All Alone

by Ian Finley

Horror
2000

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(4)
4 star:
(20)
3 star:
(37)
2 star:
(7)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 69
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- witchcock (Gainesville, FL), February 20, 2024

- OverThinking, September 28, 2022

- dollweiss, April 7, 2022

- Zape, February 27, 2021

- Arrowhead12 (Edmonton, Alberta), June 11, 2020

- Edo, May 18, 2020

- beecadee, March 30, 2020

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Perplexing but atmospheric, May 8, 2019

While very effectively evocative of an atmosphere, it's hard to know what to make of this game. A lot of little clues and faint hints and traces allude to elements that never see any kind of resolution. By the end, it's not entirely clear what happened except in a fairly broad sense. But it's well done, and some minor narrative branching makes it worth replays. I've banged away at it repeatedly and I still feel like I'm missing something that would bring it into sharper relief.

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- SchnickelFritz (TX), December 26, 2018

- HarryKile, November 29, 2018

- Stas, March 25, 2018

- Lucifalle, April 25, 2017

- RoboDragonn, January 31, 2017

- dreamsalad, January 2, 2017

- BinkleyBeardman, August 4, 2016

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), June 14, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A short, easy sound-enhanced horror game at home, May 9, 2016

This game is a fairly popular horror game. With sounds on, late at night, it is pretty creepy.

You play a young woman home alone. Various ambient noises come through as you walk around. The radio says a miller is loose, but soon things get worse.

I didn't really understand the ending, even after multiple playthroughs. This game didn't quite click with my sense of hirro, but the first time I did not use sound and just played during the day.

Recommended.

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- MattC, December 10, 2015

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Atmospheric, brooding, but yet another generic horror victim, November 22, 2015
by verityvirtue (London)

You're alone in Harvey's apartment. It is raining. The news is on: the ‘Slicer Killer’, who has young women living alone as his prey, has claimed another victim. Harvey will be back soon.

Because of genre expectations (the genre is horror, few surprises there), I, the reader, was already conditioned to expect something bad to happen. The serial killer news is the most obvious hook that the threat to the PC's safety comes from outside, almost definitely the serial killer. That the PC is actually in danger, though, is implied. I played this once early last year, and I remarked then that because the danger was implied, it meant that there was little sense of urgency. Now that I'm playing it again, I think leaving this implicit made the player make a lot more assumptions. What's to say that the PC fits into the serial killer's demographic? All we know about the PC is that they're wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas, for goodness' sake.

There are some bright spots. Events outside the PC's control heighten the tension, including, like it or not, the news. Despite my misgivings about various cosmetic and storytelling approaches, All Alone does become quite foreboding in parts. The standard 'my dirty apartment' details are drawn up adequately to give the impression of squalour (I like "Piles of Harvey's dirty clothes crouch on the floor.").

But this is not the most polished of games. Ellipses are rendered strangely throughout (maybe it's my interpreter?). There are double spaces after full stops, which is Not A Thing we do nowadays. Also, I get (Spoiler - click to show)"The pick up the knife." when I pick up the knife from the sink.

Another major problem is that there is not nearly enough to know about the PC to make the player care about them. We know more about Harvey and even about the serial killer than we do about the PC - in this way, the PC automatically (and disturbingly) becomes the typical horror movie victim: nameless, generic and lacking almost all autonomy.

There are some events which you may or may not see, depending on what you do and in what order you do it. Some of the later events are satisfyingly foreboding. My grouse, though, is that the ending comes suddenly, and it felt a little out of the blue for me. It was ambiguous, and didn't quite link up with the implications from earlier in the game, but was perfunctorily effective (and I really liked the last sentence).

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- Thrax, March 12, 2015

- Deka, February 18, 2015

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Meh., January 2, 2015
by Chai Hai (Kansas City KS)

It wasn't BAD per se, but it wasn't exactly thrilling either. Just your run of the mill horror story.

The best part about it is the creepy vibe you get. The sound effects were a nice touch. Other than that, meh.

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- Sobol (Russia), November 25, 2014

- Simon Deimel (Germany), February 12, 2014

- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), August 15, 2013


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