Darkmere was an idea for a game I had been carrying around since my days at Ocean. I'm a fan of isometric viewpoint games and while working on Rubicon for Hewson (later to become 21st Century Entertainment) I began designing the main character in my spare time. After Hewson went under I had to find a job rather quick, fortunately Space Hulk came along. I was involved in that game for about three months working on concepts for the interface, character design and wall textures. Mostly wall textures! Before then I had been shopping the idea around to a few companies but without more of a demo it was rather a hard sell.  

Eventually a company called Arcane Design was willing to take care of finding a publisher if I signed over the copyright right to them. Like a complete idiot I did. They did however get Core Design to take it. I have nothing but good things to say about Core and wish them contuning success. After Darkmere was finished I went to work with Core directly. Nice bunch of guys, and the boss, Jeremy Smith, is cool too. 

Gildorn Above is the main character's Father. The back story to is appearenace is thus. Years before he had rescue elf from forest. Fell in love, married. Had Ebryn, our hero. Disapeared. Land went to rack and ruin while dad looked for her. Dragon back, send's Ebryn to help. Fans of TSR will notice that I got my inspiration for this picture from Clyde Caldwells Dragon's of Destiny picture. Years later while at Bethesda I got to talk to him when he was preparing to paint the box cover art for The Elder Scrolls, Chapter Three. I never did mention that I had used his art as an inspiration years before. I really like his use of lighting in his paintings.


 
If any of you old Amiga people out there actually got to play Darkmere you probably saw the image on the right fairly regularly. The death screen. As with all my arwork prior to joining Bethesda in 1994 it was all "pixel pushed".For thoses of you who don't know that involves creating a limited pallete, at that time typically 16 colours, and placing each pixel at a time to create the final image.
Later on new software was released that allowed the artist to "massage" the pixels, blending them together, lightening them, darkening them, but that was never feasible until 256 colours became the norm. Darkmere was a 32 colour game, although the story screens were only 16 colours.

 
A typical screen from the game. Here Ebryn battles against an ogre that protects the entrance of the temple where villagers are sacrificed to the Orcen God, Enywas. Perhaps if you find a villager alive they might give you details helpful to your quest.

 



Malthar. Again inspired by TSR, this time Jeff Easley's "The Last Spell" picture, this is Malthar, the mage.A friend of your father's who has a secret. He features quite prominently in the game.
Again the use of light and shade was a big influence on me in this graphic. It, in its turn, inspired me years later to use it as a base for Bethesda first Webpage intro screen. Check out the Gallery for that one. I've also used this graphic as a title for my journal section of this website. Hence the title which was not there in the original piece. 

Darkmere was the first game I designed in total. Up to that point I had been responsible for most aspects of design but never all at once. Darkmere was my first attempt at designing the game, the graphics, the story and dialogue. Infact pretty much everything besides music and Programming.For a time I handled most of the producer's role also until Arcane stepped in. This freed me up to concentrate on the game. Darkmere was quite well received within the Amiga community and was even voted as one of the top 100 Amiga games of all time. (it came in 85th incase you were wondering!)


Here, in the forest that surrounds the village, you are attacked by a Small dragonling. The forest is rumoured to be haunted by the ghosts of the old elven race.

Inside the Dwarven mines, now home to orcs who have returned after the coming of the Darkmere. And perhaps, deep inside the caverns perhaps something far more evil lurks.

Inside a typical room of the houses that make up The Village. The Village if where you start your adventure.


 
An example of Ebryn's animation. Originally it was intended to give him far more frames of animation than he eventually had. Due to the Amiga's limited memory (1 meg at that time) we had to drop some of the animations.

A dark street from the village level. Your quest starts here. After the coming of the darkmere all good people have left or been taken by the orcs. It has become a hotbed of villany and evil.

The waterfall deep in the forest. Here you are to meet the water nymph.

The entrance to the Orcen lair.

A close up of Ebryn, seen here in the introduction to Darkmere.





..::Credits::..
Graphics:
Mark Jones
Code: Paul Hodgson, Andrew Buchanan and Stewart Gilray
Music: Martin Iveson
Design: Mark K. Jones
© Core Design Ltd.1994