The Dark Convergence

The Dark Convergence description

As you know, there are many games from so-called "independent" developers almost always distributed in the old days in the shareware model. And not only because of the "technological backwardness" - which for members of the tribe of alzheimera never a minus, and plus often, and primarily because sometimes too unconventional solutions when creating your "Magnum opus": it happens so that a man driven not by a desire to "communicate" to the audience, and to challenge traditional attitudes, and the call for the sake of the challenge just to prove to myself that this is possible.

The Dark Convergence is one of the latter category. This is an extremely short, but equally extremely difficult quest, made by one man in the Holy language QBasic which I remember well the graduates of the CPC, and then - Yes - sold them via the Internet, but it is made primarily for themselves. Quest, deliberately crosses all that had already happened in the genre: there is no point-and-click - only keyboard and text input commands. No humor or kindness - on the contrary, cruel and bloody. And most importantly - no documentation or even help for passage. Think for yourself, where to go and where not. Think for yourself, what commands the game will accept, and which not. Not come up? Your problem. When you consider that in 1993 the world wide Web still is not publicly accessible, and common, and to add to that just described "features", it is easy to assume that the game has become not too a large number of people, therefore it has long been considered a great rarity.

The plot, I must say, conditional, researched and resembles a low-budget horror films (mostly the movie "Feast", although he came much later): a car travelling in the desert, with the main character and his two friends stopped in the middle of the road, and the character goes to look for help. First, in the street where it is full of deadly dangers, then in a strange abandoned house, where the risk to die, and very original and creepy way, there will be more. And for each (that's each) of action, whether in raising the stone, or inspection of the table, you will need to manually enter the proper command of the English language. Sometimes it consists of a verb and a noun (or several), sometimes only the verb. And here you need to look for items. Say, the author warns: it is well hidden there, but no excess; you will not find at least single - game pass. And last: the game, of course, are monsters. But the action element is not - to be protected in the full sense of the word hero can not. "Protection" is a the same but sometimes it is so trivial and disgusting that one can only shrug.

The schedule for The Dark Convergence, it would seem, deliberately miserable, but actually very likable, primarily because of the abundance of small details in the backgrounds. Please note that each situation and each action (not only after typing the commands, but when moving to a new location, for example) are usually accompanied by a relatively detailed textual descriptions - so get ready to remember the Golden days IF... is Not recommended, and absolutely, the children, the faint of heart (in all senses) and the fans only "commercial" games. It is recommended that open to unusual, able to recognize unmotivated cruelty "author's idea" and thus well versed in English language to people. Oldgamer one word.

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Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com