Classic point and click adventure games tend to have a cult following and The Dark Eye is one of these, especially due to the nature of the game being a point and click adventure game that used elements of rail games to create a new experience.. A re-release has been wanted for a long time and now we have one, albeit renamed to Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition. This rename was needed due to trademark issues with the famous German tabletop RPG also called The Dark Eye.
Bur what is Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition / The Dark Eye? Simply put, it is a surreal interactive retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic stories. The psychological horror adventure game game involved the famous writer William S. Burroughs narrating and doing readings of The Masque of the Red Death and Annabel Lee as well. To say this was different for a point and click game would be an understatement.
The visuals made full use of animation at the time to create something off-putting and uncanny that left you creeped out in a good way. Obviously I cannot give spoilers due to the nature of point and click games, but the puzzles are well done and manage to stand above many others of the time. There was an intuitiveness that made you feel like a genius and helped you appreciate the work of Poe even more.
This all being said, Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition is not the best way to experience this classic title. This is GMedia’s first game published to Steam, and it seems a bit of a mess at times. The game is played through ScummVM and has cloud saves and achievements, but you need to close and re-open the game to enable achievements and this is just the start of the weirdness. All the original bugs and glitches are still here and not fixed in any way, but there are also new bugs and audio glitches that ruin the experience including the ending.
Many other classic point and click games have been re-released in great shape and given new polish, but with Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition there is nothing like this. There are no quality-of-life improvements,or additional language support or even subtitles. Combined with the bugs introduced by ScummVM, this feels like a lesser version of the release, especially with how bloated the install is with data not needed to run the game.
I wanted to like this release of Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition, but this is just not it. I am happy the game is available for more people to play, but this is just not a good way to play the game. The Dark Eye was unique, it was innovative and it pushed new ideas in what adventures games could be. I would say this is a barebones release, but it is less than that due to the numerous issues with bugs and glitches ruining the experience.
I hope GMedia can fix this because Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition / The Dark Eye deserves a truly great re-release. But for it to get there, GMedia needs to really time the time and fix the experience and make it a worthy release. As it is now, this is not worth the time spent playing.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided