Play Heart of Darkness in Your Browser

About Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a cinematic platform game that the French developer Amazing Studio made for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. In Europe, Infogrames Multimedia published it under the Ocean brand, releasing the PlayStation version on 3 July 1998 and the PC version three weeks later, on 24 July 1998. Roadshow Interactive distributed it in Australia, where it came out in August 1998, and Interplay Productions released it in North America on 8 September 1998 under its Tantrum Entertainment label.

Éric Chahi and Fabrice Visserot directed the game and designed it together with Frédéric Savoir, Christian Robert and Daniel Morais. Jon Norledge produced it, and Bruce Broughton composed the score. It is a single-player game.

DOS.Zone’s description fills in the story. A boy named Andy ventures into a frightening alien world to rescue his dog from shadow creatures. The description points to the game’s 2D animation, its storytelling and its puzzles, and says it blends adventure with horror.

How it runs in your browser

This is the PC release, not the PlayStation one. Press Play and dos.zone opens in a new tab, where js-dos, the site’s open-source DOSBox build for browsers, runs the original Windows version in an emulated PC. DOS.Zone files it with its games for Windows 95. As with the site’s MS-DOS games, the files load from DOS.Zone itself, so you install nothing, need no disc or copy of your own and don’t have to register. There are no ads on DOS.Zone.

The listing groups the game under platformer, action and adventure and shows a rating of 5 from 17 player reviews. It doesn’t describe how saving works, so look at DOS.Zone’s page before you sit down for a long run.

Controls and devices

Heart of Darkness was built for keyboard play. DOS.Zone doesn’t list the keys for this version, so check the game’s own options before you start, and click inside the emulator window once it has loaded so the game receives your input.

On phones, DOS.Zone offers virtual on-screen controls. A platformer designed around a keyboard still plays better on a desktop or laptop, and Chromebooks haven’t been confirmed.

Who it’s for

It suits players who remember the game from 1998 and want to see it again without getting an old Windows release running on a modern PC, and anyone who likes platformers that tell their story through animation. It’s also an easy way to try the PC release if you only ever played the game on the PlayStation. If this style appeals, Out of This World, the 1991 cinematic platformer designed by Éric Chahi, also runs on DOS.Zone, as does Prince of Persia.