Back in 1992, when I was a wee lad, my first computer was a Canon Navigator. It was monochrome, had just enough power to just do some word processing, play Chessmaster, Commander Keen if I used a boot disk, and surprisingly had a touch screen on it, which was pretty ahead of its time. I don’t even think the thing had more than maybe a couple megabytes of RAM on it.

I had seen some of the newer games run on computers at school, like Star Trek, Scorched Earth which billed itself as the “mother of all games” and unknowingly also became the granddaddy of the Worms series, and Wolfenstein 3D, which totally blew my mind when I first played it. When visiting my cousins I’d get to play on their fancy 8 megabyte RAM computers as well, and they usually had all the latest Lucasarts and Sierra adventure games as they came out. But one evening I was there and we fired up a new title I’d never heard of, called Alone in the Dark. My cousin said it was scary as all hell, and of course I believed him because neither of us have ever had much of an appetite for scary movies or games. And boy, was he right.

Alone in the Dark is widely considered to be the grandfather of the survival horror genre, popularized by classics like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and some of my dates back in college (they know who they are). All the things you’re familiar with started here: occult themes, limited health pickups and ammo, enemies you’re better off running from rather than fighting, and of course, the all-powerful jump scares. Remember the first time the dogs crashed through the windows in Resident Evil and you sharted your pants? They did it here first. And with better voice acting! Heck, even the awful tank controls and fixed camera angles started here. Where Resident Evil’s mythology was based around zombies and science experiments gone wrong, Alone in the Dark went a little more supernatural and mostly stuck with monsters that belong more in a Lovecraft story. There’s still some zombies in it, but the weird in this game goes so much farther than those.

The game starts where you choose either series protagonist Edward Carnby, or Emily Hartwood – doesn’t really change your experience either way other than just playing with a dude or a chick. Whomever you choose, they’re sent a notice that Jeremy Hartwood has committed suicide, and they’re lured into his mansion named Derceto to investigate, only to be trapped inside. So you as player have 2 tasks: figure out what happened to Jeremy, and also get the hell out of Dodge.

You start the game not at the front door like in Resident Evil, but in the attic where Jeremy had died. You then make your way through the rest of the mansion, collecting clues, managing inventory, and avoiding all manner of nasties. Something I liked about this game is that you can drop items at will when you run out of space. The strategy I used was to pick an easy to reach area to leave things at and then take what I need. You’ll find melee and ranged weapons along with keys and other items you’ll use to get around the house. In addition to that, you’ll also pick up a lot of books and letters that give you more insight into the story surrounding Jeremy’s actions leading up to his death along with just who or what is trying to keep you in the mansion.

So after almost 30 years, is this game still scary? In general, no, but the game’s still got some really great things going for it.

Unfortunately some of the scares and deaths come cheaply in the form of trial and error – traps will cause an instant death at times and even reading some books will kill you, as they’re cursed with incantations that you cannot escape. There’s encounters with enemies where if you screw up, you’ll have to reload your save. It’s also possible to screw something up to a point where you’ll have to restart the game. I’ve always felt that trial and error is bad game design and this holds true here. You’ll have to save pretty frequently as it’s entirely likely something will kill you that’s right around the corner, or some of the fights may drain your health to a point where you should just reload your save and try again.

Speaking of fights – they’re just as sluggish as you’d expect with the OG tank controls. You basically hold down the spacebar then hold one of the arrow keys to do different stuff. Using firearms will be more familiar – you just hold spacebar to draw your weapon and then use the arrow keys to aim and shoot. Personally I liked using swords or knives better, and punching out zombies always felt funny, especially since Carnby would use the old boxing stance you see on so many vintage pictures of guys with mustaches that beta males try to copy now. As a side note, along with having to basically charge up an attack, you have to switch between fighting, searching, and pushing. To do this you have to actually go into the menu to switch between them, which breaks up the action pretty badly. It also means you’ll get damaged pretty frequently because you’ll encounter a zombie or something, try to fight it, and you end up trying to search it instead. Very irritating.

So after almost 30 years, is this game still scary? In general, no, but the game’s still got some really great things going for it. First and foremost, the mansion you explore is pretty awesome and almost feels like a character of its own in the game. You’ll travel through different rooms and even venture below the mansion itself to see what the true horrors are underneath. The graphics still have some character to them even if they’re pretty dated, and while the rooms aren’t *that* detailed, I still think they look good. My favorite thing about this has to be the sound, though. The voice acting is great, the music is good even if they play the combat music a little too often, and the sound effects for everything are still creepy. Walking around the mansion and hearing your footsteps creak loudly and wondering if you’ll attract something do wonders to up the creep factor. Granted the sounds your character makes when they take damage is…odd…but everything else made up for it.

But really, this is more something that should be played and appreciated as a classic that inspired so many other great games like it since, and not something that you’ll actually want to get spooked by. I went back and played the Resident Evil remake with Mrs Controller and the game still creeped us out and even made us jump once or twice, whereas I think in Alone in the Dark, the creepiest thing you’ll see is the game over screen with all the creepy-ass monsters and that cultist guy in the robe. If any horror game is ripe for a remake, it would most definitely be this one because I’d love to see this on the RE Engine. The game still has great bones, so a new coat of paint, maybe rearrange the puzzles and update the controls and it’d have the power to scare a new generation all over again.