Alone in the Dark - The Trilogy

A review by Michael Santovec for KEGS (Komputer Enthusiasts of Greater Seattle) - August 1997

Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-leggety Beasties and Things that go Bump in the Night

If you were truly Alone in the Dark, you wouldn't have many problems. But those things that go bump in the night will bump you off, if you aren't careful.



The Alone in the Dark trilogy is series of 4 (did he say 4?) older games (1992 to 1995) that Interplay has recently repackaged as a set. These are a combination of Adventure (explore, collect useful items, solve problems) and Fighting (kill or be killed) games. The games share a common style, interface, themes and characters. The games are independent of one another and can be played in any order.

Alone in the Dark 1 - Decerto

Jeremy Hartwood died recently at his mansion Decerto, presumably a suicide. You have the choice of playing the game as either of two characters: Emily Hartwood, Jeremy's niece or Edward Carnby, a private detective. The game play is the same regardless of the character chosen. Your task is to find out what really happened, and survive. You start in the attic because you have reason to believe something important has been hidden in an old piano there. But you'll also need to quickly find some weapons. It won't be long and the beasties will start coming after you. The various weapons are of limited usefulness. You'll soon find a gun, but with only a few bullets. More bullets are to be found elsewhere in the house. A sword is handy, but it will break after a few uses. Some of the beasties are too strong or there are too many of them to fight. You'll need to be quick to avoid them, or possibly block them from getting to you.

Jack in the Dark

This is a short game included in the #1 CD-ROM. Grace Saunders, an 8 year old girl, is lost in the big city on Halloween. She wanders into a toy shop and finds herself locked inside and alone. Well not quite alone. The toys are alive, and they aren't friendly. Being a little girl, you won't be doing any real fighting. But the toys will attack you and imprison you unless you can figure out ways to stop them.

Alone in the Dark 2 - Hell's Kitchen

Little Grace Saunders (from Jack in the Dark) has been kidnapped and is being held in a mansion known as Hell's Kitchen. And the kidnappers aren't quite human. Edward Carnby (from #1) is called on to save her. Most of the game is played as Carnby. But part way through Carnby manages to temporarily free Grace while getting caught himself. You then play the game as Grace. Not long after that, Grace is caught again, but not before making it possible for Carnby to escape. You're then back to playing as Carnby to finish the game.

Alone in the Dark 3 - Slaughter Gulch

A movie crew, filming in an old west ghost town named Slaughter Gulch, has disappeared. This town isn't big enough for the film crew and the ghosties and other beasties. Carnby to the rescue again. This game is a bit more elaborate than the others in that it allows you to set various difficulty levels.

Look and Feel

These games won awards for their graphics. At the time, they were leading edge. They were some of the earliest games to use 3D graphics with complete freedom of movement. The graphics are still fairly good for their platform (286/386 processors), but can't compete with the latest software for Pentiums.

All game control is via the keyboard. The arrow keys control movement. The escape key, space bar and enter keys are used to select options. This is usable, but at times awkward, especially compared to games that use a mouse or joystick.

As you move about the rooms, your point of view will suddenly change. This can be disorienting. The arrow keys are relative to the character. The up arrow moves the character forward, from his point of view, not yours. For example, the character may be moving away from you and then without warning your point of view switches to the other end of the room and you see the character approaching you, or moving off at an angle.

The game uses three types of audio. Like many games, it uses the sound card's music synthesizer as well as the sound card's digital output for sound effects. But the game also uses CD Audio tracks (up to 53 minutes worth per game) for some of the music, dialog and sound effects. This was used by a few games in the past to get around the quality limitations of older sound cards. Newer games have given up on using CD Audio tracks because newer sound cards can achieve the same quality with fewer programming hassles.

Unfortunately, the game lacks any volume controls. At most you can turn on or off the music or sound effects. You'll need to adjust any volume levels via your sound card's mixer control before starting the game.



Hints and Help

Both the Adventure aspects and Fighting aspects of the games are relatively easy. However, if you are more into one style of game over the other, you may find the other aspect of the games a bit challenging.

Interplay has hint information available on their web site for games #1 and #2 as well as Jack. But not for #3. Interplay has also published hint books for games #1 and #2.

Hint files in UHS (Universal Hint System) format, as well as viewer programs, are available for all the games except Jack.

System Requirements

The requirements vary based on the particular game. 286/16 to 386DX/33, 1 MB to 4 MB of RAM, 2 to 34 MB of hard disk space, plus 28 KB to 54 KB for each saved game. They all require a single speed CD-ROM, Sound Blaster compatible sound card and 256 color VGA (640x480).

They run under DOS 5.0 and above. The games use the older Expanded (EMS) memory (128 KB to 3 MB). So you may need to modify your CONFIG.SYS to provide that. Although the documentation says that the games will not run under Win95, they do work fine provided you setup the EMS.

Because the games use CD Audio tracks for much of the sound (in addition to the sound card generated sounds), your CD-ROM drive needs to be capable of audio output either via the sound card or an audio jack.

Ratings and Recommendations

The game is rated "Teen - Ages 13+, Animated Blood and Violence". It's very much cartoon style. I would put the target audience at about ages 10 to 15.

These are not games for either hard core adventure gamers or hard core action gamers. These are OK games for beginners. If you have an older computer (386 or low end 486) these are reasonable games. For higher end PCs, there are more interesting games available.