Games That Weren't 64

Colin Jones speaks about work on Darkness At Dawn...

"This was a funny one. I’d been working with Mel Croucher on a number of projects, and had a few published games under my belt. Mel and I were both keen to expand the market for computer entertainment to include more experimental stuff. We later produced the world’s first interactive pop videos together, also unreleased. The trouble was, of course, that both Mel and myself were catering to a mature, experimental market which simply did not exist. We weren’t so much ahead of our time, as I say in my weblog (www.colin-jones.com), since the market never really matured. So we were out of our time.

I had some free time after programming the C64 Deus ex Machina, regarded by many as the first interactive movie, and had this idea for a computer game without text or graphics. This became the adventure game Darkness at Dawn on the C64. The C64 had the best sound chip at the time, and so was the natural selection.

Each location, character or object in the game had a sound effect of piece of music associated with it. You could turn all the text off and play to a blank screen. It was possible to play the game just by ear; incredible, I thought.

Or incredibly stupid, because no-one thought that such a game could be a commercial success, I later realised. But it opened quite a few doors for me. Clement Chambers of CRL liked it, I remember, and signed Mel and myself to write ‘ID’ for the label. They never did release ‘Darkness at Dawn’, I don’t know why.

Mel had also recorded two audio tracks for the game, which we planned to put on the b-side of the cassette. One was ‘Beware of Darkness’, a George Harrison song, the other an original composition..

I touted the game around the software houses, Argus Press liked it and gave me some game design work (Grange Hill) as a consequence. Again they didn’t want to release the game.

I think the game also helped me to get in contact with Codemasters, who game me free reign to work on my hit ‘Rock Star ate my Hamster’ which got banned from the multiples, and which I loved.

That’s about it really. I guess that I’ve got a copy of the game somewhere in the attic, although to be honest I couldn’t really say. It’s a pity that the game never saw the light of day, maybe things would be different if it had. Maybe not though; people seem to like mediocrity, after all. "

Colin Jones .