Sorceress Krysty’s Game Gale 2010 entry, Darkseed, is an atmospheric horror adventure game featuring artwork by renowned artist H.R. Giger that… oh, whoops, wrong game. Darkseed: Revival is a traditional-style science fiction RPG.

The player assumes the role of Jackson and Harry, two blonde bishonen badasses who are apparently part of some kind of master race who rely on cannibalism for sustenance. They have been locked in a science lab for three years, but today they will finally get a chance to escape and cut a bloody swath to freedom… if they can find the door that is.

Battles and Balance 1.5/5
Completely default RMXP mechanics at work in the battles, to the point where most of the skills’ names have not even been changed or altered. Each character had something called a “Psychosis” meter, but I had no idea what it did and it never seemed to affect anything even when full. The encounter rate is high but not unreasonable, enemies get stronger on each floor but never really pose much of a threat if you’re careful. Healing items are absurdly common so it is quite hard to actually die. A few encounters throw against huge numbers of enemies though, and if you’re not leveled properly you will be murdered. However, if you find the random weapons lying around, your characters’ offensive power will go through the roof and you’ll probably slaughter everything effortlessly except on the harder difficulties.

Level Design 0.5/5
Completely custom graphics here, they have an old school vibe that looks pretty decent, and the levels are littered with various objects you can examine to get conversations between your two characters. However, there is a very, very serious problem with the mapping here, and that is that often times you cannot distinguish doors from normal wall tiles. Having to guess where the door is located is completely absurd. When the basic navigation mechanics of your game is obscure, this makes the game virtually unplayable. This is particularly bad because the final door you have to go through is one of these invisible doors and is located in a very unobvious place. I only found it by accident.



On top of that, the three floors of the lab are repetitive to the point of being nearly identical-looking. All in all, even with the custom graphics this category is a mess.

Characters 3/5
It’s not all bad though. The characters in this game are fairly well-written, their dialogue is humorous and the characters have engaging chemistry. They talk like old friends and it was quite refreshing. I was really unable to distinguish any real personality differences between the two of them, they seemed rather similar, but this isn’t really an issue in such a short game.

Story 2/5:
The story is frankly quite bizarre, with something about some sort of…prophecy or something relating to the main characters. There are also a great many events referenced about the pasts of the protagonists, but nothing is ever explained about it in game. The characters seem vaguely completely aware that the plot makes no sense and lampoon this fact mercilessly.

Music and Sound 2.5/5:
Mostly techno sounding tracks for this game, the main theme for the levels is pretty catchy but the battle theme is quite grating.

Overall 1.5/5
The characters in this game are fairly well done, but almost everything else appears half-finished. With more work to the battle system and fixing some glaring flaws with the mapping, this could have been a decent game. But as it is, aside from the custom graphics and some humorous and quirky dialogue, there just isn’t much going on here.