Alone In The Dark 1992

[Nayra Waddles]

Alonein the Dark is a 1992 survival horror video game designed by Frdrick Raynal. Developed and published by Infogrames in 1992 for MS-DOS, the game was eventually ported to Mac OS, the PC-98, the FM Towns, the 3DO, the Acorn Archimedes, and iOS. Alone in the Dark is set in 1920s Louisiana and challenges the player to escape a haunted mansion. To advance, the player must solve puzzles while banishing, slaying, or eluding various ghosts and monsters. The player can collect and use weapons, manage a weight-based inventory system, and explore a partially nonlinear map.

Raynal was motivated to create Alone in the Dark due to his interest in 3D animation and his fondness for horror films. The game's storyline was inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft and the work of directors like Dario Argento and George Romero; Raynal's programming team worked to convey much of this story via key texts scattered about the game's environment. To overcome technical limitations, the production team also employed a fixed camera angle system to dramatically frame the movement of three-dimensional characters on top of two-dimensional background images.

Upon its release, Alone in the Dark received acclaim, with critics applauding its unsettling atmosphere, effective soundtrack, and technical inventiveness. The game also won several industry awards and is regularly included in lists of the best video games ever made. Often identified as the first 3D survival horror game, Alone in the Dark strongly influenced the production of Capcom's Resident Evil (1996), and it also spawned a series of follow-up games and two films. A reimagining of the original game, published by THQ Nordic, was released on 20 March 2024.

Players choose between a male or female protagonist (Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood, respectively),[3][4][5] and are then trapped inside the haunted mansion of Derceto. The player character starts in the attic, having ascended to the top of the mansion without incident, and is tasked with finding a way out of the mansion while avoiding, outsmarting, or defeating various supernatural enemies.[4][6][7][8] Although able to kill most enemies with fists and feet, the player can also find and utilize various weapons.[5][9][10] Other opponents can only be beaten by solving a particular puzzle rather than a straight fight, and still others cannot be killed and instead must be avoided.[10]

Much of the game involves exploration and puzzle-solving,[11] and the player can search through the house for clues as to what occurred before the player's arrival.[6] The player can also open and close doors, push certain objects, and pick up and use key items.[5][8][12] The game's inventory is limited, and the player must often discard items to make room. It is possible to discard items needed to complete the game, but discarded items remain in play and can be retrieved later, even if the player character leaves the room.[13] Inventory space is determined by weight, not number of items; for example, a player may discard several lightweight items yet still be unable to pick up a heavy object.[14]

Alone in the Dark has a partially non-linear level design. The player character is initially restricted to the attic and third floor, whose rooms are arranged such that they must be traversed in a linear order. Completing the puzzle at the end of the third floor grants the player character access to the first and second floors. The player can explore the rooms in this area in any order and revisit the attic and third floor if desired. Upon completing a specific puzzle, the player gains access to the caverns beneath the mansion. The caverns are completely linear, and each puzzle must be overcome as it is encountered.[15][16][17]

In 1924, Jeremy Hartwood, a noted artist and owner of the Louisiana mansion Derceto, has died by suicide. His death appears suspicious yet seems to surprise nobody, for Derceto is widely reputed to be haunted by an evil power. The player assumes the role of either Edward Carnby (a private investigator who is sent to find a piano in the loft for an antique dealer) or Emily Hartwood (Jeremy's niece, who is also interested in finding the piano because she believes it contains a secret note that explains Jeremy's suicide). Depending on whether the player chooses to play as Carnby or Hartwood, the game begins with that character going to the mansion to investigate. Upon entering the house, the doors mysteriously slam shut behind the player character, and once they make it to the attic, they are attacked by monsters. The player character progresses down through the house, fighting off various creatures and hazards.[18][19]

The player character finds documents throughout the house indicating that Derceto was built by an occultist pirate named Ezechiel Pregzt, and that beneath the house are caverns wherein Pregzt performed dark rituals to enlarge his fortune and unnaturally extend his life.[20][21] Pregzt was shot, and Derceto was burned down by encamped Union soldiers during the American Civil War.[21][22] However, Pregzt's spirit lived on, coming to inhabit an old tree in the caverns underneath Derceto.[21] Over the course of the game, the player discovers that Jeremy Hartwood killed himself to prevent his body being used by Pregzt as a host; for this reason, Pregzt is now targeting the player.[23] If the player is incapacitated, their body is subsequently dragged to a sacrificial area and possessed by Pregzt, whereupon the game ends with an image of supernatural horrors being unleashed from the house into the world at large.[15][24]

