Notes on Heart of Darkness

More or less randomly passing thoughts than anything, the post to GameDevBlog contains some thoughts about the game known as Heart of Darkness. Not to be confused with the novel sharing only the namesake, this game is totally on its own here.

As I read through the post, it seems that there is the observation that no one wants to play those 2D games anymore. Even with this in mind, it is believed that Heart of Darkness is superior to similar games - even if they are a little too similar.

The game Heart of Darkness, that is. Nothing to do with the Conrad novel. Eric Chahi of Out of this World and Frederic Savoir of Flashback pooled their talents and did something awesome: Heart of Darkness is possibly the best 2D action-adventure I’ve ever played. (Possibly except for Viewtiful Joe: VJ has it beat as far the core combat and art direction goes–Heart of Darkness is a little too wannabe-Spielberg–but in every other respect I think Heart of Darkness is superior.)

But I’m looking at old reviews right now, and reviewers were underwhelmed. Some theories as to why: there was a fair amount of hype. According to Bill Dugan, who worked at Interplay when Heart of Darkness was launched, it showed very well at E3. Then years went by. 3D happened. Finally Heart of Darkness ships, but nobody wants to play these 2D games anymore. It didn’t sell well, as I understand it.