Alone In The Dark Reimagining Officially Announced With Trailer And Gameplay

Alone In The Dark is a franchise a lot of modern gamers might not be familiar with. The first game (titled simply Alone In The Dark) reared its head as a survival horror game way back in 1992 on PC. It’s often cited as the godfather of modern horror, influencing such recognisable behemoths as Resident Evil and Silent Hill with its eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere.

It has, however, been dormant in recent years. Following a slew of sequels, reboots, movies and comic books between 1992 and 2015, it’s back from the dead to see what its descendants are up to. The project, announced today by THQ Nordic (who acquired the original IP from Atari), already has a trailer which you can check out right here.

The game is being developed by Swedish studio Pieces Interactive, but is currently in a pre-alpha stage, so it’s some way from being complete. Indeed, there’s no firm release date for the title, but we do know that it’s been in development for a healthy three years, so you’d imagine the trailer and gameplay are some way to being a fairly decent representation of what we’ll see in the final product.

As for what we do see, it’s pretty clear that Alone In The Dark is taking inspiration from the likes of The Evil Within franchise and Resident Evil 2 Remake, which in turn took inspiration from the original Alone In The Dark. It’s all very cyclical and it’ll make your nose bleed if you think about it too much, but looking at the homework of the likes of Bethesda and Capcom isn’t exactly a terrible idea in my book. Especially if you’re looking to re-enter the psychological horror genre in the modern age.

Alone In The Dark has been described as being like a love letter to the original game with its dense atmosphere and story. The latter of which focuses around a return to its forebears location, Derceto Manor, as Emily Heartwood (niece of Jeremy Heartwood) attempts to track down her uncle alongside series mainstay private detective Edward Carnby. And it’s here that Pieces Interactive really show their RE2 Remake inspirations. The game will feature two interlinked single player campaigns, one for each character, where each story will unfold differently depending on who you play as. NPCs will react differently to you, and certain areas are only accessible to one player or the other - stop me if you’ve heard that one before.

The comparisons to other games don’t stop there though, what with the title taking place in the deep south of America in a creaky old mansion filled with creepy residents and monsters. I could have described either Alone In The Dark or Resident Evil 7 with that sentence, and both would have made sense. Gentle ribbing aside, it looks like the developers are passionate about their source material and will likely be keen to walk that tightrope between pleasing old fans of the franchise and attracting new ones.

The game's combat system is one of the most intriguing parts of it though, with our chosen protagonist having unique weapons that they must utilise in order to survive the nightmare in which they find themselves. Aside from this, weapons will be found scattered around the game world and must be sought out in order to stand a chance in hell of getting to the bottom of things. Speaking of hell, there will be multiple realms to traverse where demons, nightmares and apparitions will lie around every corner. Certainly sounds like the game has some lofty goals to keep players entertained, at any rate.

One more thing to note about the game, is that its story has been written by Mikael Hedberg, who wrote both Amnesia and SOMA, so that might give you an indication as to how heavily the game will dig into its psychological horror roots. As mentioned, there is no release date for Alone In The Dark just yet, and in all likelihood it’ll probably be a little way off considering where it is in its production timeline, but we do know that it’s aiming to land on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.