Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition Review – Nevermore!

Ophidian Mind
22 minutes ago
5 min read

Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror 1995 Edition

Steam/PC

2/15/26

Inscape/GMedia

Standard Price: $9.99

The 90s were somewhat of a golden age for PC point-and-click adventures. From more commercially successful releases like The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and the King's Quest franchise to obscure gems known only to die-hard fans of the genre. Today we're looking at a recent port from the latter category: Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition published by Gmedia. Will this be an unearthed retro classic for the modern audience or something best left buried under the floorboards? Let's find out in our full review!

Developer Inscape and publisher Warner Interactive Media originally released “The Dark Eye” in 1995. It was a very experimental take on the point-and-click adventure genre that featured 3D rendered environments but functioned more like a 2.5D adventure game with its fixed camera perspectives. Interacting with key items or NPCs led to animated cut scenes, with a stop-motion appearance and deliberately slow movement also being key components. This combination resulted in a bizarrely intriguing surreal art aesthetic that gave the game a uniquely unsettling feel all its own. As a side note, the game is narrated by the late William S. Burroughs and includes a score written by Thomas Dolby, who also contributed to films and games the likes of FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Cyberia respectively.

If you’re wondering why The Dark Eye faded into obscurity and shed its original title, it’s because of some legal issues around the name. But, rejoice as Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition (which rolls right off the tongue) was born out of the ashes of the original like a phoenix. Ok, maybe more like a raven? But regardless, it’s essentially the original 1995 experience, including the OG aspect ratio and multimedia interface, but playable on your modern PC. Well, kind of. This might be some foreshadowing for you literature nerds. Poe would be proud… The game includes three classic tales of Poe, including The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and Berenice.

Multiple characters are controlled throughout the main narrative and the three substories we just referenced. In the main arc, players control an unnamed protagonist who is visiting relatives when family drama escalates, leading to unpleasant consequences. The narrative stops periodically, the surrounding environment turns blue, and the protagonist must search the environment until they find one of the game’s key items, transporting them to a substory.

When you enter one of these woeful tales, or should I say Poe‑ful, you’ll find two key figures in each story: a perpetrator and a victim. You begin from one character’s perspective, but later on, you can switch over and experience the events through the eyes of the other main character. And yes, this is literally done by clicking on the other character’s eyeballs. I promise I’m not making that up. Once you’ve wrapped up all the substories, the game finally lets you dive into the concluding chapter.

There are things to like about Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition, however, the controls and interface, especially by today’s standards, are extremely clunky. For one, directing the game’s hand cursor to various interactable points will often result in it changing to an entirely different icon when you’ve discovered an important object. This feels a bit awkward at times, as you'll need to be extremely precise with your cursor because the spots in which you need to click are EXTREMELY TINY. Even worse, players are given very little direction as to what they should be doing next. Expect no shortage of trial and error in discovering how to advance, with certain actions and events needing to be performed in extremely particular orders. As one example, touching one obscure item in a room before another may prove necessary to advance. All of this is to say, this won't be a title that will win over gamers either looking for a more traditional point-and-click adventure nor newcomers to the genre. One must be open to retro jank, experimental ideas, and general frustration.

There are no critical choices to be made, no oddball puzzle logic and combining of items, and players have an extremely limited inventory which only allows one item to be carried at a time. Thus it's important to know just what you’ll be signing up for, an experimental, surreal experience that has some truly interesting art and story beats.

And on the topic of its art, the look and sound of The Dark Eye, or, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1995 whatever, helps to create a truly strange atmosphere unlike any other. I wouldn’t say the game is downright terrifying or disturbing, but it certainly verges on the eerie and uncanny. Claymation-like figures are truly bizarre, with characters offering distorted facial features that give a less than human appearance. An eerily dreamy score adds further tension, creating an overall vibe that says, something is very wrong.

Outside of some of the previous issues I had mentioned which had more to do with the original game, this port comes with its own new problems. I came across numerous bugs which led to the game crashing on multiple occasions. Upon starting the game, a message pops up which informs players of two different play modes, the normal edition which allows for easier saving but will have bugs that prevent story progression, and a legacy edition, where saving may cause freezing but there are fewer issues with progression. Now how’s that for options? Pick your poison!

The game's warnings are fairly accurate in my experience, though both modes resulted in the game freezing repeatedly. Even as someone who is more patient than the average gamer in troubleshooting technical issues, these repeated problems pushed my patience to the limit. And here’s the reality of the situation, Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Fiction: 1995 Edition isn’t a remaster at all, it's a port, and a bad one at that. I certainly hope that Gmedia can fix the game’s many problems in the future, because this is a unique piece of gaming history that deserves to be preserved. However, in its current state, I simply can’t recommend that anyone spends their hard-earned money on this release until its many issues are hopefully patched out.

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