It was once a game – 30 years ago

Alone in the Dark – the first horror game?

In 1992, Infogrames released a title for PC (MS-DOS) that would influence game series such as Resident Evil and give rise to a whole new genre. It is admittedly controversial, but many agree that this was the first 3D game in third person, and also a kind of basis for the immensely popular genre that would later be a bit clumsily called “survival horror”.

“Very ahead of its time”

In a grip that was also very ahead of its time, the player could choose between two characters: Edward Carnby (who then went on to become a kind of front man for the series), and Emily Hartwood. The main character is given an assignment to investigate what happened at the mysterious mansion Derceto, in the middle of the deep, dark, swampy Louisiana. It’s the 1920s – the First World War is over and the Great Depression has not yet occurred. The player moves in some kind of historical borderland, rarely explored and full of macabre mysteries.

It was mostly about solving various puzzles and riddles. As usual, there was hardly anyone at all holding your hand, and you solved problems by picking up items, handwritten notes and ammunition. The latter was difficult to get over, which also became a permanent feature in future genre interpretations.

“The movement pattern of course gave rise to a lot of frustration”

The pre-rendered backgrounds combined with 3D and locked camera angles were also new for their time. Limitations of the team meant that you could only animate characters and objects, not the environments. The movement pattern of course gave rise to a lot of frustration as the character moved in relation to the camera (tank controls) and not in a first-person perspective, but the then limitations in both camera and controls also became a kind of sign. 30 years later, many of the greats of the genre still “suffer” from the same problem, with stilted movements that make you die, over and over again. The controls also meant that the player often preferred to flee rather than fight, which also became a standing feature in the genre.

But the whole thing was actually not meant to look exactly like it did. In his book La saga des Jeux Videos (which does not seem to have been translated into either English or Swedish), the author Daniel Ichbiah writes (according to a google translation) that the game was originally just called In the Dark – the player was in constant darkness, with only three matches as aids. Smells a little Penumbra, not true? After much effort, a 3D programmer had to accept his vision instead. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find any pictures from the original versions.

A cozy detail with the game was that the background story came in the form of a time-typical paper newspaper that you could sit back with. Maybe with a pipe in his mouth? At that time, copy protection was also analog, and here you found a small blue book with symbols that the game then wanted you to refer to. Nice! Check out this video below for a better idea of ​​what it might look like. You can mute if the speaker annoys you …

Of course you do not want to play Alone in the Dark today, other than for purely archaeological purposes. The game has certainly not aged well mechanically, but as a forerunner and pioneering genre creator, there is some value in exploring both its pros and cons. The game is on Steam and GoGand of course to the old formats if you have something lying in the basement.