Are You Afraid of the Dark? is based on the Nickelodeon television
series about a club of kids called the Midnight Society. The members of this club
entertain each other with ghost stories around a campfire. The premise of this
game is that you, the game player, are attempting to gain entrance into the society
by telling a ghost story of your own.

It’s a very clever idea, and it works
very well. This is one of the first games I’ve played that I would wholeheartedly
recommend to older kids.

The story you’re “telling” in this case
is about Alex and Terri, a brother and sister who sneak into an abandoned old
theater one night. The theater, “Orpheo’s Palace,” was once the venue
of a famous magician of the same name. Unfortunately, the magician, his family,
and his employees all disappeared or died in very mysterious and highly questionable
circumstances over fifty years ago, and since then the theater has been closed.

Wasn’t
There a Haunted Theater Just a Few Blocks Back?

It should come as no
great shock to the reader that the theater is, indeed, haunted. The Great Orpheo,
now an insanely evil ghost, has filled his audience with wax dummies for whom
he continues to perform. Trouble is, his magic doesn’t seem to work any more,
and anyone who appears in one of his tricks tends to come to a very bad end. Terri
and Alex aren’t in the creepy old theater more than a few minutes before they
learn that Orpheo plans for them to star that very night in his most difficult
illusion: the Teleportation Boxes!

Their only hope for survival and escape
from the theater is to solve the riddle of Orpheo’s Curse. They get assistance
in this quest from several helpful ghosts that populate the theater.

This
is an older DOS game, but it has very entertaining and colorful graphics. The
theater, which you explore in a first-person point-and-click format, is vast,
colorful, tricky, and indeed scary.

The puzzles in the game aren’t very
difficult, but they are always diverting. Danger lurks at every corner, and periodically
malicious ghosts, monsters, or other specters must be destroyed.

You
Are Telling the Story

The game has several features to recommend it.
First of all, the “sitting around the campfire” format is cute and cozy.
Each time you reload a saved game, you are returned to the campfire and the other
kids review your progress in the story so far. And when you make a fatal mistake,
the kids once again chime in and give you several choices of earlier spots in
the story to “rewind” to.

Another feature, rare in adventure games,
is that the story’s point of view bounces back and forth between sister and brother.
This adds a level of complexity and realism to the game that is quite pleasing.

As
I mentioned earlier, this theater is one huge place, and exploring it is very
fun indeed. There’s lots of eye candy, including a creepy wax museum and a series
of multi-leveled catwalks above the theater.

The actors playing the ghosts
are effective and believable, and Orpheo himself is a worthy villain.

A
Very Grand Finale

Are You Afraid of the Dark? also has a virtue
I have learned to prize very highly in an adventure game: a rousing finale. Why,
oh why, are good endings so rare in this genre? This problem has always been a
head scratcher for me. Well, this game’s finale ranks up there with the slam-dunk
finish to Full Throttle.

The final sequence in this game includes,
among other things, a breathless chase through the theater. Your characters are
literally running for their lives and must successfully flee to a certain location
in the theater. Your careful earlier exploration of the whole building pays off
here, as one false step can mean your doom. It took me several tries to survive
the chase, and it really got my blood pumping!

Are You Afraid of the
Dark? is yet another game that I feel deserves several sequels. I’m sorry
there weren’t any.

In conclusion, the game has a good, scary story and
a very entertaining environment to explore. The only bad points are no sequels,
plus it’s tricky to run on a new computer. This is a great game for kids–it’s
scary, fun, and exciting.

Final Grade: B+

System
Requirements:

PC:
386/33
(486/50 recommended)
4 MB RAM (8 MB recommended)
CD-ROM
Mouse

Macintosh:
Performa/LC
475 and above
CD-ROM drive double-speed or faster
2 MB free hard drive space
4
MB of available RAM
256 colors
System 7.1 and above
Sound Manager 3.0