In another ending, the player character finds a passage into the caverns in Hartwood's study and makes their way to the tree where Pregzt resides. The player character hurls a lighted lantern at the tree, then flees the collapsing cavern.[8][25] The flames consume Pregzt, and the house is purged of supernatural creatures and other effects caused by his influence. The player can finally open the front doors and leave the house (which, now empty of monsters, is largely safe to explore).[8][26] The game ends with the player returning to their car, only to discover that the person behind the wheel is a zombie, who drives the car back to civilization.[15]

The story is heavily influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.[15][27][28] Grimoires found in the mansion's library include the Necronomicon and De Vermis Mysteriis, both taken from Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.[15] The last name of the character Edward Carnby is a reference to John Carnby, a character in the Mythos tale The Return of the Sorcerer by Clark Ashton Smith.[29] Finally, several supernatural opponents are recognizable creatures from the Mythos (e.g., Deep Ones, Nightgaunts, Chthonians), and Pregzt even mentions Cthulhu.[19][28][30][31]

In September 1991, Raynal and his team presented an early proof of concept of their horror game to Infogrames. At the time, the game only contained a few rooms, but when Bonnell and Infogrames head of productions ric Motet saw this demo, they were convinced of the game's potential for success and officially approved the project. Infogrames subsequently diverted resources to Raynal's project, which resulted in the development team expanding from three individuals to seven.[36][b] During this phase of production, the game went by several working titles, including In the Dark, Screams in the Dark, The Old Dark House, The Thing in the House, and The Evil Fear.[32][37][38][39] The name Alone in the Dark was eventually settled upon, with the word "Alone" being added to "reinforce the tragic nature" of the game.[40]

To help develop the game's story, Infogrames hired Hubert Chardot, a screenwriter who had worked for 20th Century Fox. Chardot outlined the game's plot in only three afternoons, and he also wrote most of the game's dialogue.[41] While Alone in the Dark would go on to be advertised as a game "inspired by the work of H. P. Lovecraft",[42] Raynal has admitted that the works of Argento and Romero were stronger influences on the game and that Lovecraft was used simply to provide "ambiance, to give roots to the mystery and to add a few creatures to the bestiary".[43] This decision to allude to the author's creations rather than directly adapt one of his works led Chaosium to contend that the game was "too far removed from the spirit of H. P. Lovecraft", and so they subsequently revoked Infogrames' Call of Cthulhu license.[40] Other sources claim that Chaosium revoked their license because they believed Raynal's game to be too simple to do justice to the complex rules of their pen-and-paper game.[44]

Due to his belief that computer graphics at the time were not sufficiently frightening on their own, Raynal decided to integrate key texts into the game which could convey necessary backstory details: "A few polygons," he noted in an interview with GamaSutra, "[is] not very frightening, so I knew that I needed the text to put the situation into a very heavy background story for the game."[26] In terms of time period and setting, Raynal also decided that the game should take place in a 1920s mansion, as such an expansive locale would be conducive to player exploration, and the specific time frame would allow "for weapons while avoiding the modern commodities that were too difficult to properly handle" or which would have "caused atmosphere and consistency problems".[33] To heighten player anxiety, the game was designed so that simple tasks like walking down a hall, opening a door, or reading a book could potentially result in player death. While these deaths occurred in only a few areas, Raynal and his team included them to make the player worry about seemingly ordinary actions.[26]

The soundtrack to Alone in the Dark was created by Infogrames' in-house composer Philippe Vachey with the use of Ad Lib, Inc. sound cards.[26][33][49] Vachey's "haunting and organic" score incorporated sonic essential elements often found in horror soundtracks, including piano hits and plucked strings.[49] Upon Raynal's request, Vachey also created musical compositions that corresponded to each of the game's many monsters. While Raynal intended these tracks to only play whenever a monster appeared on screen, Vachey proposed that they occasionally play even when an enemy was absent. This, Vachey reasoned, would scare the player into thinking they were in danger when they were otherwise perfectly safe.[33] Raynal also wanted the game to incorporate realistic sound effects to heighten its atmosphere, and so Vachey incorporated Sound Blaster audio samples into his sound design.[26] While absent from the original release, the 1993 CD-ROM re-release of Alone in the Dark featured introductory voice-overs.[9]

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