Alien creator H. R. Giger boasts a game design legacy

Swiss artist H. R. Giger died today, 13 May 2014, at the age of 74.

Giger was an Academy Award winning artist whose work was the inspiration behind the extra-terrestrial from Ridley Scott’s Alien. His art was also the foundation for PC and PlayStation games Dark Seed and Dark Seed 2.

Giger died from injuries he sustained after falling down a flight of stairs at his Zurich home.

Giger’s painting titled Necronom IV, pictured below, was the basis for the alien from Ridley Scott’s hit movie, and the artist helped Scott bring it to life by working on the set.

In 1998, Giger opened his own museum in his home country displaying all his works as well as those of other famous artists, and in 2013 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Necronom IV

Besides his movie work, which also included Alien 3 and Species, Giger was the creative driving force behind Cyberdreams’ Dark Seed and Dark Seed 2.

The psychological horror point-and-click adventure games were released for PC, Mac, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn in the 90s, and Dark Seed was one of the first games to use “high resolution” graphics at the time – 640 x 400 – a resolution Giger insisted on.

Unlike most point-and-click adventure games, which give the player time to explore, almost every action in Dark Seed had to fall within precise time limits, or the game ended up in an unwinnable state.

For those of you interested in the game, you can download Dark Seed and Dark Seed 2 from abandonia.com