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Many
of you will remember the rather bizarre game by the title of "Deus
Ex Machina", created by Mel Croucher
and coded on the C64 by Colin
Jones. This was
a game of life, and wasn't like anything really seen before.
The
game won several awards, and this inspired a game with very similiar
strangeness and new idea.
Darkness
At Dawn
was the brainchild of Colin Jones, and was to be developed for
the NU WAVE label back in 1986.
The
whole game was unlike anything seen before, and was essentially
a game without the need for graphics or text. The whole game was
based on SOUND, and required careful
listening to play the game properly. Essentially the game was
set within a text adventure environment, which was believed to
be developed in The Quill.
Mel
developed the audio for the game, in the same way he developed
the audio tape for Deus Ex Machina. This also included a recording
by George Harrison and a track by
Mel himself.
The
game was fully completed, and they touted the game around to labels
such as ARGUS PRESS. Both companies
loved the game, but never published it and got Colin to work on
other projects. Just why NU WAVE never released it, is unknown.
This may have just been a rumour.
Unfortunately
the companies didn't think a game with a lack of graphics and
text would sell particularly well, and maybe the game was just
a little ahead of its time. Of course, they didn't see a potential
which was evident with Deus Ex Machina, and the potentiality of
another award winning title.
So
the game gathered dust and remained on Colin's work disks until
this day. Mel went on to use some of the ideas in later work.
Colin
believes he still has the game on disk in his attic, though large
commitments mean that Colin may not be able to look for the game
for quite some time. Mel additionally still has the original Audio
tracks for the game. Quite possibly sometime in the future, we
could see the game for the first time along with the Audio tracks
(Excluding the copyrighted track of George Harrison).
Time
will tell, and hopefully one day Colin and Mel will help find
their lost work of art once more and gain the credit that they
never recieved for their hard work.
A
complete game tucked away for the time being...
Frank.
(Additional source credits - Mel Croucher, Colin Jones, Danner)
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