The Dark Eye to re-open as Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Re-release of Inscape's classic adaptation of three Poe short stories coming this year to Steam

Inscape's The Dark Eye remains perhaps the quintessential interactive Edgar Allan Poe experience thirty years after its initial release. The problem is, it's rare to find these days so not nearly enough people have played it. That will change this year, however, as the classic original adventure is returning in an "authentic re-release" but with a very different name: Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition.

The Dark Eye (not to be confused with Daedalic's 2012 fantasy adventure The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav) is an adaptation of not one but three different "twisted tales" by Poe. "The Tell-Tale Heart" recounts the tragic fate of an old man whose corpse is dismembered and hidden, only for the killer to be haunted by a sound believed to be the dead man's still-beating heart. "The Cask of Amontillado" sees a wine connoisseur entombed alive in the catacombs of a family vault by a man seeking revenge for reasons unknown. "Berenice" is named after a woman who falls prey to a mysterious disease that leaves only her teeth intact, which become the obsession of her bereaved fiancé. As any Poe story must, the game explores disturbing themes of "madness, obsession, and guilt." Rather than straight reproductions of the acclaimed author's stories, however, what makes The Dark Eye so unique is that it puts players directly into the shoes of both the victims and their counterparts (including killers committing their crimes). 

Where most remakes these days tout spiffy new hi-res graphics and enhanced bells and whistles, the "new" version of The Dark Eye is exactly the same as the old one. Except for the name, of course, required because of "overlapping trademark registrations" with other franchises, and a new publisher, in this case the India-based GMedia who now own the rights to the game. And perhaps that's just as well, as the original version's distinctively macabre and "unpolished" blend of claymation characters and live-action video with "stop-motion animation, video collage, and psychologically disturbing storytelling" is what made it so compelling. These surreal visuals, with their original aspect ratio and "multimedia interface" (i.e. slideshow-style mechanics with creepy hand cursors) intact, will continue to be accompanied by the voice of renowned Beat Generation writer William S. Burrows as the narrator, along with a richly atmospheric score by Thomas Dolby. According to the new publisher, the goal is to deliver a nightmarish experience that "remains exactly as you remember it – unaltered, uncensored, and authentically 1995."

If you missed out on the original version of The Dark Eye back in the day, there isn't much longer to wait, as Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition is due to launch on Steam sometime later this year for Windows PC.