A Southern Gothic Tale Dripping In Horror

There’s something very special, and also nerve-wracking, about breathing life back into a classic survival horror 34 years after it was first released. Crowned as the pioneer of its genre, Alone in the Dark had a lot to live up to, having already set the design blueprint for games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Still, thankfully, and as skeptical as I was attempting to reimagine a game that was made over three decades ago, this gothic noir mystery slipped back into what it does best like a tailored, warm glove, and offered more than its fair share of tense environments, stellar voice acting and a strange yet juicy narrative that whets my appetite as I dived into the weird world of the southern supernatural.

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Seven seconds till the end.

A World Beyond Its Own

Booting up the game displayed some basic accessibility features where I could choose from a small array of different-sized subtitles, although I would have liked to have seen more from a game released in 2024, like audio descriptions, low vision, and text option improvements due to how text-heavy the game is, but more on this later.

For those who want to relive their childhood and take a trip down memory lane, there’s also an option to play the entirety of Alone in the Dark with the classic characters from the original game in the Derceto 1992 costume pack, which incorporates that classic polygonal motif, as well as adding some cool vintage horror filters, but for my playthrough, I didn’t go for any of these as I wanted to fully experience the visual upgrades.

When choosing a character to take on the disappearance of Jeremy Hartwood, it had to be Emily Hartwood for me. Given how much I love Jodie Comer in Killing Eve and her being the queen of mastering accents, I was intrigued to hear her American twang which fit in perfectly around the 1920s aesthetic era the game is set in, even though her facial animation was stiff. It’ll be fascinating on my second run to see how the story plays with private investigator Edward Carnby (David Harbour) since NPCs and even the manor react differently to each character while still producing the same story beats. This does a lot for replayability.

The story takes place in New Orleans’ murky bayou; the absolute scale of the sprawling southern Derceto Manor is what surprised me the most. From its moody atmosphere of darkness and shadows to the minute detail of beams of light protruding through partially opened curtains, the hue of its Art Deco table lamps, or the nature-infused architecture of its conservatory, the three-floored haunted house’s design was made to be savored, and the non-linear exploration catered to this extremely well.

This same impressive theme ran outside Derceto too, from Emily’s nightmare sequences of the store-lit French Quarter streets, and the deep misty swamps of Louisiana to its bizarre Ancient Egypt landscapes. Coupled with these stunning environments, the game’s score was equally captivating as it harmoniously married into that rhythmic jazz the 1920s South is known for while also playing into those all-important creepy vibes I crave when exploring a spooky, whodunnit setting.

What Alone in the Dark does best at its core, outside its environments, is its puzzle elements. Varying in difficulty, it’s obvious how much thought and time the developers poured into wanting the player to uncover its mysteries through really interesting challenges like rearranging medicine bottles and paintings, and unearthing keys to get past its many locked doors and boxes. However, if you’re not into reading a lot of text, Alone in the Dark can become a bit of a word soup.

There are so many letters and lore dumps to get through when exposing its story as well as clues that, at times, were a little overwhelming, but not only that, they were extremely hard to read unless you had your nose right up to the screen. I found myself having to get up and down from the couch a lot in order to read them, which was a hindrance to my gameplay, and again, a much-needed accessibility option for this would have been appreciated.

I did find it odd that even though this grand and beautiful house which harnessed a “safe place” for the mentally fatigued was brimming with visual opulence, it was also very empty. Other guests populate the manor that I met throughout my journey, but only through cutscenes. If it wasn’t for the puzzles of the game that had me running from one side of the house to the other in a bid to collect clues, it would have felt like a lonely experience. For me, I would have loved to have seen some of the other guests coming and going, hearing the cracking of floorboards to add even more to the creepy atmosphere, or finding someone just standing in one of its many rooms, giving me the fright of my life.

A Room With A View

Rooms turn from red to blue on the game’s interactive map when a discoverable point of interest is completed, which is a godsend to people like me who almost immediately forget which room they have just entered. There’s also a journal highlighting descriptive objectives that was super easy to use and without it, trying to discover many places and key aspects would have been a nightmare.

As well as various health potions and ammunition located throughout the game, there are also collectibles called Lagniappes sets which uncover forbidden knowledge that I occasionally picked up but didn’t go out of my way, for since I’d need to play the game at least twice, as you need to play both Carnby and Emily to collect them all.

When it comes to the game’s monsters, I felt slightly let down. I was in no way looking for the same sinister creatures as seen in other survival horrors like Resident Evil 7, but there just weren’t enough of them, and they only really started to appear toward the end of the game in some pretty cool boss fight showdowns. With an arsenal at my fingertips that included a pistol, shotgun, Tommy gun, and melee weapons like an axe, I felt like I was constantly prepared for battles that never materialized.

Sure, there were a handful of ghouls on the New Orleans streets and a few scattered midway through the game that included armored skeletons and bats too, but it was more the tense atmosphere of thinking something was about to happen that played a big part in Alone in the Dark’s environment.

Character movement could also be quite clunky at times when engaging in enemy fights and not as streamlined as it should be, or when running from a creature, I found myself more than once stuck inside some invisible wall to which I had to restart my last save, but the developers have promised that many of these issues will be fixed on release.

Still, Alone in the Dark is well worth its 15-hour playthrough, even if it’s just for its puzzles, incredibly rich and inviting environments, chilling atmosphere, and nightmarish landscapes, all while discovering Emily’s backstory and how it ties into Jeremy’s and the Dark Man’s presence. There were more than enough well-written story beats that kept me intrigued, in which I constantly wanted to find out what happened next, but also areas that I feel could have easily been fleshed out to take this beautifully rich game to greater heights.

Alone in the Dark 2024

Developer

Pieces Interactive