GameParty had the exclusive opportunity to ask some questions to Eden Games' Nour Polloni about the upcoming Alone in the Dark game. To read the whole interview, click the link.
GameParty: Alone in the Dark is clearly a very ambitious game. Does the fact that Eden has more experience with racing games than something like Alone in the Dark, increase the pressure on you to prove you can do more than 'just' that?
Nour Polloni: The pressure doesn't come from that at all. So many of the team are massive fans of the very first Alone in the Dark and also have experience on a lot of different game genres, not just racing games, as well from the action adventure game Kya: Dark Lineage we developed before starting this game. Alone in the Dark was a dream project for us, and it's something we initiated with Atari so it's a real labour of love. The pressure comes from living up to the legacy of the first Alone in the Dark in terms of innovation, but we hope we're doing a pretty good job of that so far.
GP: The freedom in gameplay is a focal point in this game. We see this in the ways you can combine items or resolve problems in your own way. Isn't this going a bit against the latest fashion of simplifying gameplay in general? Or will there be an ingame tutorial, taking us step by step through various elements of the gameplay?
NP: We think it is simple in the sense that it's intuitive based on the rules that everyone instinctively know, that's to say the real world rules we based the game mechanics on. There will of course be instructions in the game that take the player step by step through how it all works. Like anything, with a little bit of practice it'll come easily. Then we've added systems to make the gameplay more fluid and quicker such as a quick withdraw button for the last item and a quick select system which lets the player assign favorite combinations of items to a single button push. For the problem solving in the game, it's true that some of it is quite thoughtful - you can't blast your way through every situation - but then there's always more than one way to solve any given situation. If the player does get stuck we've done something really unique with Alone which is the skip menu in a DVD style interface. This lets you navigate through the game like you would a DVD, so you can skip a sequence or a whole episode if you get stuck and want to move on. It comes at a cost though - you can get almost to the end of the story, but you won't see the final ending unless you've completed a certain amount of the game. You can also go back and re-do parts where you had trouble before.
Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive has been hit with layoffs a month after its release, as per the latest information.
That genuinely, genuinely sucks. The reboot has clear flaws, but it really felt like a solid first step for this team to receive *greater* investment.
That's standard. Teams are together for a Project, after its done some..and sometimes most devs are fired until the next Project is in the works and people are needed again. Only the core members stay in the time between the hot phase of the game development.
What’s annoying is people don’t understand how contractors work, either. All of this is uninformed knee-jerk reactions without any understanding of how employment works in this industry. There are key developers and staff that stay with a studio/publisher, but often times it’s a hire per project and then seeking new employment for a project. That’s how it’s always been…
That's a fair point too. I would say that in light of its tepid critical/commercial response and ongoing mass layoffs across the industry I think it's understandable for fans to worry about the longer-term implications. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "In one sense, it feels strange to even think Pieces Interactive had big shoes to fill with this series' legacy. Given what's come before, did it really? And yet, even when considering the last two flops over a two-decade span, there's still something about Alone in the Dark emblazoned on a title screen that carries a sense of revered history. In that respect, perhaps this reboot's best accomplishment is in honoring that spirit through its inventive world. It's also fair to emphasize knocks against its survival-horror design, some puzzle-solving, and so on; it certainly won't be considered a trendsetter like the 1992 classic. Still, the amount of goodwill wedded to its brighter qualities makes for something that dawdles the line between unfortunately-flawed and impressively-enticing."
The new Alone in the Dark remake doesn't do anything especially noteworthy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's just... cromulent.
