Game:

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001)

Duration: 13:24

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So I recently played Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. It's an old school style survival horror game that came out right in the middle of the genres heyday. As I'm sure most people probably know at this point, Alone in the Dark is basically the first survival-horror series (unless you count Project Firestart but Alone in the Dark is closer to what you expect from the genre) which gave birth to many of the tropes we know and love. After a run of 3 games from 1992 to 1995, the series went dormant just one year before the release of Resident Evil.

From 1995 to 2001, the survival horror genre emerged into the gaming sphere and was home to many games that refined and iterated on the groundwork laid by the original Alone in the Dark games. As a result, The New Nightmare makes heavy use of those improvements made on the series original formula.

The result is a pretty damn good game. I like the original 3 Alone in the Darks, don't get me wrong, but they can be extremely esoteric at times with the things they require you to do to progress. Like the games that came afterwards, The New Nightmare puts much more focus on survival, inventory management, and puzzle solving, as opposed to the "use every item on everything you see" style of challenge that the older games presented.

I find it kind of sad that despite how competent it is, Alone in the Dark wasn't able to fully propel the series back into relevancy and it once again slipped back into a state of hibernation. The game got reviewed well and I don't think there's any sales information on the internet, so I think it was probably more just a casualty of the publisher not knowing what to do with the series amongst a shifting industry landscape.

Either way, if you're a fan of the genre, it's definitely worth it to give this game a shot.

Outro music is Bad Omens by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio.

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