Poor old Alone in the Dark has been through the wringer over the years.
First released on MS-DOS PC in 1992, it garnered critical acclaim for its innovative gameplay, presentation and wonderful atmosphere, and remains an essential play for anyone interested in the history of the survival horror genre. Without the original Alone in the Dark, we may not have had the Resident Evil series — at least not in the form it took in its early years.
Subsequent entries struggled to live up to the legacy of their predecessor, however… particularly when various companies attempted to “reboot” the franchise on several occasions in the intervening decades. But now Alone in the Dark is very much back on track, thanks to yet another reboot, this time developed by Pieces Interactive and published by THQ Nordic. Let’s take a closer look.
Confusingly, the new reboot of Alone in the Dark is simply called Alone in the Dark, along with both the original 1992 game and one of the reboots. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll be referring to the new 2024 game simply as Alone in the Dark throughout this piece, and should one of the other entries come up, I’ll call it, say, Alone in the Dark 1992 or “the original Alone in the Dark” for clarity.
Alone in the Dark casts you in the role of either private investigator Edward Carnby or his client Emily Hartwood. The pair of them have driven to the old Derceto manor on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans in the hope of establishing the condition of Emily’s uncle, Jeremy. Emily received a letter from Jeremy which seemed to indicate he was suffering, and so she decided to enlist Carnby’s services to investigate the mental health hospital which had been established within the walls of Derceto, and extract Jeremy from the situation if required.
This setup is similar to the original Alone in the Dark in that it involves the same characters, but the details are somewhat different. This can be said about the whole game; rather than an attempt to retell the story of the 1992 original, this is instead a considerably expanded reimagining that veers off in some interesting and unexpected directions.
For example, in the original game, Jeremy Hartwood was the owner of the Derceto mansion, and prior to the events of the game, he apparently committed suicide; in this new take, however, he appears to be very much alive, but involved in something which may be supernatural, or which may simply be all in his own head. It’s a typical Lovecraftian sort of tale, in other words, which is firmly in keeping with the original intent for Alone in the Dark, even if this new game comes from a slightly different angle.
Rather than unfolding from the fixed camera angles of the original game, Alone in the Dark instead adopts the fashionable over-the-shoulder third-person camera. This works well for the most part, particularly given you have a dedicated “zoom” button to look closely at environmental elements. Interactive elements are highlighted when you get near them so they can be easily distinguished, and each scene is packed with detail.
The flow of gameplay is rather similar to the PS2-era Silent Hill games, in which your playable protagonist explores a bit of “the real world” in Derceto, then via various circumstances often finds themselves “somewhere else”. The exact context and explanation of these “other places” varies according to the character you’re playing, but one can interpret them as being glimpses into someone’s mental state — perhaps Jeremy Hartwood’s, but perhaps also someone else’s?
In this sense, the game mirrors Silent Hill’s “light world/dark world” divide, and emphasises this point by only featuring combat in the dreamscape sequences. While exploring Derceto, you are “safe” — though that doesn’t mean scary things won’t happen as you wander around the place!
Alone in the Dark features a nice blend of psychological horror and very occasional jumpscares, making for a game that, outside of its lovely presentation, feels like it could have been made 20 years ago. And I mean that absolutely as a compliment. You even have the option to play the game in either “modern” or “old-school” style, with the latter approach turning off most objective markers and hints in favour of allowing you to work things out for yourself.
And Alone in the Dark does feature some excellent sequences where you have to determine things for yourself, usually by reading the various notes and documents you find scattered around Derceto. None of the puzzles are massively complex — they’re about akin to what you’d find on Silent Hill 2’s normal puzzle difficulty — but they are satisfying to solve, and on more than one occasion will genuinely make you feel quite smart for figuring them out.
The game is perhaps a little reliant on “put the pieces in the right place and complete the picture” puzzles if anything, but these at least vary in their execution: some require you to rotate pieces, others require you to overlay elements on a background, others still simply involve swapping tiles around until you’ve made the picture in question.
The best puzzles in the game are the ones that don’t really offer any explanation to begin with; you just have to figure out how the various elements work together. My absolute favourite involved flipping pictures on a wall to reveal names, then cross-referencing those names with numbers, then cross-referencing those numbers with Zodiac signs. Playing on the “old school” setting, you get no hints along the way — though you do get a subtle little musical sting when you’ve correctly completed part of the puzzle, letting you know to move on to the next section.
At the time of writing, I’ve only played Emily’s playthrough, but narratively this makes internal sense, even if its focus on exploring the mental state of a clearly troubled man makes for a somewhat chaotic route to get to its final destination. There’s an interesting blend of Louisiana voodoo (many elements of which will be very familiar to anyone who has played Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers) and Lovecraftian cosmic horror along the way, and it works well for the most part.
The only section of the game that I feel fell a bit flat was the finale sequence, which features an absolutely atrocious and out-of-place feeling boss battle, the likes of which I haven’t seen since True Crime: Streets of L.A.
The trouble with this part is that for most of Alone in the Dark’s duration, you feel that combat is mostly optional, and it’s used very sparingly at that. Most environments feature only a couple of monsters at most, and sequences featuring large numbers of monsters are usually a signal to run away rather than attempt to fight them.
But for this finale sequence, combat is suddenly mandatory and a lot more intense than it has been at any other point in the game, and it just feels completely out of whack with what the rest of the experience was going for. Plus I’m a strong believer that in Lovecraftian tales, you should never end up going toe-to-toe with a legendary cosmic horror and expect to come out on top using nothing but puny human firearms. And yet. And yet.
Still, this was just one blot on an otherwise immaculate copybook. It sort of made sense for the story to end up where it did, but I also feel like it could have been handled closer to the original game’s finale sequence, which simply involved burning down the big tree that houses the great evil (which is likewise the case in this new one) and then running like buggery as the whole house collapses on top of it, rather than actually having to fight it.
Don’t let that put you off too much, though; the rest of Alone in the Dark is very good indeed. The Derceto sequences feature some excellent psychological horror through the combination of the documents you find (which are all voice acted) and the peculiar characters you occasionally run into, while the “dreamscape” sequences provide some much-needed variety, allowing the story to escape beyond the confines of Derceto and go to a variety of weird and wonderful places.
Probably the best thing is how it still feels like Alone in the Dark. While the story is considerably expanded compared to the rather bare-bones original, there are enough recognisable elements to make it feel like this is both a solid successor to the 1992 classic and a very worthwhile addition to modern survival horror canon. Not only that, there are some very deliberate touches of fanservice throughout that fit in with the overall lore, but which will nonetheless be immediately recognisable to those who played and loved the original.
With that in mind, whether you’re an Alone in the Dark newcomer or a grizzled old veteran who has been burned by previous attempts to “reboot” the series, I can definitely recommend this new take on Alone in the Dark. It’s a modern game that feels like it takes some of the best elements of titles from previous generations, and that, in itself, makes it stand out as something very distinctive in today’s market.
So yeah. More of this, please.
More about Alone in the Dark (2024)
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