| Heart of Darkness | |
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| Developer(s) | Amazing Studio |
| Publisher(s) | Interplay |
| Designer(s) | Eric Chahi |
| Released | July 31 1998 (PS1) August 31 1998 (WIN) |
| Genre | Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Ratings | ESRB: E (Everyone) USK: 12+ OFLC: G8+ |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, PlayStation |
| Media | 2 CD-ROMs (PS1) 1 CD-ROM (WIN) |
- For the Joseph Conrad novel, see Heart of Darkness. For other uses, see Heart of Darkness (disambiguation).
Heart of Darkness is a 1998 video game by Amazing Studio and released by Interplay for Microsoft Windows-based PCs and the PlayStation. A Game Boy Advance port was announced in 2001 but never released. It is the first game to have its score recorded by an orchestra (though, because of delays, it was not the first to be released with a full orchestral soundtrack).
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Plot
The game follows Andy, a regular child who hates his teacher, loves his dog, and is afraid of the dark. One day, Andy and his dog, Whiskey, head for the park to watch a solar eclipse. During the eclipse, Whiskey disappears. In a flurry of childhood imagination, Andy heads for his treehouse, where he keeps his "inventions", and jumps inside a spaceship to find his dog. Of course, he actually does take off, and finds himself in another world, called the Darklands. Inhabited by creatures of the night and ruled over by The Master of Darkness, the Darklands are extremely dangerous. Andy must find it in himself to rescue his dog, find a way home, face his fears, and enter the Heart of Darkness itself. In his journey he encounters "Amigos" - winged beings who are also terrorised by the Master of Darkness. They are very friendly and help Andy whenever they can. Andy accidentally comes across a mysterious glowing magic green stone that grants magical powers to anyone who touches it, as long as the stone is in one piece. With the help of the Amigos, Andy believes they can fight back those dark forces. Later in the game, the stone is brought to the Dark Lair, the house of the Master of Darkness. Andy and his friends then decide to use the stone to bring down the entire Dark Kingdom by neutralizing the Master of Darkness. However, the Master won't give up so easily...
Gameplay
Heart of Darkness is a platform game in the vein of Another World, a game also created by Eric Chahi. The player controls Andy, who has the ability to run, jump, walk, climb and somersault. In addition to this, Andy can attack or defend himself by using either a plasma gun or by throwing magic energy, depending on which section of the game is being played. The magic energy can be used to grow or destroy trees, and either weapon can be used in a variety of poses. Although classified as jump-n-run, Andy can climb up rocks, swim under water and generally can perform a lot of actions. The game also sometime requires three keys to be pressed simultaneously that can be in some cases a problem for low-end keyboards. The game is linear and straightforward. The player spends the game completing puzzles, timing movements, or simply moving in order to get to the next screen. Backtracking to previous screens is rarely required, except near the end of the game while Andy is reassembling the Magic Rock. The game is noteworthy for the number of disturbing ways the young hero can be killed, whereas most modern games remove children as NPCs altogether to avoid situations where terrible fates may be brought upon them. It's typical for games in the sub-genre of realistic 2d platformers (such as Another World, Flashback, their sequels and the first Prince of Persia games) to extend this realism to death sequences, some of them (including Heart) occasionally using cutscenes. This is in contrast to more cartoonish platformers, such as Super Mario Bros., the Sonic the Hedgehog series and the Commander Keen series, where the character simply falls off the screen. Andy can be crushed, devoured, incinerated and drowned in a variety of ways, not graphically but neither discreetly.
Creation and reception
Heart of Darkness took four years to develop. These four years were spent creating the game's musical score, the graphics, and the FMV sequences. There was a bidding war to distribute the game which Interplay won. The game was released to generally good reviews. The most common complaint was the short length of the piece; most of the game's two CDs were made up of the FMVs. However, the public did not take much of an interest.
