This is the second post today; we will be talking about the Psychical horror and action-adventure game Alan Wake. The game was released in May of 2010, It was made by the Remedy Entertainment. This studio was famous for games like the Max Payne series and was inspired by authors Stephen King and David Lynch. The author of the game is Sam Lake and Mikko Rautalahti. It took them over five years to create. In terms of gross revenue, the game would make about $24,968,198.43 dollars.
The game is about the story of Alan Wake, a famous crime fiction author suffering from two years of writer’s block. Alan and his wife would go on a trip to Bight Fall, Washington. Before the trip, Wake would have an all-to-real nightmare of shadowy figures who are trying to kill him. During the dream, Alan would encounter a man in a diving suit.
Once at Bright Falls, Alan would meet some of the locals and mysterious older women that he would have to go to the cabin in the middle of Cauldron Lake, after a fight with his wife about seeing a doctor to help him. Alan storms out of the house, once outside he would hear Alice calling for help. But when he got inside of the house, Alice was taken into the lake by some unknown force.
Wake dives into the water after Alice but blacks out as he goes under the water. As Alan regains his footing, he makes his way to a nearby gas station. But a shadowy force beings to possess some of the locals and they would try to kill Wake. Some of these events would be led to Wake and the local police butting heads.
Over the course of this adventure Alan would come across pages of a book that a man named Mott wants for some odd reason. After running from the FBI and the Police for some time, Alan would make his way into the forest to get info on the location of Alice. Alan learned of a man named Zane, who is the man in the diving suit and the writer of those odd pages. The dark evil that Alan has been fighting was connected to Zane.
After meeting Cynthia Weaver who knows about the darkness and led Alan to a light switch known as the Clicker. Alan gains the power to destroy the darkness, he was able to now make thoughts reality. Alan uses the clicker to destroy the darkness, but he must maintain the balance of the story. Alan completes his final story and saves his wife but at a cost.
The cost was that he became stranded in the Darkness, with the final words on the book page: “it’s not a lake, it’s an ocean”. In my opinion, this game is rather interesting; the story puts the author in a rather odd situation and makes him seem crazy in the end. I would also say that if people want a game with psychological horror, this is their best bet. I would say that the game is a must-play for someone looking for something new and fun for Halloween.
