Story: Jeremy Hartwood is dead. And while this statement should be considered unfortunate, it becomes tragic when you realize he committed suicide, but what that means to you will depend on who choose to play as. For one Emily Hartwood, the news of her uncle's death by his own hand is too much to believe. There had to be a reason, and she suspected she knew where she might find a clue: a secret compartment in the piano her uncle kept in the attic of his house, the Derceto property.
But there is another (cannon) choice. If you play Edward Carnby, you will find he was also seeking that piano, but for far less honorable reasons. Edward is a private eye who was down on his luck and hounded by the bank for bills he wasn't paying, so imagine his surprise when a local art collector called on him about this same Derceto property. With the owner dead, there were a lot of rare and unique relics in the house which collectors would love to get their hands on. In particular, she was looking for Edward to investigate that same piano in the attic. Instruments like that with hidden compartments drive the market wild, and she would have loved to get her hands on it. Handing the P.I. $150 and a key to the house, she sends him on his way.
Whoever you choose to play as, however, this is about all the difference you will get. In both cases, your character arrives at the mansion, makes their way to the attic only to get trapped in the house.,From there it is quickly made obvious the dark rumors Emily had heard about and Edward had researched to prepare for this job are true. The place is alive with demonic energy and manifests as monsters immediately invade the attic you are now in... well unless you stop them, but we will get back to that when we get to gameplay.
What is most important is you are now trapped and if you expect to escape the house and live another day, you will have to explore the mansion, find the source of the evil events both on this night and over the time this house has existed, and destroy it. There really are no twists to this story, and in fact it is entirely possible to complete the game without a single other detailed discovered: possible, you may have to actively choose to avoid them. As you explore, you will come across many books, notes, letters, and the like which will give you some background on the house, the events within it, and what you are truly up against, and a lot of it basically falls in your lap with things you need to actually finish. But it all its together beautifully and smooth as silk. Overall it's a pretty simple haunted house story even if one steeped in the lore as written by H.P. Lovecraft. If that encourages you, enjoy it. (And don't worry about playing twice to get the endings of both characters. They are essentially the same with only how they react to leaving the front door marking any real difference.)
7/10
Graphics: Alone in the Dark came out in 1992 and it is going to look as old as that sounds, especially as one of the first games to both rely on 3D rendered models as well as pioneer the look later games like the original Resident Evil games take up.
To this end, you will guide your chosen hero through a haunted house, made of still shots lovingly detailed to the ability of the day, but clearly not as colorful as the later games to use this style would be. Still these background look nice if primitive, matching the modeling work that makes up literally every object that you can and will interact with.
And by everything, I mean everything. Every object you can move or pickup is actually a 3D model on the screen to be pushed, pulled, opened or picked up at will, making it a first for the medium. Furthermore, even though the camera is in fixed locations (allowing for the backgrounds to be painted) anything you move is well recognized from each shot, allowing for them and even enemies to remain where they should be even when the camera shifts, something of a feat for it's day!
Nor are the objects the only things modeled. You and the enemies you face off with are all also 3D modeled, though these have definitely aged a lot worse then the rather simple objects that make up your tools and various moving pieces in the game. Your hero, be it Emily or Edward, doesn't look too bad provided the camera keeps a proper distance, but the simplicity of the models do not stand to close scrutiny and probably even in their day looked hilarious in the rare moments the game puts you up close to them.
Most of the monsters you face are the same way, being either simple green humanoid zombies or weird bird-dog monstrosities that hop around with large triangle teeth almost comically. There are a few other enemies as you play, but they tend to be in specific moments only and not half as common.
The whole thing comes together relatively well though for it's. Still that age makes the game over 30 years old, and it will often come off as more quaint then anything because of it.
6/10
Sound: Much like the graphics, the sound in this game is also fairly limited, particularly in the sound effect territory. Most of the time you will be listening to the creaking floorboards or doorway and your corresponding footsteps as you wander about with noises really only going with your actions. Most monsters don't really make noise on their own. (At least unless they are already on the attack. Then they can growl or roar with the best of them.)
