A promising game from the once promising Cherry Software. Coded by Taboo, the style of game was to be a cross between Flashback and Impossible Mission.
The intro features a stunning 3D filled vector car driving around with fluid movement (Reminiscent of the Another World intro). Also it featured some haunting music by Shogoon and some nice graphics to match. I still remember being shocked watching the intro when I picked this up on a Binary Zone PD disk.
The game actually came to a halt when the development team went their own ways with other projects. According to the programmer, the game was very close to completion in terms of the engine, all that needed doing was the level graphics and designs.
A huge shame… Nothing was ever seen apart from the intro sequence, but GTW is proud to show you part of what the game was to look like. There are now some screenshots of the game’s main character moving around… and its VERY Flashback like!… Taboo kindly handed over all the game and its sources, but sadly these bits were lost a few years back in a hard drive crash, and are currently being recovered again from Taboo for GTW release.
GTW can finally now confirm that sadly no fully working version of Zone of Darkness is to be available in the near future, but we have been finding bits and pieces over the years. We exclusively released the Character test demo some time back, which allows you to move a very well animated Flashback character around a test screen… This gives an indication of how the game was to roughly play.
The game never really got to a playable state before it was cancelled. Some basic level design work was actually started, and Witold Bryndza found the disk with the artwork on after a 5 year search. See the downloads for an extra graphic disk with the 4 top files being executable and showing the impressive graphical asset work which was intended for the backgrounds. The game would have ran on a stock C64 without any enhancements.
It is hoped that some day we will learn the full story about the game and the intentions for it.
Trivia – Commodore Format once bizarrely claimed that the Zone of Darkness intro was an intro for a SEUCK game on their covermount called Road Course. Not entirely sure what they were smoking that day.
Contributions: Kenz, Jazzcat, Witold Bryndza
Supporting content
Available downloads
- zod-graphics (zip)
- Preview_ZoneOfDarkness.zip (zip)
Gallery
Update history
22/07/14 – Witold Bryndza helps us to preserve level design assets for the game.
