Weird how many times Edgar Allan Poe wrote about burying people alive or in his walls. You think any of his friends ever asked him about that? Just like, "hey man you sure have thought about burying people in walls a lot."
@@lukeb247Makes sense, given the times (that happened quite often) and that he was a horror/tragedy writer. Many take inspiration from what they themselves fear.
I must've beaten this game 50 or more times as a kid and it's criminal how unknown it is. But you only get half of the experience buying it online because it originally came with a huge companion book with lots of cool stuff in it. Now if someone does a video on Shivers my life will be complete.
@@convolution223 I thought I still had the book in my room but couldn't find it, so I'll just have to do my best to remember. It starts with a forward from the game devs followed by a few pages on the life and legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. It then retells the original story that it uses as the vessel for the Poe stories (with Uncle Edwin and your brother and underage cousin's tragic love story), then goes through and retells the Poe stories from the perspectives of both the killers and victims tactically interspersed with screenshots from the game (in black and white though), and I think you're supposed to go back and forth between the Edwin story and the Poe stories when you read it. Then it has the Poe stories and poems that the game uses in their original glory. I feel like there's more I'm forgetting, if I end up finding the book I'll reply again.
I think the design of the characters really work well for this game. It makes the world seem more fictional yet still uncanny. It feels like they're puppets without strings, which I think works really well for Poe's style of story telling.
the woman that flashed on the screen that is supposedly montresor's wife is actually a woman that was enjoying the festivities in the beginning of the story if you spoke with the other revelers!
Absolutely one of the most formative interactive movies I ever played. My dad's coworker gave us a copy (how I wish I knew where it went) when it came out (Halloween 1995!) and it was scary to me as a 5 year old. I picked it up again when I was 14 and was hooked. I loved the art styles and I feel like they really hold up today. I play through it at least once a year. I've chatted with a couple of the artists who worked on it and I've had the great pleasure of meeting Richard Downs, who did the phrenological map, icons, and the Masque of the Red Death. The early-mid 90s seemed like such a great time to take risks and make media like this. It was a very special thing that fostered my love of user interfaces and art, even if I didn't know it at the time. God, I wish I could experience it all for the first time again.
This game looks like the kind of lucid dream that convinces you something was just sitting on your chest and blowing into your ear. Terrifying. I like it!
Holy shit this video is fantastic. I'm an avid watcher of videos on obscure/niche games but you really manage to dig up some absolute gems I've never heard of. I'm really jiving with your style of commentary and editing and this is such a good example of it. Really, really great work with your vids!!
Everything put out by Inscape is absolutely worth checking out, they only put out a few before they went under but they are all gems worth talking about. As far as I can tell, they both acted as a developer as well as a publisher, with The Dark Eye, Bad Day at the Midway and the Devo game (yes, that Devo) being produced to a differing degree inhouse. Though The Dark Eye and Bad Day came out on the exact same day and don't seem to have much overlap in teams, beyond sharing an art director. The team behind Bad Days are by and large the same team that made the earlier Resident's collaboration game Freak Show, with the Dark Eye team later going on to make Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol. As for what they exclusively just produced, there's Drowned God: Conspiracy of Ages (an endless rabbit-hole of a topic) and... the Princess Maker 2 PC port. Fun fact, if you've played Riven you might have recognized the art style for the Masque of the Red Death sequence, yep it's the same artist: Richard Downs.
Oh shit, I didn't imagine this and it actually exists? I had a dream about this when I was really into Edgar Allan Poe's work back in the day and thought I made it up for some reason
Thats a pretty low bar to pass seeing as what kind of trash manages to win awards, awards that are nothing more than endorsment for products as their plastered as a giant wall of big numbers as if to make you feel good about your purchase.
Common misconception: The film Naked Lunch is far more a very loose mix of material from Burroughs’ early books, such as Junky, and a vague fictionalization of him writing thing those books, than Naked Lunch itself. I don’t think I was ever aware of this game, and I wonder if Burroughs was actually enthusiastic about voicing it, or if the devs were pretty cool.
This game is very nostalgic for me. Sought it out after reading Poe and was probably the start of sending me down the rabbit hole of experimental 90s PC games. Was sort of familiar with Burroughs at the time too. Played through it many times. Far from perfect but so unique with the use of stop motion in 3D environments. Can't really say anything more you covered it well.
So glad you've reviewed this. I first played this game in 1995 when it got out and it succeeded at both creeping me out and getting me to delve into Poe's litterature. The puppet design was masterfully grotesque and to this day remains (to me) the ideal incarnation of all protagonists in Poe's stories. The art direction, music and narrative did a great job at immersing you within the tales - and the minimalist staging set the perfect mood for the macabre creepiness to happen. The Cask of Amontillado and Berenice were my fave parts, but I also immensely enjoyed the victorian darkness imbued in the 'Annabelle Lee" poem, masterfully read by William Burroughs. The game was unfortunately too short - more of an "interactive experience", but it did a great job at incarnating the very essence of Poe's universe.
I am immediately enamoured with the animate visuals of the characters and even the _cursor!_ The stop-motion quality of the yet fluid motions is a treat itself, and the ascribed uncanny vibe really suits a horror game to displace trust in the unfamiliar.
When my family got our first PC in the 90's, my older brothers bought a lot of games for it. This was one. Even as a kid I was a big Edgar Allan Poe fan and this game was so cool to me. Honestly, though, the cool compendium book that came with it was better than the game itself. Glad to see another obscure gem on the channel, Dungeon Chill.
So cool you covered this game, I ended up buying a psychical copy at an antique shop and got it to work on my previous laptop through a windows emulator, sadly the laptop got destroyed along with the disc
I played this for the first time when I was 16. Still have the big box and all. The fact that it isn't on GOG is downright criminal. Such a scary game.
