'Wait, and hold on to hope. ’
In London in 1905, Queen Victoria still maintained her health and majesty, and the scientific and technological progress brought about by the first industrial revolution showed no signs of slowing down. Under the influence of Charles Babbage and his invention of the steam computer, the British Empire is ushering in an unprecedented prosperity, from household cleaning tools, small locomotives, to portable computers, steam machinery has been completely integrated into people's lives.
Not knowing the above world, will it make you feel a little familiar? These settings all seem to be somewhat similar to the world depicted by the American novelist William Gibson in "The Difference Machine". Written in the last century, this science fiction masterpiece, taking the first industrial revolution as a point of disagreement, depicts an IF world that is far from historical reality, and brings out a concept called "steampunk".
The "steampunk" series of games produced by Liar-Soft, an established Japanese game company, was influenced by this concept. The third work in the series, "Dark Shernos", which has just been adapted to the Steam platform, is one of the most representative works.
Released in 2008, The Pitch Black Sharnos shared a worldview with the rest of the series and was one of Sakurai's most famous works as a game scripter. At the beginning of the game's release, it was once sought after by many "steampunk" enthusiasts in the circle. Three years later, in 2011, Liar-Soft remakeed the game, improving some of the game's systems as well as new voices and CGs for the game. The Steam version this time is also ported on this basis.
Set in the skipped beginning of London, "Pitch Black" tells the story of Mary Clarissa Christie, a schoolgirl, who is forced to sign a contract with a mysterious man who calls herself "M" in order to save her friend who has fallen into a coma due to supernatural powers, and is torn around the "weirdness" hidden in the shadow of the city and pursues the truth. Although this game is released in the form of an ordinary adult game, its script does not have any depiction of the "love" between the male and female protagonists, on the contrary, it also uses a large number of "Cthulhu" and "occult" elements to fill the game's eerie atmosphere. This was quite rare in the same kind of works at that time.
Even throughout the "Steampunk" series, the worldview of "Pitch Black Sharnos" has a very special charm. In addition to the basic structure at the beginning of the article, which borrows from the steampunk classic "The Difference Machine", Sakurai Mitsumi absorbs a lot of characters and literary works that actually exist in the real world when creating the world and characters. For example, the protagonist of "In Search of the Truth", Mary, is based on the "Queen of Reasoning" Agatha Christie, and Mary's favorite author is the famous British writer Mary Shelley, the female friend of the story who is responsible for adjusting the atmosphere, Achelika Dares, and a woman named Howard Phillips (H. Phillips). P)'s boyfriend, the prototype of both, was the original builder of the "Cthulhu" cultural system.
Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baron Münchhaus, Winston Churchill, the West India Company, the Diogenesian Club, these most popular and popular characters and elements, all become one of the important components of the story. The true and realistic worldview setting, as well as the unique text expression used by the script creators, have become an important means to help players quickly integrate into the game world.
In the composition of the script, "Dark Shernos" is also somewhat special. The game is divided into paragraphs in a chapter manner, and although there is a very clear main line as the introduction to the story, in the actual play, except for some common characters and the overall atmosphere with some sadness, the experience is more like a weakly related unit drama, and each scene tells a story belonging to a different person.
To be honest, from today's point of view, the content of these stories is really not very brilliant. Almost all of the chapters follow the exact same story flow: Mary meets someone, switches perspectives, gives the player an insight into the character, and finally evolves into a confrontation with the weird, even if the story's final "reversal" is not so unexpected.
But even so, Dark Shernos is by no means a simple or mediocre work. On the contrary, it is very easy for the player to be attracted by its story and characters, a certain unique charm. A large part of the root cause of this must be attributed to Hikaru Sakurai, a well-known female scripter in the industry.
But anyone who is playing Dark Sharnos for the first time will inevitably feel a little contrary to the way the game is written far from everyday life. Unique phrases, meticulous subjective descriptions, and a large number of reused passages and texts fill every corner of the game.
As a female creator, Sakurai Hikaru is very good at starting from a female perspective, and has a very accurate grasp of the psychological activities of his characters, and his level is far higher than that of many male writers. It is also for this reason that "Dark Sharnos" has also gained good popularity among female players. In promoting the plot, Sakurai Hikaru does not use a large third-person or protagonist perspective to narrate things in an inorganic texture, but on top of the characters' extremely subjective words, accompanied by extremely calm words, together with the narrator to complete the full narration of the story.
