Alone in the Dark: The Most Important Survival Horror Game You've Never Played
135Alone in the Dark didn’t just inspire Resident Evil, but a whole load of horror games have their roots in Alone in the Dark. And maybe even a few things outside the gaming space. Resident Evil is famous for coining the term survival horror.
But. Without Alone in the Dark there would be no Resident Evil.
Without Alone in the Dark there would be no Amnesia. No Evil Within. No Dark Souls. I’m not saying these games are directly inspired by Alone in the Dark. But I’m saying It’s a spider web. Complicated, and right in the middle sits Alone in the Dark like a fat shiny spider.
The Alone in the Dark series is one I consider to be, well, not just a forerunner to modern survival horror games, but one of the most influential horror series of all time. And it’s a series which is left out of the discourse quite a lot. Presumably because it was released on the DOS PC in the early 1990s (at least here in the West) and is relatively inaccessible to modern audiences. Alone in the Dark combined the creeping dread of Lovecraftian cosmic horror with anxiety-inducing survival horror gameplay. And like a true lurking menace, Alone in the Dark continues to loom in the shadows, pulling the strings of modern survival horror games to this day.
Sources
https://web.archive.org/web/20120510230815/http://www.the-horror.com/index.php?id=features&s=tsbb
http://hardcoregaming101.net/alone-in-the-dark/
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/phantasmagoria/
https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_296/8699-House-of-Horrors
https://web.archive.org/web/20180307054415/http://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/tokuro-fujiwara/
https://archive.vn/20171109190016/http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2014/10/14/shinji-mikami-aux-sources-du-jeu-d-horreur_4502400_4408996.html#selection-5299.1-5401.53
https://web.archive.org/web/20071119103923/http://www.rehorror.net/thirdeye06/m_f_interview.php
https://gamerant.com/hp-lovecraft-influence-in-gaming-explained-cosmic-horror-bloodborne-amnesia-call-of-cthulhu/
#AloneintheDark #SurvivalHorrorGaming #RetroPCGames
💙 Support the channel by joining Delta Squad:
https://www.youtube.com/stokedtube/join
Follow me on social media:
🐦 https://www.twitter.com/stoked_matty
😐 https://www.facebook.com/stokedtube
🌐 https://www.stoked.blog