Alone in the Dark

aka: AITD, Call of Cthulhu: Doom of Derceto, In the Dark, Screams in the Dark
Moby ID: 325
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Jeremy Hartwood has committed suicide in his Louisiana mansion, Derceto. You take the role of either Edward Carnby, a private investigator, or Emily Hartwood, Jeremy's niece, and investigate the suspicious death. The three-floor mansion is reputed to be haunted by its eccentric past owner. Very quickly, you realise that it is. Warped rats, zombies, and giant worms are among the foes who are after you, and you must somehow escape.

Alone in the Dark is an action-adventure survival horror game. The action is displayed from a number of fixed viewpoints. The backgrounds are 2D painted images, while the player character, all items, and monsters are rendered as 3D models.

To escape the mansion, you'll have to solve a number of puzzles. They usually involve finding an item and using it in a proper place. Apart from items necessary for the puzzles, you can also find books and documents that can be read, healing items which can be consumed to restore hit points, and weapons.

Weapons come in handy since Derceto is full of various monsters. Some monsters can be killed with weapons, but others are either impossible to kill or require a bit of thinking to take down. Note also that you have limited amounts of ammunition, so you have to use firearms carefully.

Spellings

  • アローン・イン・ザ・ダーク - Japanese spelling
  • 鬼屋魔影 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

39 People (35 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Producer
Realized & Directed by
First Assistant
Programming
Production Designer (2D Graphics)
3D Modeling & Animation
Original Music & Sound FX
Mixed by
  • Sequence Coda
Screenplay
Product Manager (US)
Product Manager (EU)
Translation
Best Boys
Special Thanks To
JACK IN THE DARK and the CD-ROM conversions
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 50 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 201 ratings with 14 reviews)

Great game that spawned a genre

The Good
Very creepy for its time. Lovecraftian theme! And of course the gameplay was so original when it first came out.

The Bad
The controls were pretty awkward, especially running. Also the fact that you can trap yourself in a certain situation with no way out especially if you didn't save the game first was very frustrating.

The Bottom Line
An adventure game that paved the way to games like Resident Evil and other "Survival Horror" type games. You control an investigator on a mission to discover the weird happenings in a mansion sometime in the 1920's or 30's. The graphics are a bit dated but they were pretty good at the time. This game was very fun to play with complex puzzles and a spooky atmosphere.

DOS · by cimerians (49) · 2001

The House the Lovecraft Built

The Good
What could you not like about a game that takes place within the ancient house of a fallen family? This game is the precursor to the survival horror genre and one of the first to animate a polygonal character against a pre-rendered background.

From the moment you take over the playing you must barricade yourself or get attacked by monsters. Also, this game makes great use of camera angles. There is nothing creepier than entering a room and seeing a hint of a monster just behind you.

Finally, loved the library. There are some books that aren't meant to be read.

The Bad
Graphically this game doesn't hold up well. Audio is a little shaky. The biggest problem is the controls, sluggish would be a kind way to describe it.

The Bottom Line
While still a fun game, if you didn't play this game in its time, then you might wonder what the big deal is. One of the better Lovecraft games though.

DOS · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2001

An excellent classic game. Period.

The Good
Alone in the Dark has so many good points it's hard not to forget some. Let's see :

The story is really good, it respects well the style of Lovecraft's work. OK, the monsters aren't "real" Lovecraft creatures, but the way you discover darker secrets at every step, as well as the main plot line are quite faithful. The use of various in-game books that the the player needs to read to understand it is a nice idea.

Sounds and music were simply fantastic for the time... With very good hardware, it was really frightening (I still remember the effect it had on me after having played it on a computer with Roland MT 32 compatible card), and it was way superior to any title (and still is, I think) if you didn't have any sound hardware but your basic PC speaker. Choose it in the setup menu, and then just listen to the sound when you drink water for example.

Ok, let's look at the graphics : well, simply put, Alone in the Dark was one of the first game ever using real-time flat 3D graphics. With a few other titles such as Strike Commander & Ultima Underworld, it has initiated the evolution which led the video gaming industry where it is now. Sure, the 3D is quite outdated now but still acceptable. What's more, it goes well with the beautiful 2D backgrounds, and the use of dramatic camera angles is really great.

Finally, the gameplay, that is puzzles and fights, is ok but not extraordinary. Note though that there are a few different ways to resolve some problems. Yes, the game seems really short compared to recent games, but first this is true for lots of old games, and second if you really try to do it only by yourself, it's not that easy. And take time to immerse yourself !

The Bad
There are in my opinion a few difficult moments. Do not hesitate to backup old saves while playing, for you can pretty easily get stuck forever (if you play without walkthrough, that is).

