Pieces Interactive has just released a major update for the remake/reboot of Alone in the Dark. This patch adds a Photo Mode and a New Game+ mode. Moreover, it brings numerous QoL, visual, combat and gameplay improvements.

Going into more details, this patch fixes more than 90 collision issues that could make the player get stuck in environments. It also brings fixes to avoid numerous potential softlocks. Additionally, it resolves a black screen when solving attic puzzle after loading save made in attic.

This update also packs tweaks and improvements to level visual guidance, and to level lighting. It also updates various animations and various textures, as well as various meshes and UI elements for multiple key items.

Alongside the graphical tweaks, this update comes with some performance enhancements. For instance, it adds preload component to cemetery corridor transition to reduce texture pop-ins. It also simplifies the fmod events for performance improvements. It also brings several bug fixes to art assets which will improve overall performance.

This latest patch removes dismemberment on already dead creatures. Dismemberment will now only trigger on the killing hit. This kind of sucks, though the devs may have done this in order to somehow improve performance and game stability.

Speaking of combat changes, the update improves Edward’s melee swing arcs to hit so they hit enemies more consistently. It also tweaks Edward’s heavy hitreactions so the player is allowed to regain input control sooner. Furthermore, it updates Emily’s combat animations to allow her to blend out of the animations earlier. And finally, it trims and speed ups many of Emily’s hitreactions to feel more direct and responsive.

As always, Steam will download this update the next time you launch its client. Below you can also find its complete changelog.

Alone in the Dark May 29th Patch Notes

New Features

1. Added Photo Mode.
2. Added “New Game +” available after finishing the campaign once.
   • Start the game with all weapons unlocked
   • Completely overhauled balance with more and tougher enemies
   • Some additional gameplay-events and scares
   • New, alternative intro

Critical Bugs Fixed

1. Fixed black screen when solving attic puzzle after loading save made in attic.
2. Fixed achievement bug “Nobody knows what happened”.
3. Fixed a large number of potential crashes and bugs related to audio issues.
4. Fixed missing keychain in French Quarter 1 after Save/Load.
5. Added fixes to avoid potential softlocks:
   • Door to from Spiral Staircase to Grand Parlor to avoid soft lock when transitioning to Taroella
   • Made sure the Parlor to conservatory door always in unlocked in Chapter 4
   • Fixed an issue where the door between Grand Parlor and Spiral Stairs was locked in Chapter 4
   • Fixed save issues with boiler valve
   • Fixed an issue where the camera in Ruth’s room was not interactable when playing as Emily; preventing the player from proceeding to Warphoto
   • Fixed an issue where loading an autosave in chapter 4 made the player lose key items (contract and dagger)
6. Fixed more than 90 collision issues that could make the player get stuck in environments

Quality of Life Features

1. Added two additional save slots for the last autosaves.
2. Added tutorial popup for examination view.
3. Added contextual dodge tutorial for when you have been in combat but not dodged for a while.
4. Melee tutorial will now also display if player is already in combat state upon picking up weapon.
5. Added new icons for molotovs & brick throwable opportunities.
6. Added camera keyboard controls to the rebinding menu to allow rebinding of arrow keys.
7. Split map and lagniappe tutorial messages into separate strings to better fit the screen.

Combat improvements

1. Fixed wrong hit reactions playing for Steamboat Creature in some occasions.
2. Updated Cemetery Creature to be more responsive to damage received.
3. Disabled dismemberment on already dead creatures. Now only triggers on the killing hit.
4. Updated Emily’s combat animations to allow her to blend out of the animations earlier (eg. getting player input control back much sooner).
5. Trimmed and sped up many of Emily’s hit reactions to feel more direct and responsive.
6. The player can no longer switch weapon while suicidal (Dark Man).
7. Tweaked Edward’s heavy hit reactions so the player is allowed to regain input control sooner (smaller chance of stunlock).
8. Improved Edward’s melee swing arcs to hit so they hit enemies more consistently.
9. Decreased combat exit wait timer to not have the music played for too long after combat is finished.

