What is Dark Colony?

A large part of Dark Colony’s appeal is sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein’s story line. Earth corporations are starting to colonize Mars when little gray guys with egg-shape heads and big round eyes start attacking. It turns out that aliens have been probing us for years and they have their sights set on taking Mars for themselves.

You can play as either the human corporation, with technologically advanced weapons and vehicles, or the Grays, mysterious aliens with biomechanical monsters, intent on wiping out the squishy humans. The campaign mode takes you across the surface of Mars to locations where, if you’re playing as the human, you’re assigned to root out the alien hives and fortify the corporations’ hold on the planet. The aliens’ objective is to kick the intruding humans off the planet. The plot leads you over various terrains, from dense jungle to clear deserts and insidiously difficult underground levels. For a quick game, you can also engage in single-level wars on more than two dozen maps.

In most ways, Dark Colony is a straight-forward real-time strategy game, obviously drawing on WarCraft and Command & Conquer for play mechanics and game desip. While Dark Colony’s influences are obvious, the designers have changed the game enough to create a new experience, as the resource harvesting exemplifies. Dark Colony has one resource, Petra-7, which you get from vents on the planet surface. Vents divulge only a limited amount of Petra-7, and you never know when a dormant vent will become active. Another interesting twist is base construction. Both humans and Grays build on platforms that pow as they purchase uppades. Defending the larger perimeter requires you to build additional mines and missiles. And unlike most other real-time strategy games, Dark Colony makes an important distinction between day and night, because the Grays, with their bulging eyes, are nocturnal fighters, while the humans fight better during the day.

When a game emulates such outstanding predecessors as WarCraft and Command & Conquer, it’s pretty hard for it to fail. SSI has created an entertaining game with Dark Colony, and Mac gamers should have a good time repelling the alien invaders.

Sanchez, Rick. (June 1998). Dark Colony. MacAddict. (pg. 57).

Download Dark Colony for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.1 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

To run Dark Colony (under OS 9), you need an older version (1.5) of the Game Sprockets Extension. Just replace your current OS 9 ones and everything works fine.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver