Alone in the Dark

France is known for many things, but videogames were never really a part of them. Strange because France produces a lot of games, but especially so because back in the days of the PC boom of the 80s and 90s a lot of beautiful & genre breaking games came out of France. Alone in the Dark was one of them.

Developed by a small team in a company called Infogrames under the lead of Frédérick Raynal, a young programmer with a passion for 3D graphics and horror films, Alone in the Dark was a survival horror game released in 1992 for IBM PC compatibles. At the time there was nothing else quite like it. I remember seeing the intro for the first time and feeling rather uneasy as I saw a flat shaded polygonal 1920s car drive down a moody hand painted background of a sunset lit road towards an old mansion. Not only this graphical technique was unusual for the time, but the art itself communicated the feeling of dread. The entire introduction sequence is your character slowly making their way from the gate of the mansion to the attic while some possibly undead entity is watching.

Alone in the Dark was called an action adventure back then and essentially combined the elements of both genres. Your get to explore the mansion solving adventure-like inventory puzzles, but also periodically need to fight off the forces of evil, often using a variety of weapons. However, Raynal maintains that the game is an adventure and he designed it as such, because if you think just a little bit, you’ll be able to avoid most if not all confrontations in the game. First location of the game, the attic, was specifically designed to teach you that principle. Here you discover your first clues to the mystery behind the mansion and get to fight a zombie that raises from a hatch in the floor and a flying creature with razor sharp teeth that crashes through a window. However, a quick assessment of the situation will reveal that you can prevent the hatch from opening by pushing an old chest on top of it and moving an armoir just a little will block the window. The rest of the game is just that, and your goal is to avoid many enemies and traps by using your brain to find the next book or a note containing a hint or a bit of story. The more books and notes you read, you get to fill in the story of this old mansion called Derceto and the source of evil that inhabits it.

The story was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and in my opinion captured the atmosphere perfectly. You find out that the evil is much bigger than you or the mansion, and that the stakes are very high. Despite weapons actually being effective against many supernatural creatures, you still feel rather helpless. You are alone. This concept is so perfectly executed that it was surprising to find out that the game wasn’t a product of many iterations. The team only had three days to discuss the game and draw up a plan to make it a reality. About 10 months later Alone in the Dark was born. One of the game’s surprise achievements was the ability to select either a male or a female protagonist, which was uncharacteristic for an adventure game. Both characters have different sets of animations and also each have a different reason for entering the mansion, which is explained before the game begins.

Of course not everything was perfect and the game did have a few issues. The biggest ones, unfortunately, by design. You definitely won’t be finishing the game on your first try because it’s full of traps that you have no way of overcoming unless you fell for them at least once before. It’s very possible to put a game in an unwinnable state by throwing away a crucial item and then crossing a point of no return. Aiming can be incredibly difficult due to some crazy camera angles. And also the inventory is awkwardly limited by weight.

These little annoyances didn’t stop Alone in the Dark from becoming a success. Raynal had some sort of disagreement with Infogrames and left to start Adeline Software, taking some of the original team with him. This, however, didn’t stop Infogrames from using his engine and tools to develop sequels.

First one was Jack in the Dark, a short standalone demo used to promote the upcoming Alone in the Dark 2. You play as a little girl called Grace Sounders who enters an empty Halloween store only to discover that the place is haunted by possessed toys that keep Santa Claus their prisoner. It’s a cute little game and a nice way to spend half an hour or so. Standalone demos aren’t common today and they certainly weren’t back then either.

Alone in the Dark 2 was not that great, despite receiving favorable reviews and being fondly remembered by many. While it offered a bigger mansion to explore and even more beautiful, often animated, background art and an intriguing mix of gangsters, pirates and voodoo, the focus of the game shifted towards action. Unfortunately Raynal’s technology wasn’t made for action, so the sequel turned out unnecessarily difficult because of awkward controls and a multitude of sharpshooting enemies. The tone of the game also changed and the game wasn’t as suspenseful or moody, and even became downright comical at times.

When Alone in the Dark 3 arrived, it was a massive disappointment. The setting was a western ghost town full of, well, ghosts… with guns. The game became even more action oriented with a plot was unnecessarily convoluted, incredibly nonsensical puzzles, and the whole thing began resembling Dragon’s Lair with how quick it expected correct actions from the player before it killed them off on just about every screen. Honestly, the less is said about this game, the better.

Despite negative reactions Infogrames still didn’t give up and used the same tech to produce Knight’s Chase (known as Time Gate in the U.S.), a game about time travel and the Knights Templar that wasn’t much better than Alone in the Dark 3. The game was supposed to be the first in another trilogy, but disappointing sales made Infogrames put aside Alone in the Dark and its tech for while.

Since then the name Alone in the Dark became rather tarnished. The numberless sequel/reboot from 2001 failed to deliver either action or scares, and it didn’t help that it was later adapted into a film by the schlockmeister Uwe Boll. Then 2008 saw yet another game simply called Alone in the Dark that was painfully mediocre. You might even be surprised to learn that yet another Alone in the Dark game was released last year. It’s a cooperative multiplayer game, so by definition you’re not alone and as the subtitle “Illumination” suggests, you’re not in the dark either.

But not everything is that bleak. Despite the franchise effectively collapsing onto itself, the original game inspired another a very successful video game series – Resident Evil. First game in that franchise garnered an incredibly positive reception and coined the term “survival horror”, but all of the elements of the genre can be traced back to a little French game called Alone in the Dark.

The original game holds a very special place in my heart. I was very much intrigued by the mentioning of H.P. Lovecraft in the game’s credits and decided to look for his books in local libraries. I happened to live in Russia at the time, so there weren’t many. But what I did find I liked a lot and now I have a French game to thank for making me a big Lovecraft fan I am today.

It just so happens that the digital distribution service GOG offers Alone in the Dark games for just $6 in a bundle (it’s the CD-ROM versions, so you’ll have to deal with incredibly over the top voice acting,) so if you don’t have much to do this Halloween weekend, you might want to head on there, buy and download the first game, turn off the lights, and stretch your retro game muscles a bit. Despite its age the game is going to make you look over your shoulder a few times. Guaranteed.