Because of this, it is difficult to find a nasty character from "Dark Sharnos", from words and deeds to psychological activities, which make these characters look full of realism. Even in the story, the most despicable "negative" characters are in the author's pen, revealing an interesting human touch.
Based on this unique narrative style, the game uses a lot of gorgeous words and phrases to modify the characters' words. In the end, the work became what it is now— a "word game" that seems more appropriate to describe it as a carefully choreographed drama than a mouse-clicking "word game."
As important as Sakurai's unique script is the same high-quality original art and music part of Dark Sharnos, which also played a crucial role in building the game's unique worldview.
The game's original drawing and character design is handled by AKERA, a painter with a strong personal style, and his design of the character's appearance and costumes, on the basis of ensuring that it meets the aesthetics of the audience, also restores the common wear of twentieth-century Britain as much as possible. Its rough lines, but no lack of details of the peculiar style of depiction, and the extreme delicacy of the script after integration, forming an incredible complementary relationship. That's why, even thirteen years later, the graphics of Pitch Black Sharnos don't look outdated.
The music part of "Pitch Black Sharnos" can also be said to be a perfect match for the overall style of the game, and the game's OP theme song "DORCHADAS" is also fully qualified, calling it one of the best adult game OP in 2008. The song is sung by Rita, and under the celtic tune and the real accordion sound, it is divided into multiple sections with different styles, sometimes sad and low, sometimes cheerful and relaxed, with a strong toxicity, even for people who do not know the origin of the song, it is easy to indulge in it, which corresponds to the unchanging law of "butter out of the divine comedy".
But even if this is such a good "Dark Sharnos", there are inevitably some reasons why people "can't play", that is, the "Gameplay" part of the game.
"Gameplay" was one of the important hallmarks of Liar-Soft's "Steampunk" series in that era. In addition to a large number of text reading, the producers also chose to intersperse the actual "mini-game" in the plot to enhance the player's sense of substitution and actual experience.
In the adult gaming market at the time, this wasn't too new. But Dark Sharnos is so much overdone that many players are blocked by the weirdness of wandering on the masonry road at the beginning of the game.
The game's gameplay is carried out in the form of a grid, and incorporates some of the most popular "COC" running group elements in Japan at that time, and the player needs to control Mary's progress in a masonry maze, with the goal of finding four sound fragments related to weirdness at the prompt of the screen. In this process, players also need to cleverly avoid enemy tracking, deal with random events that are not rich, and do a good job of resource management of "psychological state" and "movement mode".
Although the actual difficulty of this part is not too high, the long play cycle and repetitive content can easily destroy the player's will after several failures. The low fault tolerance rate and cumbersome operation became an important reason for dissuading players at that time.
From any point of view, this part of the design is not excellent. It is also because of the awareness of this problem, in the version of the game released in 2011, Liar-Soft provides players with the option of "skipping gameplay", which allows many players to have the opportunity to experience the complete game.
But personally, this "skipping" always brings me a hint of guilt, after all, it should be part of the game.
In addition, the extreme pursuit of the plot and world view also made "Dark Sharnos" an "outlier" in the same kind of products at that time. In addition to the absence of a "love" plot between male and female protagonists, even the plot with "adult" content is extremely rare. A small number of restrictive content has also become dispensable under the impact of a large number of subjective narratives and information. Even if this is not unusual for the "steampunk" series, "Pitch Black Shernos" is the most obvious problem in the entire series.
Of course, once you're truly integrated into the game's world, you'll find that it doesn't need that.
Gameplay aside, even today, there are very few works that can surpass Dark Charnos on the theme of "steampunk". Although, because of certain elements in the story, it is often classified as "Cthulhu" or "plot horror", its core is an incredibly gentle stage play, no matter how many years have passed, it is worth all players trying or supplementing the ticket -
But it is a pity that, like many classic works that have been re-adapted to the table in recent years, the Steam version of "Pitch Black Sharnos" was only rudely packaged and thrown out after obtaining the copyright of the work, not only did not make appropriate adjustments for the UI function of the game, but even the resolution could only be maintained at the 800×600 at that time, and the player could only choose to make a choice in the small window and stretched into the deformed screen.
In terms of text translation, the Steam version also occasionally misses translation, or translation errors, which are very fatal for such a work that focuses on engaging players, and I hope that the localization team of the game will pay attention to these issues. Although Sakurai Hikaru, as the main creator, is now bound to the angry "FGO" next door, none of this can change the achievements and status that "Dark Shernos" has already achieved.
It deserves to be played by more players, and at the same time, it is worth remembering by more players.