A real problem when playing it now is that the controls don't always work correctly on recent PCs. I've tried it on many different hardware configurations, using Ms-Dos booting disks as well as Windows Dos Boxes... Well sometimes, running in the game is, as a fact, very difficult, no matter what you do (I even changed the BIOS keyboard speed settings). And running is VERY important in this game :-\

The automatic camera switching may definitely be irritating when you are in the middle of a fight :-)

I suggest using a software to make it run slower (I don't have any name in mind right now, sorry). You can't really appreciate the introduction, for example, if you run it on a high-speed PC. Remember it was supposed to run on a 386 or 486...

The Bottom Line
A great action/adventure game with a nice story and, most of all, a wonderful atmosphere. Atmosphere clearly makes it all, if you don't appreciate it, you can stop playing. One of the two games I ever played which made me scream (ok, I doubt anyone playing it now would scream, but at the time it seemed much realistic ;-)

DOS · by Yeba (48) · 2001

[ View all 14 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Crime doesn't pay chirinea (47504) Nov 8, 2011

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Alone in the Dark appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Backgrounds

All backgrounds were rendered in 3D via multiple camera angles, then converted to 2D.

Budget

Alone in the Dark was made with a budget of US $400,000.

Christmas CD re-release

There was a Christmas CD re-release with all the patches and Jack in the Dark.

Development

According to the French book La saga des Jeux Videos, by Daniel Ichbiah, the original title would have been In the Dark. The idea came from the Infogrames' PDG, Bruno Bonnell, and one of his collaborators, Eric Motet. The player would have been constantly in the dark, having only 3 matches he could use to progress.

Frederic Raynal, an Infogrames coder who was working on a 3D engine in his free time, tried to integrate the project very soon, but he didn't succeeded in convincing Eric Motet. He then finished his 3D engine and made a demo with an Infogrames artist Didier Chanfray. The result was shown to the managers in 1991 and it was judged so good Raynal became the project leader.

After a first attempt by the team itself, the scenario was written by Hubert Chardot, an independent writer who had worked for the 20th Century Fox and was a real Lovecraft fan. The definitive version was finished in only 3 afternoons, the whole team participating. Chaosium, judging it was unfaithful to Lovecraft's work, refused to validate it, thus losing any right to perceive royalties on it. It's also at this moment that the definitive title was chosen.

Last but not least.. when the project was in its early stage, Frederic Raynal met Yael Barroz, an Infogrames artist which integrated the team. They married very soon.

More details can be found in the book already mentioned; this is just a partial summary.

Inspiration to other games

Besides the obvious sequels, this game also "inspired" two other Infogrames Cthulu games, Shadow of the Comet and Prisoner of Ice. Two books in the game refer to Lord Boleskine and his ill-fated expedition to Illsmouth, which was later used as the basis for Shadow of the Comet's plot. Another book refers to the Prisoners of Ice who are featured in the Infogrames game of the same name.

This game is widely reported as being the inspiration for the Resident Evil series for both its graphical innovation and "survival horror" plot. But in terms of the graphic engine, a similar approach was used in Cruise for a Corpse.

Inspiration

The story was inspired by a supposedly true event. A man by the name of Edward Carnby spent a night in an old house by the name of Decerto to prove that it wasn't haunted. The following morning it is reported that Carnby used a pay phone to call someone called Gloria Allen and according to a witness he looked like "he'd been fighting 'gators all night."

Virtual Dreams

Before its release, Infogrames announced that Alone in the Dark would be the first in a new series of games; The "Virtual Dreams" series. Each game would have a totally different plot and setting, but they would all use the same engine. The original Alone in the Dark box (at least, in Europe) had different cover art, and featured the "Virtual Dreams" title. The game was later re-issued in its current box design, and there was no further mention, from Infogrames, of the "Virtual Dreams" series.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • February 1996 (Issue #139) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #88 on the 150 Best Games of All Time list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #14 Best Way To Die In Computer Gaming (being dragged into the underworld and sacrificed after)
  • GameFan
    • Vol.3, Iss. 1 - Best 3DO Action/Adventure Game of the Year in 1994
  • Game Informer
    • October 2005 (issue #136) - one of the Top 25 Most Influential Games of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #34 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • ECTS Awards 1993
    • Most original game
    • Game of the year France
    • Best graphics

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Andrew Grasmeder, Big John WV, hydra9, Joshua Dove, Karthik KANE, Sycada and Yeba

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Related Sites +

  • Postmortem Video - How the game was crafted
    A video featuring Alone in the Dark designer Frédérick Raynal discussing in depth the creation of Alone in the Dark on it's twentieth anniversary. Video is about an hour long, taken on March 9, 2012 at GDC 2012. Content starts at time index 13:32 in the video.
  • Walkthrough on GameFAQs

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 325
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Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

FM Towns added by Sciere. iPhone, Acorn 32-bit, iPad added by Kabushi. PC-98 added by Terok Nor. Macintosh added by Scaryfun. 3DO added by Indra was here.

Additional contributors: Matthew Bailey, Xantheous, Brolin Empey, Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, Pirou Julien, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, li zhen, FatherJack, BlaringCoder, Johny Barreau.

Game added October 25, 1999. Last modified March 4, 2024.