybe 2003 where unfair when it comes to directions, puzzles and clues. the sequel "Dark Seed II" i think is much better game, less confusing and more focused, however it's a Win3x game not dos.

At the time this was released I was a C64 owner, I was really envious of my PC owning mate, Richard with some of the games he could play. It was only a couple of years later I finally left school and treated myself to a Packard Bell PC and the one genre I really got sucked up into was graphic adventure point and clicks. Such was the popularity of the genre and number of games available, I never got to get a copy of Darkseed which was one of those games "one that got away". I finally tried this as abandonware in the 2010s and really loved the setting and mood given by this game. Definitely worth a look.

I played this game on a Mac and was so into it, but near the end the game would end with a FATAL ERROR message. Hoping to finally play it through to the end now!

EDIT: Not the final season of S.T. ;-)
Also, to add ‘Dark Seed’ / ‘ST’: Victor Creel’s Victorian mansion & Vecna’s recurring image of grandfather clock.

. . . (2022) fourth & final season of ‘Stranger Things’ —WHAT!?— Joyce Byers receives a doll packaged in a box and hand-delivered to her door by the mailman? . . . The Dark Seed parallels undeniable. ;-) lol, love these connections! —Rob P. Ackerman

Finally, my little review and backstory how I found out about this game.

I played the Japanese PlayStation (PS1, PSX) version of the game (Never release in the west, only in Japan!) oddly, on an ("ehemm") hardmodded PS1 I picked up. (this was several years ago, I got my first PlayStation when I was younger more on that later.)

I burned nearly the whole library of games for the console (Mostly English games, several Japanese games.) via that rom site that was raided because of Big N, and tested each game for 10 mins. average and came across this and it perplexed me and its been on my mind ever since, so I've got it again now. (My modded PS1 Died on me when i tested all the burned games, ain't that something HAHA. Plus my PlayStation I got when I was younger eventually got modded and died on me as well. Hard mod chips are bad. AVOID THEM!)

But, Yeah that's how I found out about this game, I can't wait to play it.

Oh yeah, Enjoy people!

AGJERDE and GIGERFAN pretty much near enough-ish said what I've said but just cleaned it up a bit and provided a more iron-clad solution for those who are struggling. (Sorry AGJERDE and GIGERFAN and others.)

Anyway, notes:

I've noticed when you run the game that the files START.EXE and TOS.EXE interchange while playing the game (It does it automatically when the game is booted with "ds", DOSBox tells you what file is running at the top of the window when actively playing in windowed mode.)

The game starts like it should, (Title, credit crawl, disturbing but funny dream cutscene at the beginning with the protagonist etc.) using the START.EXE but then (This is when most people trying, especially the ones who commented (And me earlier today.)), to get past the rainbow coloured static/pixels) it uses the TOC.EXE for the gameplay, the fix should remedy that error and play flawlessly between cutscenes and game.

I've only played up until you get the package/box when the courier ring the doorbell or knocks on the door followed by the cutscene with the baby/alien (Whatever it is!) and it indeed switches back to the PLAY.EXE for cutscenes and back to TOC.EXE for gameplay.

I tried to work around the floppy version from this site but to no avail, on the floppy version it asks for Disk 1 at the exact point where the CD version messes up pre fix, so I downloaded the floppy version somewhere else (Sorry MyAbandonware) and it worked perfectly!

I will play this game another time but follow the guide to my fix and it should be fine.

Though I'd let Y'all know in-depth why this was happening.

Enjoy!

Here's the fix for the CD Version:

1. Instead of mounting the .cue from the .bin/.cue files via IMGMOUNT and using the INSTALL.EXE inside said .cue VIA DOSBox, Download ISOBuster (This will help you open said .bin/.cue files. Very handy program/app whatever you call 'em these days.)

2. After installing ISOBuster, run the program, click on FILE OPEN IMAGE FILE, locate the folder or whatever directory where the .bin/.cue files are and select the .cue file.

This will open the files as I previously mentioned, on the left pane is the path of the contents (CD SESSION 1 TRACK01 DARKSEED151) it should show the expanded path, LEFT-Click on DARKSEED151, (It has a red box with the letters ISO next to it.) in the right pane it shows a DARKSEED Folder, a INSTALL.EXE (as mentioned), a README Text File and a .WRI File.

RIGHT-Click on the DARKSEED FOLDER and RIGHT-Click Extract Folder, choose the destination (Just put it in the directory where your DOSBox game(s) etc. are.) and close, uninstall, whatever your preference with ISOBuster when finished.

3. Now we have the meat of the files to run the game, put the .bin/.cue files in your DOSBox game directory (or in your Dark Seed Folder for example.), then we just have to IMGMOUNT the .bin/.cue files with DOSBox for succession.

For those who don't know how to IMGMOUNT or forgot and are too lazy to check the DOSBox Wiki (I sometimes forget... It happens!)

(NOTE: Put in the full directory of the location of the .bin/.cue files when image mounting, to be on the safe side.)

IMGMOUNT (pick any available virtual drive letter A:-Y: (Z: is already in use with DOSBox and most people I'm guessing mount virtual drive with drive letter C: when booting games etc.)) "yourmounteddriveletter:" (e.g. A:-Y: not including your chosen IMGMOUNT virtual drive letter.) \"dosboxgamesdirectory" (where your games are located.) \"gamedirectory" (darkseed folder, 8 character limit (name of folder) for DOS, so it's perfect.) \"folderwith.bin.cuefiles" (optional but I prefer to put it in a folder to keep the files tidy, I'm weird like that (OCD), ha.) \"darkseed.cue" -T CDROM

For example it will look like this, (the DSCD folder is optional):

IMGMOUNT D: C:\DOSBOX\DARKSEED\DSCD\DARKSEED.CUE -T CDROM

4. When the .cue is mounted and you see the MSCDEX installed message, it's time to boot up the game, USE the DS.BAT file to boot so type "ds", (without quotes.) Simple.

5. ???=PROFIT.

6. My sincerest apologies for the wall of text, I'm just trying to help.

to anyone not wanting to go through the history of comments here to get the game up and running - the floppy version will work without too much fuss - just keep in mind that you're supposed to run 'ds.bat' instead of 'start.exe' to avoid the game hanging up.
The cd version has different sounding music and a lot more voice cues - still you use dosbox to run it, but since it's a cue/bin you'll need to mount it in dosbox and run the installer - if you don't do that, the game will mess up after the opening cut scene.
How to mount the cd
https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/IMGMOUNT
If you want to convert the bin to iso, use this tool
http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/WinBin2Iso

To avoid avoid the crash at the alien implant scene in the intro, try mounting the disc in DosBox:
mount c c:\[your path]
imgmount d c:\[your path]\darkseed.cue -t iso
d:
install [wait for install, then type 'ds' to run]
Next time you wanna play, do the same mount and imgmount, then:
c:
cd darkseed
ds