The Dark Eye

The Dark Eye is a 1995 first-person psychological horror adventure game developed by Inscape and published by Warner Interactive Entertainment for Windows and Mac. The game features combined 3D graphics, stop-motion animation and video segments. With its unconventional interface, storyline, and characters, the game's peculiarity became its selling point. The characters are largely lifelike in appearance except for their clay-modeled faces, which are often distorted or feature grotesquely exaggerated features. This near-realism, sometimes referred to as the uncanny valley, contributes to the game's ambience of unease and anxiety. Also notable was the use of author William S. Burroughs as a voice actor: Burroughs provided not only the voice for the character of Edwin, but also voiceovers for two slide-show sequences illustrating the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "Annabel Lee". Another story, "The Premature Burial", can be found while reading the newspaper during "The Tell-Tale Heart", and the poem "To Helen" can be read while playing the victim in "Berenice". Gameplay Structurally, the game is a point-and-click adventure fueled by the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe. The player can experience three of the stories ("The Cask of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart", and "Berenice") from the perspectives of both murderer and victim.