How to save — Edgar Allen Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition

Emulation is weird sometimes.

Howdy readers! If you’re reading this, you’re either a true literature-slash-horror sicko, or you read my recent review and are interested in checking out GMedia’s recent retro revival of The Dark Eye. It’s now called Edgar Allen Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition, and it’s old software running through the open source SCUMMVM emulator. It’s a great emulator, but the way it’s set up here is weird in terms of options. Meaning, there aren’t any! The biggest oddity is how unclear saving is. So, here’s how.

To save, you have to press the escape key twice. But it’s weird, because you don’t get a prompt or any indication what you’re doing is saving your game. When you first press Esc, you’ll see a de facto pause screen, or at least I’m kind of guessing that’s what we’re looking at here (this is an odd game, if you haven’t picked up on that yet):

Clicking the eyeball on the spooky abstract face returns you to the game. If you press Esc again though, you’ll be sent to what looks like the initial starting screen, where you can start a new game or load/continue. Again, no notifications or anything to indicate you’ve saved. But you, in fact, have saved! You’ll be able to continue from the point you saved from here, or close the game and come back later.

While the in-game functions are barely existent and odd, Edgar Allen Poe’s Interactive Horror does support cloud saves on Steam, and a recent post-launch update implemented achievements. This should help you make sure you don’t lose your save and have to start over, so you can fill out that list. Enjoy! And don’t forget to read the review, if you haven’t done so yet.