Surprise! Survival horror series Alone In The Dark returns – again! This time it’s a reimagining of the original 1992 game, where you’ll delve into Derceto Manor as returning characters Emily Hartwood and Edward Carnby in an attempt to figure out what’s happened to Hartwood’s missing uncle. As you’d expect, it does not go terribly well. But hey, it looks like it makes for a pretty good time.
There have been numerous attempts to revive Alone In The Dark over the years, all of which haven’t gone down well. It swung around as an action-adventure reboot in 2008, which saw Edward Carnby awkwardly bumble through New York and set fire to things. And we don’t talk about that multiplayer FPS. But then THQ Nordic hoovered up rights to the series three years ago, which, at the time, prompted Alice0 to question what form a new entry would take and gushing over AITD 2008’s long coat inventory.
And now we’ve got Alone In The Dark (202?), which sees you inch through a Derceto manor that’s traded the original’s reds and greens for a more traditional ‘murk’, mixing the swampy American deep south with a 1920s noir mood. It’s an original story headed up by Soma’s Mikael Hedberg, developers Pieces Interactive have told us, but it will also be incorporating characters, places and themes from the original trilogy in the 90s.
However, you’ll also be travelling to new places in this reimaginging, via portals that open up new worlds and settings outside of the manor. I was shown a ‘forgotten cemetery’ outside New Orleans and an oil rig in the bayou in a presentation earlier this week, and you’ll have to choose whether to play as Edward or Emily as you dig round their nooks and crannies. If I’m being brutally honest, it looks like any survival horror game that’s released over the last few years, what with all the over-the-shoulder exploring and shooting of monsters that look like inflated testes.
Then again, I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing the game looks similar to say, your Resident Evils and The Evil Withins. From the brief glimpses of the manor and its surrounds I saw during a presentation earlier this week, it looks suitably haunting. It’s also brimming with little puzzles that involve slotting bits into a wall and rotating them. So yes, for what it’s worth, it looks like a good time. Whether it’s a grand time that can stand tall amongst the rest of the horror game competition, though? Well, that remains to be seen. No release date yet, but you can find out more on its Steam page.