Alone in the Dark 2 - Saving Grace

 Written by Andy Panthro

So long as we don't have to redo that maze!

A potentially fun little swap here, we shift from the main protagonist of Edward Carnby to the young child Grace, who was the Hero of Halloween in Jack of the Dark. As before, Grace can’t attack or fight anything directly, so no more brute forcing things with a tommy gun. We take control with Grace having left the mansion, and hiding behind a statue.

Of course my first thought is, “what if I just leave?” and I try walking towards the front gate. Alas, there is a zombie there with a gun, and this results in a game over. This time, instead of Carnby being thrown into the sea, he is instead suspended by his feet above the pirates as they party on the deck of their ship. 

Carnby is the centre of this party.

I guess we can’t run away and get help, we have to rescue Carnby ourselves!

I explore in various directions, but find either dead ends or I get Grace captured. There isn’t much to do, but there is a car waiting outside the mansion, so I search it. Searching (and kicking?) the back, causes a zombie to come out and get in the car. This means I can climb into the now-open trunk and ride along. Grace also collects a red billiard ball in the trunk.

A short trip in a classic car.

The journey is quite short, taking us past the gate and towards a small gazebo. The driver pulls up, gets out and so does Grace. There are three guys dancing in the gazebo, one with a stick and two with guns by the look of it. I wander past and pick up something on the ground, it’s the hook! Perhaps Carnby is leaving us a trail. I try wandering off past the trees and get automatically caught, so time to reload and follow the path instead.

That first time, the gazebo guys didn’t spot me at all. When I reload, suddenly they have hawk-like vision, catching me almost every time. Eventually I make it a couple of screens over, where there’s a kind of crossroads and a pole in the ground with a little white flag on it. Perhaps they’re gonna turn this into a luxury golf resort? There doesn’t seem to be anything this way, so I turn around and head behind the mansion.

The gazebo, hook on the right hand side.

I find a spooky tree with what seems to be a hole in it, that surely Grace could fit into. There doesn’t appear to be anything I can do with it though. Funnily enough, the “Open/Search” option in the menu does kind of work like the “Fight” one for Carnby, in that if you hold the space bar and press a direction key it does something different each time. Kicking, stamping your foot, blowing a raspberry and waving your arms seem to be the four options. None seem to help with this tree, and I am fast running out of places to go and things to do.

I took a bit of a breather here for a few days, and went back to check the only items I had with the only options available. I suppose the white flag is supposed to be a golf flag? Marking a hole? It was the only option I hadn’t tried, and using the billiard ball next to the flag caused a statue to appear next to the tree with a face. Walking up to the statue, I try to interact or push it, to no avail. I assume the hook must do something, and it seems to make the arm of the statue move down and then back up again.

I didn’t get the best screenshot of the statue, or the pirate afterwards.

All this does is raise a pirate from the depths beneath the tree, who immediately captures Grace. What even was the point of this section? Escaped only to be captured minutes later, with no particular benefit? We then find ourselves in the Flying Dutchman’s brig, next to Carby, with Elizabeth Jarret giving us the villain’s monologue this time. It’s quite a brief story, and links her power to learning voodoo, and doesn’t really tell us a lot about who she was. She ends up being a prisoner on the Flying Dutchman, but it doesn’t really explain why, and then she uses her magic to attract One Eyed Jack to take over the Dutchman. She also reveals they’ve kidnapped Grace in order to maintain their youth, something they need to do every hundred years.

We’ve just had Gabriel Knight being covered on this blog, and its handling of voodoo and magic is so much better than whatever this was. Everything about this backstory feels kind of thin, and the really bad digitised recording of the voice acting does not help to bring any emotional resonance to it.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, Carnby is chained up, so we remain in control of Grace. Elizabeth flies away and we’re left to try and get Carnby out of his chains and escape. The room is pretty bare, but there’s a door, and next to that door a large hatch (or small doorway?) covered with a wooden panel. It’s heavy, but Grace can still move it, and we can get a look at the next room. In here we see a squawking parrot, some furniture, and various items and things on the wall.

On the table is a sandwich and a pepper pot, next to the table a bag of seeds, and on the wall is a map of some sort. There also looks to be a gun, and a bottle of something, but they don’t seem to be interactable, nor is the cupboard on the other wall. There’s no door to this room, and if you walk out there’s a patrolling zombie that might catch you. I try giving the seeds to the parrot, and this results in Grace getting stuck in an animation where she walks in circles, so I have to reload.

Feeding a parrot to get clues is an adventure game staple.

Trying the seeds again, the parrot gives you a little rhyme, telling you that the staff is in the one-eyed man’s room. Also not to sneeze. Which immediately makes me want to try and do something with the pepper pot. Outside, I avoid one of the zombies and make it up to the next deck. Alas, I am caught and have a game over. I’m not really sure where I’m going at this point, so it’s going to take a lot of reloads to try and figure it out.

After a few attempts, I make it back to the deck above, and then instead of going near the guard there I just go up again, which leads me to the main deck. There’s a group of pirates having a drink and playing music, and some crates and things placed around in such a way that suggests I can find my way around by sneaking between boxes and barrels. I save behind a box, and hope I don’t have to replay this section too many times.

Grace is too young to join in on this party.

Getting past the group of pirates is quite difficult, the first direction I go is a trap and only gets me stuck, so I have to reload an earlier save. I slowly make my way between boxes and barrels, trying to avoid the gaze of the dancing one and the music-playing one, which seem to be the only ones alert. Eventually I make it to the other opening down, not before finding myself a tinder box, which looks an awful lot like a stick with a marshmallow on it.

The opening drops me directly into what looks like Jack’s bedroom. There’s a small chest with a small cannon in it, and a shelf with a crystal vase. The other side of the bed, I find a statue of Captain Nichols, and a closet with a captain’s staff in it. My initial thought is to use the Staff with the Statue, but that doesn’t seem to work. The doors here are closed, and it’s hard to know if I’ve missed anything, or quite what I am supposed to do in this moment. I was hoping to have found a key.

Toy cannon 1, pirates 0.

Perhaps a toy cannon can break a door, I think. But when I try and use it, Grace puts it down towards a different door. I find it can be loaded with pepper, and then fired with the tinder-box. However this doesn’t really help me much. Next I throw the glass vase, and the door opens. Presumably the vase is supposed to break, to alert the pirate in the corridor? This then reveals the solution: First I must prime my toy cannon on the floor, loaded with pepper. Next, I throw the glass vase at the door, alerting the pirate. Finally, when the pirate enters the room I fire the cannon using the tinder box, causing the pirate to sneeze his skin off, leaving a skeleton that collapses to the floor. The only item he leaves is a bell, and I pick up the glass vase again just in case.

I try a couple of directions from here, but one has two little chefs in the way, one hatch down she won’t fall into, and she won’t go up the ladder. The last place is a kitchen (or galley I suppose), with a chicken foot on the table. I try ringing the bell, and the two chefs come running. But it also opens a hatch, to a dumb waiter. Reloading, I try this again next to the hatch, and Grace can get into the dumb waiter and ride it up to the top.

Back in the mansion. (can you spot the key?)

This brings us back to the mansion, in the kitchen! How the ship can link up to the mansion I don’t really know but this is also a game with magic and zombies so I’ll not think about that too much. There’s a key on the floor that I almost miss because it’s the same colour as the floor tiles, and I can’t find anything else except a guy with a gun who walks faster than me and I can’t avoid. That seems like a good place to stop, and pick this up next time.