AITD - Installments

Installments

Alone in the Dark, the original game in the series, was developed by Infogrames and released for the PC in 1992. It was one of the first two games to use polygonal characters over pre-rendered backgrounds. Guinness World Records awarded it the record of "First Ever 3D Survival Horror Game" in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008 edition. Krisalis made a port for 3DO in 1994 that was released by Interplay.

Alone in the Dark 2, developed by Infogrames and released for the PC in 1993, was a drastic departure from the original game, being more action-oriented than its predecessor, with a much greater emphasis on firearms and shootouts, and resulting in more difficult combat. It was ported to 3DO by Krisalis and released by Interplay. An enhanced port under the name of Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back (Alone in the Dark: One-Eyed Jack's Revenge in the United States) was released in 1996 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Both versions were also released in Japan under the original name of Alone in the Dark 2.

Jack in the Dark is a small game made during Alone in the Dark 2 production. It was used as a promotional game distributed at Christmas 1993 (just before Alone in the Dark 2 release). The game was on a single floppy in a golden wrapping featuring a Jack-in-the-box illustration on the top. It is a short adventure featuring the young child Grace Saunders. During Halloween, she enters a small toy store after dark and gets locked in it. There, the toys are alive, and Grace must save Santa Claus from an evil Jack-in-the-box. Jack in the Dark is an adventure game that focuses purely on puzzles and has no combat. Later CD versions of both Alone in the Dark and Alone in the Dark 2 came packaged with Jack in the Dark.

Alone in the Dark 3 was the final game in the original trilogy and the last game to utilize the same engine and characters as the original game. Released for the PC in 1994, Alone in the Dark 3 attempts to return to the gameplay style of the original game. A version of the game for Windows 95 was released as Alone in the Dark: Ghosts in Town in 1996.

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, the then next generation game of the Alone in the Dark series, was created by Darkworks as a console survival horror, and shows significant influence from the Resident Evil series. The control scheme and gameplay is much closer to that of Resident Evil than the original Alone in the Dark games. Internally known as Alone in the Dark 4, the game was released in 2001, developed by Darkworks for the PlayStation and Dreamcast, and by Spiral Studios for the PC and PlayStation 2, also with an alternative portable Game Boy Color version developed by Pocket Studios.

Alone in the Dark was developed by Eden Games for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and by Hydravision Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 and Wii. It changed the focus of the series back to survival horror. Initially known as Alone in the Dark: Near Death Investigation, the game was finally rebranded as simply Alone in the Dark despite having only a few connections with the original game. The game sets apart from previous Alone in the Dark games by featuring 3D generated scenarios and interchangeable first and third person view for the first time. With complex puzzle-solving controls, the environment plays a large role in core gameplay; the player can pick up any object, even decorative, and use it as a melee weapon or combine them to make different styles of weapons. Many elements from scenery, like boxes and doors, can be interacted with. Fire, generated in real-time, plays a prominent role in the game, as objects can be set alight and destroyed by being exposed to the fire, which is also extinguishable. The PS3 version was released several months after the other versions as Alone in the Dark: Inferno. It had a few gameplay changes and fewer glitches, earning more favorable reviews.