Chris Trottier

2024-11-22 23:47:31

In Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness you are Black slave on a Caribbean sugar plantation plotting a revolt against your master. Released in 1988, this is one of the most wildly ambitious DOS games ever made. How ambitious? It’s a point-and-click adventure, RPG, stealth game, and fighting game rolled into one. Yes, all of that, and no, your PC speaker isn’t ready for this level of intensity.

You sneak around the plantation dodging dogs, lighting fires, and rallying fellow slaves. Then, because subtlety isn’t enough, you throw hands against your oppressors in a Street Fighter-style one-on-one brawl. Should you lose, it’s not just “Game Over”.

Oh no, this game is here to remind you of the very real horrors of slavery. Mess up, and you don’t just lose – you lose badly. Your character faces terrible and grisly executions. Did I mention this game came out in 1988?!

Think this is a cash grab by some soulless dev studio? Think again. Freedom is the brainchild of Afro-Caribbean author and activist Patrick Chamoiseau. Not only did he design and write it, he made sure it hit hard. And somehow, it’s still ridiculously fun to play.

Now, for all the “gamers” out there whining about how “woke” games have become, let me tell you, Freedom will slap your silly beliefs sideways. This game doesn’t just raise the social justice banner, it sets the whole plantation on fire while shouting “Catch up!”

The gameplay? You pick one of four heroes, each with unique skills (like climbing or arson – classic RPG stuff). You can adjust their stats, but their attributes remain largely the same.

Then you’re given an overhead view of the plantation. You must learn about your surroundings, test the waters, waiting for your moment to strike. When you’re at the building of your choice, the view switches to landscape view where you’re given a menu which typically offers you the choices of “climb”, “pick lock” or “burn”.

If you get caught, it’s fight-or-die time. You kick, punch, and hurt your opponent before he hurts you. But unlike Street Fighter, there’s only one round. Lose, and it’s curtains.

For an EGA game, the graphics are stellar – though it doesn’t hold a candle to the Amiga and Atari ST versions. The reason I’m reviewing the DOS version is because it’s in English whereas the only copies for other platforms I could find were in French. Nevertheless, there’s great use of colour for EGA, and once you get into portrait view, there’s lots of detail. The fighting screen is a little too plain for my liking, but this game already does so much.

The only downside is the sound. There’s no music and only a few beeps for sound effects. No support for AdLib either. Listening to sound on Amiga, it’s vastly better. This is the game’s biggest weakness.

Because this game is so obscure, a manual is hard to come by. So controlling this game takes a lot of guesswork. What’s more, because Freedom has no support for mouse, “pointing” and “clicking” is replaced by using your arrow keys for pointer movement, then pressing <Enter> to select. <Esc> returns you to the previous screen.

Coktel Vision published Freedom. They’re also known for making various Asterix games. Eventually, they were acquired by Sierra.

So is Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness worth your time? Absolutely. It’s ambitious, brutal, innovative, and unapologetically revolutionary. We didn’t see this kind of gameplay fusion until Shenmue – over a decade later. It’s a little clunky, a little punishing, but holy hell, is it unforgettable.

Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness (1988) - MobyGames

Freedom: Rebels In The Darkness is a game that combines elements of strategy, stealth and fighting games. The main character is a rebellious black slave working on a sugar plantation that tries to incite a revolt among the slave population to gain...

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