#160: Jack in the Dark
No, not what you do at night — basically a glorified demo for Alone in the Dark 2
This review was originally posted on August 19, 2019.
Initial release: Christmas 1993
Platform: PC, Mac, PC-98
Developer: Infogrames
A quick little game, and a quick little review. Obviously when Alone in the Dark turned out to be a smash hit, Infogrames were obligated to make a sequel. During production, this little thing was churned out as a demo. Most demos — and that includes the ever-popular shareware model of games that so defined a lot of early to mid 90s PC gaming — usually feature a chunk of the game proper to give players an idea of what they can expect from the full game. Not so with Jack in the Dark.
Instead, we get one of those rare demos that are little games in and of themselves, showing off the technology and gameplay while still being essentially a short-form game independent of the title it’s supposed to be representative of. The plot is simple: little Grace Saunders is going trick or treating for Halloween, until she walks into the wrong toy shop and finds herself locked in. The toys seem to be alive, and they don’t like her very much. Also, santa claus is locked up in back for some reason.
If you know how Alone in the Dark is played, then you know exactly how this goes down — through trial and error (or a walkthrough) you basically have to defeat the evil jack-in-the-box that menaces you from the store counter and save Santa. Or something like that.
That’s it. That’s the whole game. You find some candy, feed it to the evil jack in the box (that looks a lot like the evil zombie pirate that’s the main villain of the actual game this is a demo to) and scare him with a mirror, and Santa is freed and so are you. The end.
Back when I gave games ratings, I struggled to actually rate this one; it’s such a short little game. But the controls are pretty ass, following much in the same route as the hot mess that was the original game. And while it’s slightly less ugly than the original, that’s not saying much. Cute music tho.
