Dark Earth

Dark Earth is a third-person game centered around item-collection and weapon-based melee combat. The game world is filled with a variety of different weapons which can be used until broken, requiring a constant need to expand the main character Arkhan's weapon collection. The vast majority of the weapons are scavenged or improvised, such as kitchen knives and shivs. There are a very limited number of guns in Dark Earth, as most people have forgotten about firearms.

For the select few guns Arkhan finds, there is a limited amount of ammo, making guns good for only a limited time. Arkhan must also scavenge for food, as it is his only means of healing.

Dark Earth takes place several centuries in the future, when a meteor collision with Earth (referred to as the "Great Cataclysm") has thrown up great clouds of ash and dust, blocking out the light of the sun. Those not killed in the collision were soon hunted by strange creatures of darkness, and so they began to seek a refuge from the "Dark Earth" - pockets of land where the light of the sun breached the clouds. Eventually they found such places. Called "Stallites", these places of light became cities, and the survivors built temples in honor of the light. The game is set in a Stallite called Sparta.

By the time of the game, many centuries after the establishment of Sparta, most of the citizens have forgotten their history and now worship the light as a god, Solaar. The city is run by Sunseers, priests of Solaar, who maintain order and prevent the creatures of darkness from entering the city limits. The game focuses on Arkhan, a "Guardian of Fire", one of the military protectors of the city.

The game was in development for two years. Most of the work on the game was done at Mindscape's development house in Bordeaux, France. The characters' facial models were assembled from various parts (e.g. eyes, cheekbones) chosen from a collective character database, rather than being created from a single model.

Kalisto's plans for a sequel to Dark Earth never came to fruition, although they did produce, in partnership with French publisher Multisim, a tabletop role-playing game based on the Dark Earth world.

Dark Earth sold 500,000 units globally by mid-1999. However, it failed commercially in the United States, where its sales totaled 54,200 units by April 1999. Microprose's Tom Nichols blamed this performance on competition from The Curse of Monkey Island and Blade Runner, which he said drew retailers away from stocking Dark Earth and customers away from buying it. He also noted that "we signed the game late in its development, so we didn't have enough time to build the pre-awareness and hype that you need to have in order to be successful today".

Dark Earth received generally positive reviews, and held an aggregate score of 71% on GameRankings. It was named the best adventure game of 1997 by CNET Gamecenter, whose editors called it "beautifully conceived and executed" and an example of how "a superior adventure game is made". The game was also a finalist for the Software Publishers Association's 1997 "Best Adventure/Role-Playing Software Game" Codie award, which it ultimately lost to Diablo.