Veil of Darkness (1993): Initial Impressions

Veil of Darkness is one of those games that slipped under my radar, as I don't think it was a particularly popular title and by the time I was in the market again for PC games the selection in my area was really spotty.

(I did however own and play The Summoning, which is from the same developer and seemingly even uses the same engine.)

Veil of Darkness opens with an impressive animated introduction, though I admit that it animates so slowly that it honestly gets a little boring halfway through.  After the intro you wake up in a house in some Transylvania-like town and soon find that you are the one prophesied to take out the evil vampire ruling the region.


This is basically a point-and-click adventure game with some very very light RPG elements on top.  Much of the game so far involves exploring, talking to people, and solving light puzzles, broken up occasionally by realtime combat that is frankly not interesting at all.

The game generally looks good with some attention to detail in the backgrounds.  I was especially impressed with the houses.  However, while it definitely looks better than The Summoning (released from the same developers just a year prior), the characters and items are still tiny and lack detail... and in the meantime the jaw-dropping Ultima VII was released.  In fact, the items are so tiny that they can be difficult to see, though the developers realized this and added an option to magnify all items.

The audio is not great.  Although it supports the Roland MT-32, I suspect that the game was composed for Adlib and just converted to Roland quickly, as some instruments sound awful.  I've tried the game on both an MT-32 and CM-500 (in Mode B), and the game just sounds unnatural on Roland devices.  Of particular note is the otherwise excellent tune that plays in the bar (note how it grows quieter and quieter the further away from the bar room you are in the building), that is ruined by a shrill screeching that is supposed to be a violinist performing for the customers.  I really do not understand it, as the Roland MT-32 is particularly well-suited for strings and other orchestral music.

The game offers you a checklist of sorts in the form of a scroll you obtain early in the game listing all of the things you are prophesied to accomplish.  This is really cool.  It gives you a general idea of what you will need to do next, and since the prophecy is told in the form of a metaphorical poem figuring it out is like a meta puzzle running throughout the game.

As you work through the game more and more locations open up on the map.  This fortune teller reminding me immediately of a similar character in the introduction to Ultima VI.  It's always a lot of fun to explore a new location, and the writing is quite decent.  Strangely, the dialog is quite brief compared with The Summoning, which is more of a traditional RPG while Veil of Darkness is definitely more of a character-based adventure game.

Although I have enjoyed the game so far, the solutions to some of the puzzles are kind of out there.  There is one point where you need to lift a curse from some guy, and the solution is basically to kill him and have him brought back to life.  I dunno how anyone would just stumble upon that (I had to look that one up).  The atmosphere and interesting characters more than make up for that though, and I am definitely planning on seeing this one to its end.