GC 2007: Alone in the Dark Progress Report

Developer Eden Studios takes us through a brief tech demo of the upcoming horror game.

UK, August 23, 2007 - It's been almost a year since we saw Alone in the Dark in action, so we were interested to see how the spooky horror title had evolved in the past few months. Developer Eden Studios invited us back stage during the Games Convention, cleared some space behind the sofa and prepared to terrify us with some new information and gameplay details. In fact, it was the longest demonstration we'd ever seen but it still left us wanting more... along with providing a few more questions about what the heck is happening in Central Park after dark.

Taking us through the demo was producer Nour Polloni from Eden Studios, who was keen to show off the game engine the development team has created especially for this next generation Alone in the Dark. However, before we get onto our impressions, we'll just briefly run through the plot. Although Atari is remaining tight-lipped on some details, the game basically sees main character Edward Carnby exploring New York's Central Park to uncover a terrifying secret. Along you way you meet a range of terrifying monsters, as you piece together the clues about the famous park's mysterious past. That's pretty much all we know and this latest eyes-on didn't provide any more clues.

Anyway, back to demo... things kicked off with Carnby exploring a murky sewer that was almost pitch black. However, you have a number of tricks up your sleeve to light the way, including smashing down a fluorescent light from the ceiling and using it as a makeshift torch. Unfortunately it still has to be attached to the electricity cables, so you can only walk so far before you run out of cable and it snaps out of your hand. As well as demonstrating the interaction with environments, this also gave Atari the chance to show off the dynamic lighting in Alone in Dark, which is an important part of the game because lighting and shadows are key to providing a suitably eerie atmosphere. In this case the fluorescent bulb only provided a brief shimmer of light that reflected off walls and puddles in the sewer. What's more, if you swing it around, the light moves accordingly with some areas growing darker, while others get brighter.

After demonstrating the dynamic lighting, Polloni then moved onto the game's inventory. Unlike most games, accessing the inventory doesn't take you to a special menu screen, instead the view changes to the inside of Carnby's coat, with key items - such as a lighter, sticky tape and plastic bottles - sticking out of numerous pockets. However, what's interesting is that many of these items can be combined together to create traps, stick objects to walls or even dowse enemies in lighter fluid before setting fire to them.

This process of combining items was then used to demonstrate how you can potentially distract or kill enemies in the game. In this case the enemies were weird possessed rats that feed on blood and are attracted to dead bodies. So, one way to confuse them is to attach a bag of blood to a wall using the sticky tape because the rats will then be more concerned with trying to drink the blood, which means you can quickly sneak past. You can also use the rats to your advantage by combining the tape with a flare, so that when you throw it towards a rat it actually sticks to the creature. This is handy because as the rodent runs around, the flare lights up dark passages - which could be handy for spotting enemies lurking in the gloom. Finally, to kill the rats you can throw a bottle full of lighter fluid at them and then set fire to the trail of flammable liquid so that it bursts into flames and incinerates the enemies.

Ah, while we're on the subject on fire, it's worth noting that Alone in the Dark features some extremely impressive and unscripted fire. Polloni said the development team had actually been working on the fire physics for about a year and it certainly shows because this was an impressive aspect of the demo. Polloni showed how once you've set fire to an object the flames quickly spread to any nearby flammable items. Here, she ignited a wooden pole which quickly burst into flames and eventually broke in half due to fire damage - it then fell onto a pile of wood, which also caught fire. Polloni told us that you can actually set fire to almost everything in the game, apart from the woods in Central Park because they've been dowsed by the wet New York weather.

The eyes-on ended with Polloni showing us how you control items that you're holding. Carnby's right arm is mapped to the right analogue stick, so that as you move the joystick round it also manipulates the item you're holding. For example, if you've got a fire extinguisher you can bash things by quickly rotating the stick and can even knock down metal doors with a few meaty blows. Plus, if you're holding something like a flaming torch you can sweep it from side to side to light the dark corridors.

And that was it for our spooky trip through the grimy sewers of Alone in the Dark. Of course, we would have loved to have seen more gameplay and perhaps a bit of combat but this tech demo did provide some impressive indications about what's to come in the finished game. Plus, Polloni also revealed that you can expect to be playing the title within the current fiscal year - which ends in early 2008.

Trailer
http://www.gamespot.com/video/930280/6177396/video...

Do not expect anything AWESOME about this.

As thats all in-game its looking very good.