But that isn't to say you wont have anything else to listen to. The game does keep a soundtrack which works out very well with music to tell you when the place you are in is mysterious and may hold some secrets to review or an almost militant tune for when monsters are near and may well intend to attack you. Listening can often save your life
But the real "treat" here is the voice work. It's hammy and corny as hell, but it was also from a day when not everyone got the chance to witness it: if you didn't have a CD-ROM drive you never got to hear any of it. Some people would suggest that is better in this case, but playing today I would be disappointed if I missed the over-acting. It's not like the look of the game can hold up the scary aspects, so there really isn't much to ruin anymore. Rather you get to enjoy the pure camp or the era, and I wouldn't have that any other way.
7/10
Gameplay: Ever the pioneer and as noted before, anyone who played the Playstation classic games of Resident Evil will instantly be familiar with the gameplay type offered here. You will guide your hero through still camera shots of this haunted house, dealing with the denizens within as need be. And yet this might not be as common as you think. The game offers enough of them to keep the place from feeling even remotely empty, but there is surprisingly little it will force you to actually fight. Just about every potential encounter you find on the way can be prevented, leaving just enough encounters you will have to take on to more then a single hand to count on. You have have to be observant and quick enough on your feet to do it, but if you are, you will likely do very little actual fighting. And that's assuming the enemy you face isn't an outright puzzle encounter. There are a few of those too.
Navigating this world will prove a little bit clunky, however. Like those games it inspired, it will be played with tank controls: you don't go the direction you push the button to go. Rather Up will always move you forward, down backwards, and the left and right arrows will turn your character until they face the direction you will. And I am going to arrows in general because this game has no native controller support and no way to change buttons. You are stuck using the arrow keys or something like Antimicro if you want to use a controller. I do not recommend doing so, however, as I oddly found the keyboard much more precise.... a must for this game.
Going with this, you will basically use three buttons for the entire game: enter, space, and escape. Escape will take you to the main menu where you can save, load, or quit as expected, leaving the actual gameplay commands to just those remaining two buttons.
Enter will bring you to your inventory screen, which will give you a list of items taking up the top of the screen, a spinning picture of whatever you have highlighted in that list in bottom left quarter of the screen with a counter if applicable (like oil in the lamp or ammo in the gun for example), and a list of actions you can do with the item in the bottom right. You yourself are also an item in this way when highlighting "actions" with your health as the number in the pic. Once you've selected an object and an action for it, you will return to the main screen, either having done the action if it's a one shot {like reload a gun for example) or if not, you will now see your character now holding whatever item you chose. At this point, the Space button will be how you do whatever action you chose to do, requiring you to hold it through the full animation to complete whatever it is. In the case of combat, you will need to also hold an arrow to decide how you are striking whatever is in front of you (or the blank air.. the game will let you do that too).
If this sounds clunky, it is. Choosing to do anything takes a lot more deliberate action then most games would since it actually requires you to navigate 2 menus and THEN execute it, but it also works here... partly because the game pauses while you are choosing in those menus, but also because that timing is part of the general gameplay and despite being slow, feels smooth once in action. The end result is a slow, deliberate horror game that makes combat harrowing and something to be avoided where possible... and most of the time it is possible while you unwind the environmental puzzles of the mansion itself. It works shockingly well! (And I'm not normally a tank control guy.)
8/10
Story: Grace Saunders is lost in the Big City. Desperate for a place to be, she finds herself infront of a toy store with the lights on and the door unlocked. But unknown to this 8 year old girl this is not an ordinary toy store. It has been many years since anyone dared open this cursed door. Unaware, the little girl wanders in only to get trapped inside.
This basic beginning will set you on a small adventure as Grace investigates what makes this little store unique with two distinct endings. It is a very simple story but one even if you don't know what you are doing you will likely finish within a single hour, so it doesn't need to be much more then it is... a simple reason to deal with a haunted toy store.
