On his first night at the house, Mike has a nightmare about being imprisoned by a machine that shoots an alien embryo into his brain.

On the second day, he travels to that universe through the living room mirror and meets the Keeper of the Scrolls, a friendly darkworlder.

[2] Amiga Format, in its review, stated with regards to Dark Seed's gameplay: "Too many things in the game need to be done within a specific time, or in a certain order, and you don't necessarily know when you've passed that 'critical point' after which you're fighting a lost cause.

[3] If it becomes night while Dawson is in the Dark World, he will fall asleep and die, resulting in a game over.

Some of the work selected for use in Dark Seed includes: "N.Y. City III", "Hommage a Bocklin", and "Li II".

[6] Developers used an Epson flatbed scanner to import selected body parts and landscape fragments in monochrome, then with Deluxe Paint II Enhanced for MS-DOS assembled them into single images.

[citation needed] An unlicensed version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Chinese, but an English translated ROM is currently being worked on by a small nonprofit team.

[citation needed] Computer Gaming World called Dark Seed in 1992 "the most integrated and effective feel for a horror adventure yet" but criticized the unforgiving real-time gameplay that often caused unwinnable situations, hard-to-find on-screen puzzle elements, and an overly abrupt ending, stating that "the interactive elements are so poorly implemented that they nearly destroy the effect" of the graphics and sound.

The reviewer wrote: "The graphics are impressive, the atmosphere gripping, but for me the staying power was the story and wondering what was going to happen next", and concluded: "I didn't think it was the best thing out this year, but I certainly would have missed out if I'd passed it by.

[9] The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #188 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.

[10] Amiga Format gave the Amiga version of Dark Seed an overall score of 72%, praising the use of Giger's artwork and "stunningly spooky" graphics, calling it "the nearest thing you could have to a software nightmare", but criticizes its strict timeframe, and refers to Dark Seed's gameplay as "its weakest element".

[3] The One gave the Amiga version of Dark Seed an overall score of 80%, praising its "well-designed" controls, and states that "The premise isn't a particularly original one, but good sci-fi is all about ideas and Darkseed has plenty of them, most of which are used to good effect game-wise - I particularly like the way the real and alien worlds mirror each other".

[14] Dark Seed was a nominee for Computer Games Strategy Plus's 1992 "Best Adventure" award, which ultimately went to The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel.

The magazine's Theo Clarke wrote: "The strength of this game lies in its atmosphere, but my pleasure was diminished by the use of a master diskette at the security device".