Alone in the Dark 2 - Play Your Cards Right

 Written by Andy Panthro

Red herrings.

Last time, we found ourselves in the basement of the mansion. After dealing with many machine gun zombies, finally we’re getting some puzzles and the game feels a lot better for it. I basically have two options here, to go upstairs or to go into a side room that sounds like gunfire. Since I want to finish up down here before moving on upstairs, I check the side room.

As I mentioned last time, it turns out it sounds like gunfire because two burly guys with pistols are shooting targets on the other side of the room. Acting quickly with my battledore, I had dispatched them. The room has four posters of four playing cards on one wall: The Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Clubs, the King of Spades, and the Ace of Hearts. At the other end of the room, are four pillars with pictures of each suit on their four sides. I am assuming I need to rotate the pillars so they match the wall pictures.

This took a bit of figuring out, as hitting the pillars did not always rotate them once. Then immediately I’m stumped, as I try Diamond, Club, Spade, Heart and it does nothing. Then I try them in reverse, still nothing. I’m curious if the suit means anything, or perhaps I’m just seeing puzzles where none exist.

The little chef shouts “help me!”

For a brief respite, I decide to check upstairs. I don’t get much time to explore though, before a short man in chef’s whites comes out and screams for help. Then every zombie nearby comes to shoot me, and I die. The next attempt, I run past the hallway and make my way upstairs instead. On this floor was a zombie with a gun, and I didn’t last long there either, as I was unprepared. Frustrated again, I reload the save in the card puzzle room.

So next I tried a few card combinations, and then decided to check a hint (using Universal Hint System - a hint system that gives little hints without spoiling too much). And it turns out I needed them all to be turned to diamonds, the same as for the secret door in the maze. The cards on the wall are a red herring it seems, which feels a bit cruel!

When the last pillar is turned to diamonds, the back room opens, and a zombie with a gun pops out. Thankfully I am in the right position to punch him to death, which takes about 30 hits, they really want you to be using the guns here, but my ammo is really scarce. Inside the back room is a whiskey distillery, and I pick up a bottle of whiskey, a health flask, and two books.

The first book talks about T.Bone, who seems to have taken over cooking for the crew. Deadly with a blow-pipe apparently, and perhaps the cook that shouted for help when I went upstairs (later edit, turns out a different character! Hard to tell sometimes with these zombies). The other book is about a senator that got swindled at billiards, making me think that there really is a theme of various types of games in this game.

Perfect place for a little gambling, in this dingy little basement back room.

Finally there seems to be an object on the wall in the room, with a lever attached. Kind of looks a bit like either an old fashioned cash register or some sort of fruit machine/one-armed-bandit (or whatever term you have for this sort of gambling machine). I’m lacking any coins to use though, perhaps I should have found one already? I hope this isn’t a walking dead situation.

Leaving the back room I see… a zombie in their underwear doing stretches? With a large sack or something nearby. I was able to just walk up to him and kill him, very odd. But what was more odd, was inside the sack was a Father Christmas costume. Of course I had to put it on, so now I’m dressed as Santa Claus. I suppose the game is set at Christmas 1924, but it is such a weird choice for this game.

Ho ho ho?

Still curious about the slot machine from earlier, I again consulted the hints, and it mentions a nickel. A nickel? From where? I had to backtrack all the way back to the very start of the underground section, where there is a two pixel line that shows you that there’s an item on the floor. I guess they wanted to make sure this was definitely an adventure game, so wanted to include some pixel hunting on top of the maze from earlier. Going all the way back to the machine that’s in the hidden whiskey distillery, I use my nickel and get two tokens, one gold coloured and the other maybe wood or brass.

Spot the nickel.

Moving on, I take my Santa suited Carnby upstairs. The little chef seems to not mind Santa walking around, so I’m safe for now. The cook heads upstairs, so I stay downstairs. Further on from the hallway are paintings I can’t really look at, and a strange statue. Trying to walk past the statue means it throws a trident at you, so that blocks off a couple of doors, one that looks like it’s towards the kitchen and another closed door.

Next to the statue is a crown, hard to tell with these graphics if it’s supposed to be a regal crown or a costume one. The next room I can get to on the ground floor is quite cosy, comfortable chairs and a Christmas tree! A lovely place to relax, if only I didn’t have a child to rescue, and the house wasn’t full of murderous pirate zombies. Unfortunately for me, the adjoining door leads to a room full of said zombies, and they shoot me to death. Time for a different plan.

I wonder if the pictures are of the developers?

This next time, I grab the crown from near the statue and instead make my way upstairs. There’s one zombie at the top, quickly dispatched with the trusty battledore. The only doorway leads to a hallway that has three doors. The first is just an empty bathroom, and the second is a gaming room, that is to say the sort of room a large mansion at this time might have, with a billiards table and other things. There’s a cigar-smoking gentleman there, who doesn’t like the look of me I suppose. So I trap him at the corner of the billiards table, and hit him with the battledore. If there’s a clever way to defeat him, I didn’t figure it out. He drops a sword-cane, and at the table I find a Derringer with ten bullets (although it looks like the sort of thing that might only have one or two bullets).

There’s some sort of pachinko-like pegboard box in the middle of the room, but damned if I know how to interact with it. My tokens don’t seem to work here, unless I’m doing something wrong. There also seems to be a bookcase in front of a doorway, but I also can’t figure out how to move that, and the hallway outside would suggest that this would only lead to the bathroom anyway (not that it’s easy to keep your direction as the camera angles shift).

Some sort of pegboard game, and a billiards table.

Returning to the hallway, and passing the pirate skull painting with a glowing eye, I enter the master bedroom. This is quite lavish for the era, presumably where the lady of the house sleeps. She does not appear though, allowing us to search the room. At first I don’t really find anything, except a strange antechamber outside the bathroom, that I think we saw in the introduction. Presumably she conducts her rituals here, although there is also a square slab on the floor which might be a route out (or in) later on.

Two animated sword-arms swing wildly.

Returning to the main bedroom, search around the outside and get hit by something, the camera angles not being my friend here. A bit of manoeuvring and it reveals a couple of plinths, one of which has a parchment on it. What had hit me was two flailing sword arms, and in order to get close to the parchment I had to either take a lot of damage or carefully strike the sword-arms with a sword-cane of my own. This however, was only half the parchment. It took a lot of backtracking to find that the other half was in the billiards room, tucked away on a bookshelf I could have sworn I’d checked several times. The complete parchment contains a poem, although I’m not yet sure of its relevance.

It seems I’ve finished everything I’m able to do upstairs, so downstairs is all I can do. I’ll have to figure out how to deal with the room of guards, or the kitchen to progress next time!