ALONE IN THE DARK

"I HAVE FREED HELLISH FORCES AND NOW THE PRICE MUST BE PAID"

For this year's christmas and new year holidays I spent my time in a small but charming hut in the mountains with friends. Of course we played lots of board and card games but somehow I knew there would be time to play some videogames as well. I was prepared. With me was Alone in the Dark. A true classic for videogame historians and a must for everyone that enjoys the Survival Horror genre and wants to reveal the actual roots of it.

Alone in the Dark was published by Infogrames in 1992 and it was an astonishing game for its time. The graphics were new, interesting and basically ground-breaking for me, given I never saw some pure 3D characters among the countless Point&Click or Jump&Run games I was playing at that time. But even more intriguing than the graphics was one of the best archetype stories and settings that has yet to be reached by more than a handful of games; Derceto, an old mansion on the outskirts of an urban town, curses, magic, zombies, ghosts, the paranormal and of course death and fear!


As soon as Edward Carnby steps into the yard and some creepy creature watches him moving towards the house and probably even walking up to the rooftop, anybody - even today - will feel a strong tense building up. Although the mansion doesn't seem very big, with one door after another closing behind you, you know that there is danger waiting behind every corner... Yes, this game is hard. There were no checkpoints in those days, no quick-time events that could save your life and hints about what you're supposed to do that can be best described as confusing. You could save the game anytime but that didn't change the fact that this game was and still is hard as hell! - You could simply run out of ammo, destroy items that you would need later on, make a false step or even just open a wrong door or read a deadly book... death was everywhere, waiting without - or maybe too cryptic - warnings.

When I was about 11 years old, I couldn't beat that game - not even together with my best friend of that time and whole weekends to try. I had to settle this score and this time I finally did it. It took me about five restarts of the game and still a lot of try and error since I was still not capable of deciphering all those cryptic hints in that game. I feel like I accomplished something now. I beat the newest Resident Evil, which I think I already cursed to dust for being anything but Resident Evil on some previous occasion, in a day and it gave me nothing but frustration and anger. Now that I beat Alone in the Dark I finally know again how it feels to accomplish something in a game.


Since I know quite a lot about game design and I could observe and analyze the simplicity of that game very well, I was terribly motivated to conceive and start to do a modern remake of it right away. Like so often somebody was faster however and I found an awesome looking and ambitious project on the internet:



Although it seems like this had potential to become one of the best remakes ever made, according to the blog of the creators it seems the project has been cancelled a while ago... It seems the blog needs to be updated. Maybe they are working on it again? Maybe not? I will try to contact them and get more information. In the meantime you could check it out and support guillaumecolomb. I just hope they will keep it a bit more close to the original or probably allow for some "classic mode" without quick-time events and so on. This game was hard and it has to stay that way!

If you haven't played Alone in the Dark yet, I highly recommend getting a DOS-Box and get it running. Just don't come too close to the ghost of the lady in the chair as well as to any other parts except the one and only original from 1992 and the great looking remake. Seriously, all other parts of this franchise on all kind of systems (except maybe the second) are absolutely not worth it!

Play more! Accomplish more!