Heart of Darkness. Most underrated, groundbreaking games of the 90s

The colorful cartoon platformer had little to do with the famous novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, or the movie Apocalypse Now. Even so, it did share the title with these timeless works. The title had more to do with the fact it was a game about Andy, a little boy, who had to go to a dark land to save his doggo and was afraid of darkness. The game Heart of Darkness was another project of Eric Chahi, the creator of Another World, a timeless classic. Despite the similarities in gameplay and ambitious goals, the game never gained similar recognition to Another World, and Chahi himself paid for the creation with a crisis and professional burnout.

Heart of Darkness remained in development for six years. Production began shortly after the success of Another World in 1992, with the game announced publicly in 1995 and released only in 1998. What went wrong? Chahi recalls that the biggest difficulty for him was switching from working alone to working in a team. In addition, revolutions were rapidly taking place in the world of games – the advent of CD-ROMs and 3D graphics was already there. The longer a game was in production, the more changes it needed to keep up-to-date with the changing standards. When creating cutscenes and backgrounds 3D Studio was used, allowing for great cutscenes, but in-game characters were already ordinary 2D sprites, and the game did not run on PCs in high resolution.

Due to prolonged development, the game appeared on the market at a time when 2D platformers were already outdated, and the graphics didn't manage to keep pace with the latest hits. Heart of Darkness also aroused considerable controversy, because its cartoonish, childish style starkly contrasted with brutal scenes in some cutscenes. Some people wondered how this production could be rated "E" for everyone, when it deserved much tougher restrictions. Completely burned out, Eric Chahi abandoned gamedev after this release, devoting himself to traveling and other hobbies. He only returned to the industry after 13 years.

The game itself wasn't that bad, and it certainly didn't deserve to be forgotten forever in the shadow of Another World. Especially the version for the first PlayStation had much better scpres than the PC version. The great narration kept the player curious all the time. Heart of Darkness was also distinguished by its atmosphere, great music and robust animations. It definitely deserves a try if you're fan of Another World.

1. Heart of Darkness in our encyclopedia