The look of this game, amazing puppetry! And voice work, wow man, there is so many gems in a infinite ocean of PC gaming. Great video! Thank you for spotlighting such an interesting oddity this project is
Wasn't expecting to see a video of this game on my feed. I haven't played this game since I was a kid. Takes me way back. The art direction has always stuck in my mind, and really left an impression. Thanks for the content.
Fun fact about Edgar Allen Poe: we know his dark/horror stories well because they aged well. When he was alive he mostly did critiques and even did quite a bit of comedy but it was so specific to the time period it just didn't have the same lasting effect.
I played this years ago and when I tried to tell anyone about it, no one had heard of it. I started to think I had been a victim of the Mandella Effect. Thank you for giving me peace.
I did a playthrough of this game on my RU-vid channel many years ago, back when I did Let's Plays and game reaction vids. What a strange, unnerving, and unique little game The Dark Eye is... I learned about it through a SomethingAwful Let's Play myself, and getting it set up was kind of a nightmare of basically, running a Windows 3.11 Virtual Machine in DOSBox. It took months to find the ISO, get it running, and play it. I'm glad I did and I'm extremely glad to see someone else talk about it.
This game has been my favorite for a while and I’ve barely seen anyone talk about it or make videos for it. It’s such a creative and unique game and I haven’t been able to find anything similar enough.
Loved this game ever since I saw it at Home of the Underdogs. I really miss that time in gaming where people were just trying things to see what works, and you got arty things like this being made. The teeth part in the Berenice section is just so well done.
I remember playing this as a kid in our basement, in the dark. This game truly scared the crap outta me & I've never had another game affect me like this one. Such a classic..
I played this when it came out in 1995. I absolutely loved it! It holds as much nostalgia for me as Myst! I used your link to get the game! I played it I think 3 times back then so time for another playthrough! Thanks again!
A good insight into an obscure horror game here with some really interesting art direction and atmosphere. Nice to see such hidden gems come to life. Also, was that Kelsey Grammer voicing Fortunato?
I had this playing in the background while doing other things but once you said that William S. Burroughs is a voice actor in this game I could not believe my ears. That has to be one of the most absurd things I've heard in a long while Subscribed
So it’s been awhile since I read it but it seemed like the overarching story was a riff on ‘Fall of the House of Usher’…could be wrong but it’s a nice way of keeping the overworld in-universe with Mr. Poe
11:17 That's nuts. I use to do a lot of "breaking bad drug" and when I was awake for 2-3 days my mind would be so cooked I could stare into the darkness and stuff would move and whisper to me and I could sit there and stare for hours. Not a good time.
😱😨 The strange claymation movements and the figures themselves are absolutely horrifying to me--especially their hand and arm movements! Something about this is truly unsettling me to the core. Some moments of the game where the figure comes in to the room or is just standing in the back of the already disturbing scenery...oh man, giving me mega chills of terror that I can't explain. That being said, what a wonder, great video on this creepy, horrid game haha. Your channel has quickly become one of my top favorites so cheers and looking forward to more chills like this!
this game had really high production standards based on what ive seen here, the 1990s were really interesting with all of the animation studios experimenting with adventure games
The Collection Chamber has a RU-vid Channel. They (he?) either hasn't updated it anymore or does so very infrequently, which is a shame - you're right in that that blog does great work and their old RU-vid videos were pretty good retro gaming RU-vid content that spotlighted a decent number of obscurities. Glad the CC got this game working; at first I thought I _was_ familiar with it but then I realized I was thinking of The Dream Machine, so I'm happy to see someone cover this one. Great job, Dungeon Chill! So cool to see a game like this get some coverage for Halloween month.
The figures in this game reminds me of an obscure stop-motion tv special that I would probably only see once on tv when I was young and would probably not find until some extensive google searches, or if someone made a RU-vid video talking about it. Amazing video though!
I've always had a fascination with this game through seeing it mentioned on various abandonware sites, but I've never actually played it or seen it in action before. Very cool, and a great review of it.
This is one of the coolest channels Ive found. I am an old. (Well. Not a super old. But old enough I remember the 80s as a child) i love late 80s-early 90s DOS and windows games, and have my own collection of obscure games. Thanks. Subbed!
Along these same lines, last Halloween I stumbled onto a free game on Steam which is a walking sim recreation of HP Lovecraft's Dagon. It was pretty good, especially for a freebie.
This was my first exposure to these Poe stories. Berenice in particular really stuck with me; that bit with the teeth flashing on the screen is so freaky. Later looking up the original story, I was shocked how short it was. If you open the Wikipedia article for it, the entire short story is embedded right there as a gif, just a single page with a few paragraphs. It felt a lot bigger when I first experienced this game.
Dude I wish I could play this as someone who’s a fan of Edgar Allen Poe’s work (and the fact that the Tell-Tale Heart is in here and that’s my favorite EAP story makes it even better). Also this game looks so much like a Tim Burton movie
I played this on stream for Halloween a couple of years ago and it was............. well it was an experience. Very hard to figure out but that must not have been helped by being on stream and whatnot but I really enjoyed the art style. The sound was really cool to me :)
I played this as a kid and haven't really thought about the game for probably 12-15 years. Seeing it now it's so obvious it's an avant-garde psychological horror game but I legit just thought it was like a normal children's point and click edutainment game as a kid. I played it in rotation with Freddi Fish and Treasure Cove and didn't think it was weird at all lmao
I've been awaiting this one since you mentioned it on Twitter. And it is quite appealing. It actually reminds me of a Tool music video. This is one I'd definitely like to play.
