Systems: Windows, Steam Deck
Release Date: May 25, 2023
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Developer: Pieces Interactive
Time Spent: 15 minutes
I have some experience with the original Alone in the Dark, originally released on DOS by Infogrames back in 1992, and played that game the agonizing way it was meant to be played, with arrow keys and the spacebar as an action button (which you had to pause to select what action you wanted to perform when you unpaused and returned to the game). The point is that I am somewhat familiar with the Hartwood family, the Dercerto estate, and the general vibe that this game very successfully was establishing. I love survival horror games that can convincingly incorporate non-combat gameplay and at the same time, fool me into believing that I am not playing a point-and-click adventure game.
The Alone in the Dark Prologue is a short introduction to this reimagined world from the original game with the full game being released later this year. Before starting the prologue, I specifically did not look up information about the game apart from it being essentially a remake of the original Alone in the Dark, just to make sure that it was not going the route of the 2008 remake by turning it into a first-person shooter, or the 2005 movie by just being apparently bad (both of which take place in the present day). Not that I needed the game to take place in the 1920s, but I find that it helps with this kind of story by limiting the types of resources the player can use in the world, although there are obvious exceptions in games like Outbreak and Layers of Fear: Inheritance. I spent 15 minutes total with this demo, and that was watching all cutscenes, exploring every available room, talking to every person I could find, and interacting with everything that gave me an "A" button. Sure there was no combat, no equipable items apart from the one key I found that immediately went into an invisible inventory that I could not pull up. And once it was clear that I was going to be playing as Grace, a child no more than 12 years old, I was not expecting her to be wielding crowbars or touting a six-shooter.
What I found interesting about this prologue is that it really is just a prologue and less like a demo of the full game, designed to set the tone of the full game which releases on October 23rd of this year, so I cannot say if this short story will be included or will be a separate entity altogether. It is not so much a demo in the traditional sense that you might expect from Street Fighter 6, System Shock, or Gal Guardians: Demon Purge in that all you did here was walk around, talk to people, look at things, and unlock a door. Sure there were context events that happened, but I would not say that I experienced all of the functions or mechanics of the game enough to say that I know what to expect from the full game.
While the main game does not currently have a Steam Deck rating, the prologue is rated as unknown compatibility, but I did not have any issues playing the game the three times I booted it up; the first time for my playthrough, and the other two times to get a couple of pictures I missed. The game, by default, set all of the graphical sliders to High and Ultra, so I decided to leave them as such. The game ran fine, although I probably could have turn down the settings for a smoother experience, but there were no hiccups with long load times or stuttering between gameplay and cinematics. The graphics were about what I was expecting considering this is not an AAA studio, but I do not know if I would want to trust the Alone in the Dark IP to a AAA studio with the end goal being board member profits and not the customer's experience. What it really boils down to, is that I was very happy with this prologue and how it ran on the Steam Deck, and if the full game runs as well as this did, I will be very happy come October.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
So It Shall Be Written
P.S. I just wanted to throw in that it appears that, at least in this one instance, that the developers utilized functioning mirrors, or at least a trick to give the impression that mirrors are functional in this game. I actually do not know how the technology works for mirrors to be a thing in video games, and I am sure that there are ways around it so that the game is not actually generating a mirror image of what the camera sees based on where both the character and camera are in relation to the mirror in the stage. Yeah, like I know what I am talking about.
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