Alone in the Dark was the first 3D survival horror game, beating Resident Evil to the punch by four years. Its polygonal character models in dingy pre-rendered interiors looked genuinely frightening in 1992 and, to be honest, still looks kinda creepy in 2026, albeit less for its realism and more for its antiquated art style. I’d highly recommend you play them, or at least, play a little bit of them: they’re pretty hard going by modern standards.
Now’s a better time than ever to become acquainted with this slice of PC gaming history: GOG is giving away the original Alone in the Dark trilogy right now. It’s actually more than the original trilogy too, because it includes Jack in the Dark, a weird spin-off released between Alone in the Dark and its sequel about a kid stuck in a creepy toy store.
While Alone in the Dark has many of the hallmarks of early survival horror, including tank controls, fixed camera perspectives, and near-unmanagable combat, newcomers may be surprised how much it borrows from point ‘n’ click adventures. Puzzle-solving continues to be a fixture in survival horror, but Alone in the Dark adopts the age-old “apply correct object to correct surface” gameplay, albeit in a less obtuse way than the old Lucasarts games. Of the trilogy it’s the one I’d recommend the most, despite feeling slightly rougher around the edges. Its haunted house setting is brilliant, and you can see how it influenced most of the Japanese games that would follow in the ’90s.
Fair warning, though: If you do manage to get through Alone in the Dark and hope to tackle Alone in the Dark 2, it’s less of a horror game than it is a thriller, though the trilogy finale makes up for that with an amusingly grim take on the wild west.
If all this sounds appealing but you’d prefer these games in your Steam library, Steam is offering the trilogy, as well as the 2008 Alone in the Dark, for 75% off the usual price.
Now defunct Swedish studio Pieces Interactive released an Alone in the Dark reboot in 2024, and against all odds it was actually good: “Alone in the Dark is a resounding success, not a cynical attempt to cash in on a moderately recognisable brand name, but made with intelligence and a fondness for the series that really shines through,” Alexander Chatziioannou wrote.