Other gameplay improvements

1. Talisman: Increased the amount of time the player can look at the talisman when completing a puzzle to see all three pictures.
2. Updated Talisman pickup animations and sequence for both Edward and Emily.
3. Added bark for picking up the mummified cat lagniappe.
4. Added/adjusted various barks in Chapter 2 Derceto (pickups & puzzles).
5. Added sound when trying to pick up max stack item.
6. Removed enemies that have not been killed in the warehouse fight if we reach the show room building and load a save.
7. Made sure the warehouse event cannot be retriggered after loading a save.
8. Boiler Valve Puzzle: Made sure the player can’t interact with the puzzle when taking damage of the steam.
9. Added fog and disabled the traversal to avoid backtracking down to the sewers in Gallatin street.
10. Added bark to noticing Cassandra’s crime scene in the basement of spiral stair case.
11. Updated player character’s “Awe” Reaction (used upon entering convent library).
12. Added various instances of force feedback on controllers:
    • Added proximity force feedback to active Dark Man
    • Added force feedback when landing on the ground after jumping down
    • Added small force feedback on player death
    • Added force feedback to transition to various game events (Steamboat storm event, cemetery, dead clerk in Derceto, crypt flicker anomaly, temple collapse)
    • Added force feedback to grapple
    • Added force feedback to unlocking doors with key
    • Added force feedback to unbolting doors
    • Added force feedback when trying to interact with a bolted or permanent locked door
    • Added small force feedback when picking up consumables
    • Added force feedback to walking in maggot piles
    • Added force feedback on tackling doors open for single and double doors
    • Added force feedback to resistance walk
13. Added save logic to the “Jack in the box” – lagniappe to ensure you can only pick it up once.
14. Added new plank walkway in Gallatin street dock area.
15. Allowing the player to triggering Edward’s hidden ending in chapter 4.
16. Removed bark after climbing down ladder to crypt after plaza fight in cemetery.
17. Small audio improvements to cutscenes.
18. Added non-diegetic “boom” sound when an enemy is dismembered.

Visual Improvements

1. Updated size of objectives in the menu.
2. Tweaks and improvements to level visual guidance.
3. Tweaks and improvements to level lighting.
4. Added LODs to Edwards Ghost models.
5. Updated various animations (Combat, Gun Handling, characters reaching out to rails).
6. Optimized interaction HUD.
7. Various updated textures.
8. Updated various meshes and UI elements for multiple key items (Sitting Room Key, Stevedore’s Key, Kitchen Garden Key, Edward’s Desk Key, Jetty Key).
9. Updated UI for Batistes Keychain to only feature 3 keys.
10. Adjusted and added keys to both versions of Johnny the Conqueror cutscenes to match with the amount of keys you actually get.
11. Decreased lens frost intensity.
12. Added dust trail to car in intro cutscene.
13. Polished lighting of the final boss area and added more animations.
14. Improved mirror reflections.
15. Edited the jacket joints in Emily sneak animations to fix most of the clipping between the jacket and her skirt.
16. Removed some missed full body dismemberment effects.
17. Updated set dressing for better visibility in the voodoo courtyard in French Quarter 1.
18. Added a minor set of vines outside of voodoo drugstore in French Quarter 1.
19. Updated water drop shader and fixed many areas in the game with water effects to work with the change.
20. Updated Emily banter animations to fix sync issue between animation and sound.
21. Added blood splatter decal to rock crushing cemetery creature in temple escape sequence.
22. Fixed issue with part of Edward’s hair going invisible when far away.
23. Reduced flickering issues of cloth in windy conditions.
24. Improved visual quality of 8bit filter.
25. Updated Power of the Verb UI to better match the description.
26. Fix for player character having frost effect on clothes during confronting the Dark Man.

Performance

1. Improved Lighting in various cutscenes, improving performance.
2. Added preload component to cemetery corridor transition to reduce texture pop-ins.
3. Several small visual fixes and improvements (reflections, lights).
4. Several bug fixes to art assets improving overall performance.
5. Removed preloading of Arctic levels to reduce stutter and lag in final Gray’s Apt sequence.
6. Simplified fmod events for performance improvements.