6/10
Graphics: If you played the also reviewed here Alone in the Dark, you already have a good idea of just how this game looks. Using all of two rooms with a handful of camera perspectives, this game will have you play the roll of Grace as you look from fixed cameras about the toy store. Each view has a well crafted and hand-drawn background to make up the world while objects and enemies you interact with are created using flat circles and basic polygons (including Grace herself). It is an incredibly dated look which while it likely wowed players in it's day, will just not do the same now. It looks good enough for the day, but any creep factor it once had is gone.
Still it looks good enough as the camera angles generally keep a proper distance to not draw too much attention to how low polygon the 3D work actually is, making the game feel more retro then genuinely outdated most of the time.
6/10
Sound: This is one of those games where the soundscape, while it sounds good, is very limited. You will have few music tracks, basically a jaunty tune when first start and a few more ominous ones to suggest when the threat just got more real for Grace's night. They sound all right, but they are not anything too special. Nor is this title going to have any voice work at all. Simply put it was not made to be the main event and they didn't waste the space to have any real lines said.
Rather the only sounds you are going to get are just that. Sounds in the toyshop. Be it the train's whistle, the sound of the plane flying above the door to the back room, or the laugh of the jack-in-the-box on the counter, these will be the main sounds that fill the very small game... and they sound good enough to sell the haunted toy store vibes the game goes for... but there is just very little else here to really talk about.
6/10
Gameplay: And sadly this is the week part of this game since Jack in the Dark is not made to be a game so much as an interactive ad for the next game in the franchise: Alone in the Dark 2. You will play the roll of Grace as she find herself trapped in this haunted toy store, wandering the two rooms in your quest to find a way out and maybe rescue someone very special for the holidays from the storage room. But the denizens of this store will not let you do so easily. There are several haunted toys here that will threaten the poor girl before you will be allowed to finish the adventure, but that doesn't make this an action game in any way. In fact, unlike the game this shipped with, you have no option to fight at all. If you are not using an item, your total options are "search" and "close."
And this too is going to confuse people coming fresh off of Alone in the Dark. While the menu looks the same, in that game these actions only happen when you hit and hold Space to activate them in the game. Jack in the Dark, however, treats the menu option as the action, making the game feel a bit more primitive in this fashion. It still works well, but it feels less interactive with the world.
And while the game does have a save/load feature, you will not need it. As noted above, this is a very small and short game and you will likely finish it within a single sitting, even including the screenshots for Alone in the Dark 2 it rewards you with for finishing before the game just shuts down. It is an ok demo, but it is nothing more.
5/10
Bugs: For the most part, this game ran perfectly. However there were a few odd graphics I do have to mention where the game seemed to have issues knowing where the background was supposed to be in front of or behind the characters. As a result, on occasion you could walk "over" the corner of a bookshelf and the like. And on one occasion there was one window in the entire manor where if you stepped up to it JUST RIGHT, you disappeared down to the ankles. This is an issue in the room as I was able to reliably recreate this. BUT these were very few and far between and nothing that will get in the way of the gameplay.
Digital Rights Management: The original boxed version of this game pulled the classic "read the copy protection from the manual" that was very common in the 90s on PC games, but if you bought this from just about any digital store, you got a steam code and Steam itself is your DRM. The exception is gog (where I got the game) where there is no DRM.
Score: While the "bonus" game really isn't really much to write home about, the main meat of this game is Alone in the Dark, and so it is where I would focus on this package. And that game is clunky and showing it's age, but is shockingly good despite that! I highly recommend taking the time to see what is arguably the first tank controlled horror game where even Resident Evil came for inspiration, both because of how it still plays as well as to see where it all began.
Just unless you are desperate for that last extra ounce of game, you may want to skip out on Jack in the Dark. It's not bad, but it literally does nothing special outside of showing off what Infogrames would have coming down the pipeline in the form of Alone in the Dark's sequel.
7/10
System Requirements:
- Any CPU running at least 1.8 Ghz
- 2 GB RAM
- Any GPU that supports DirectX 9.0c
- Windows 10
- 380 MB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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