News
Atari Bringing Back ‘Alone in the Dark’, ‘Haunted House’
Atari has just announced their plans to “reimagine” two of their horror classics, including Haunted House, which released in 1992 making it one of the earliest examples of survival horror, and Alone in the Dark: Illumination. At least the bar has been set about as low as possible after the disaster that was the 2008 reboot. As a series, Alone in the Dark has struggled for some time. I was almost positive we wouldn’t be hearing from it again, or at least not for some time.
So how far off are these games, you ask? 2015? 2016? Despite our just hearing about them, both games are coming to PC this fall.
According to a teaser site for Alone in the Dark: Illumination, development is being handled by a studio called Pure. They must be new, as I haven’t heard of them and after a bit of searching I was unable to find any semblance of an online presence for the developer. I’m going to go ahead and assume this isn’t them.
Haunted House is in the potentially capable hands of indie developer Dreampainters, the studio behind the PC indie horror game Anna. I wasn’t a big fan of the game, but at least we can take some comfort in knowing they’re familiar with the genre. The last two Haunted House games were decidedly family friendly, but I don’t think the same will go for this game. How could it, when its teaser site has “Terror Returns” plastered on it?
That’s everything we know so far. Atari promises to illuminate us (ha! er, sorry) with more details on each game at PAX Prime (Aug 29-Sept 1).
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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