Steam Deck

1. Added default video settings specifically for the Steam Deck.
2. Steam Deck UI support.
3. Steam Deck icons resized.
4. Steam Deck controller icons added.
5. Made the keybinding option hidden when playing on a Steam Deck.

Balancing

1. Boosted enemy health on hard difficulty and removed consumables.
2. Boosted the health of the steamboat creature.
3. Added new checkpoint in French Quarter 3 just before flooded section.
4. Added destructible weapons in French Quarter 3 to flooded area.
5. Updated weapon pickup in Cryptflicker Anomaly.
6. Added weapon drop spot to Dead Clerk Anomaly.
7. Increased chances of loot spawning, avoiding the possibility of empty containers.
8. Healing flasks now change the healing amount based on difficulty.
9. Added melee weapon pickups and dropspots to Derceto.
10. OilyRoom anomaly: Added melee weapons.
11. Added support for flare gun ammo in dynamic pickups.
12. Spawning of consumables due to empty containers now takes the current difficulty into account when calculating health flask spawn rate.
13. Moved pickups in chapter 5 from bossfight gameplay to regular gameplay.

Additional Bugfixes and Optimization

1. Fixed noir and 8bit filters being wrongly displayed with enabled HDR.
2. Fixed bug where flare gun ammo is over Revolver/Remington after loading a save.
3. Fixed the menu so the options for dlss and dlaa are not enabled if dlss is not supported.
4. Fixed bug with subtitle size reset after game start.
5. Fixed an issue when binding an action to a key that is already bound. Now the old binding will get properly unbound and saved.
6. Fixed an issue of players getting stuck while opening lockers in Oil Rig.
7. Fixed an issue of the “I abandoned him” achievement being possible to unlock early.
8. Fixed an issue where it was possible to see the Mound Beast despawn in Oil Rig.
9. Updated credits and fixed spelling errors.
10. Disabled Flare Gun when Dark Man is active to avoid letting the player setting him on fire.
11. Added timeout checks to avoid weapons getting stuck mid reload animation.
12. Fixed credits music not playing.
13. Removed duplicate save key of drowning disaster door to prevent the mansion door to be locked after loading a save.
14. Attic Puzzle: Added logic to add the item needed to continue the puzzle, if the player has already put it in the puzzle and the puzzle was reset.
15. Gray’s Apartment Checkpoint: Retimed when the save occurs to minimize the risk of the player getting stuck in when loading the autosave.
16. Fixed a VO line in a cutscene not playing and multiple VO lines getting delayed.
17. Fixed weapon-fire audio getting sidechained (volume lowered) when shooting certain enemies.
18. Disabled checkpoints in chapter 4 to fix a bug where player could get softlocked in funnel when loading autosave.
19. Fixed a bug where a molotov by the plaza in the cemetery could not be reached.
20. Attic Statuette Puzzle: Fixed an issue with the images in the talisman snapping out of focus.
21. Chapter 2: Piazza door is now deactivated in CryptFlicker anomaly.
22. Chapter 4: Funnel doors fixed in Gray’s hallway.
23. Moved up interaction icon on False book in Gray’s office that was sometimes impossible to reach.
24. Fixed an issue where player got stuck when loading save in chapter 5.
25. Fixed the falling rock after chase event in cemetery.
26. Fixing issue with being unable to trigger a hidden ending.
27. Fixed multiple minor bugs that all would lead to ragdoll stopping immediately (most prevalent on loaded save game).
28. UI fix for puzzle Dual Cemetery Medallions: move marker input hints was set to incorrect axis (left/right instead of up/down).
29. Fixed bug where NPC dialogue would not be correctly reset upon picking up commonplace book.
30. X-Ray Puzzle: Tweaked how items are swapped to handle plates clipping through it while moving the item there.
31. Solved issue with player character shadow disappearing when the character gets too close to the camera.

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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