Event Horizon Software Retrospective
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Their fourth and last game created in this style and under the name Event Horizon was Veil of Darkness (1993), a horror-themed RPG-Adventure hybrid set in Transylvania in the early 20th century. You play an American cargo pilot whose plane crashes somewhere in Transylvania during a storm that doesn't seem natural. You crash in a remote valley surrounded by mountains that is ruled by an evil vampire lord who shrouds the valley into darkness and prevents anyone from entering or leaving. And, guess what you seem to be the prophesized hero who is supposed to slay him. The combat system is the same as in the previous games (clicky clicky action combat), but this time, combat is not the focus of the game. Instead, you'll spend most of your time talking to people, gathering clues and solving item-combination puzzles typical of Adventure games. This genre-crossover works surprisingly well, even though the combat difficulty is a bit too harsh at times.Hmm, I didn't realize that they were working on a WoD title before shuttering. What a shame.
The graphics are good and the atmosphere is superb: many places feel eerie and dangerous (the harsh difficulty helps a lot there, too) and the keyword dialogue system works extremely well for this game. One NPC is a werewolf, and you have to find out who he is when you mention the word werewolf to him, he will transform and attack you. Since there are no dialogue trees, you'll have to figure out who he is by yourself there are no automatic journal updates, no dialogue tree that unlocks once you finish a quest. Overall, I would say that this is the best of Event Horizon's RPGs, a great genre-mix that manages to deliver in all aspects.
Veil of Darkness was the last game developed before the company changed its name to DreamForge. There were no more games using the engine that powered Dusk of the Gods, The Summoning and Veil of Darkness, nor did they ever return to making this type of RPG. Instead, they made several Eye of the Beholder clones, some of them pretty decent, but most of them criticized for being mediocre and buggy. Those games were Dungeon Hack (1993), Menzoberranzan (1994), Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (1994), Ravenloft 2: The Stone Prophet (1995) and Anvil of Dawn (1996). They also worked on a few adventures and RTS games, but Anvil of Dawn was to be their last RPG before they went bankrupt in 1999, in the middle of developing a game in the Werewolf World of Darkness setting which never got finished.
