There is an open source of this game which improves rendering resolution (640x480)

https://github.com/jmimu/FITD/releases

I started replaying this one today. More then twenty years after finishing it sometime in the early Nineties.

While the overall atmosphere strangely still holds up for me, and while the controls are nowhere near as horrible as I thought they would be, there is one thing that outright kills the game for me: The grunts and groans of the protagonists.

Oh boy, I have not laughed so hard in a loooong time! It is incredible how stupid they sound when they get hit. Especially Edward Carnby sounds very weird: Unconvincing and lame, yet with a very special note of 'passion'.

As for Emily Hartwood… well how shall I put it: There is a certain chance that someone will pass me by while I am playing the game and I do not want them to get the wrong impression of what kind of game I am actually playing.

Come to think of it this might be the first time I am playing this game with a sound blaster, so I might never have heard those great digitized sound effects.

For fairness sake it should be mentioned that the voice actors (at least those of the German version) which read the texts do an outstanding job which makes up for a lot and sets me in just the right mood… until I get hit again.

Let's also not forget the shrieking music when a monster would suddenly appear. Excellent use of audio adapting dynamically to the situation!

On top of that most encounters took a bit more than endlessly bashing the monsters (or at least it took bashing them with certain items), and some of them were outright invincible.

What helped the tension a lot in my case was, that it was the very first horror game I played. I will never forget that horrible attic and that strange demon creature flying outside the window… and then crahsing right through it an killing me.

I think one of the things which made this work so well for me is that it doesn't fall into the typical trap of just throwing an endless stream of monsters at you. Instead, the encounters are carefully planned, making them all the more tense.

Definitely one of the best survival horrors. And the 1st game is actually better than other 2 (discounting the 4th which i never really played).

oldies - are goldies!
Recommend 9/10 this game

Screw all of you who think this is "like Resident Evil", Resident Evil is like this game. In fact, it ripped AitD off in a lot of ways. I remember playing this game when I was 7 or 8...and it screwed me up for life. I played it again a few years later and was still creeped out. I love this game. If it still worked on my computer, I'd be playing it on a regular basis. Long live Edward Carnby.

An excellent game. One of my favorite games of all time, I highly recommend this. There are tons of copies on eBay so check it out.

Feel free to share anything about Alone In The Dark (1992) here!