Alan Wake

Alan Wake is described by Remedy as "the mind of a psychological thriller" and "the body of a cinematic action game" put together. In interviews, the game's creators hold that the game does not belong squarely in the survival horror video-game genre. The game is primarily set in the fictional idyllic small town of Bright Falls, Washington. The main gameplay happens in various areas of Bright Falls—such as the forest, a national park, or a farm—during the night time; these are punctuated by calmer, non-combative sequences set during the day.

The player controls the eponymous protagonist Alan Wake, a well-known novelist who is going through writer's block. In the game, a "darkness" is taking over humans, animals, and objects. These enemies, dubbed the "Taken", are murderous shadows that attack Wake, wielding weapons of their own, ranging from mallets and knives to shovels and chainsaws. They vary by speed, size and the amount of damage they can take, and some can teleport short distances.

Alan Wake (voiced by Matthew Porretta) is a bestselling crime fiction author from New York City who suffers from a two-year stretch of writer's block. He and his wife Alice travel to the small mountain town of Bright Falls, Washington, for a short vacation on the advice of their friend and agent Barry Wheeler. Before arriving, Alan has a nightmare about shadowy figures who try to kill him, when an ethereal figure in a diving suit intervenes in the dream and teaches him how to utilize light to fend off the shadows.

Upon arrival in Bright Falls, Alan goes to a diner to retrieve the keys to their cabin from Carl Stucky, the landlord, but instead encounters a mysterious old woman, who tells him that Stucky had fallen ill and she was entrusted to give Alan the keys. The woman directs the couple to a cabin on an island in the middle of Cauldron Lake, a volcanic crater lake, where Alan experiences a vision of the old woman. As they unpack, Alice reveals that the real purpose of their trip is to help break his writer's block by arranging for him to see a famous Bright Falls psychologist named Dr. Emil Hartman.

By 2003, the Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment had created the critically acclaimed Max Payne (2001), and its sequel, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003). After shipping Max Payne 2, Remedy Entertainment spent some time "recovering from the crunch," and started coming up with different concepts for a new project. Among these was the concept for Alan Wake. Early on, this was based on trying to tell a deeper narrative story than what Max Payne had been, influenced by works of Stephen King and David Lynch, in particular Twin Peaks, and approached as a television episodic format to tell the story of the action-thriller. The basic elements of the narrative were set early on: Alan Wake as a successful writer finds himself in the small town of Bright Falls where due to supernatural events his writings have come to life to attack him.

To further distance this next game from the linear style of Max Payne, Remedy planned Bright Falls as a free-roaming, sandbox-style open world city, similar to those seen in the Grand Theft Auto series. They developed a semi-automatic system to help generate this open world using biomes and other features based on their research on the Pacific Northwest where Bright Falls was set. For example, this tool allowed them to path a road across the game world, upon which the tool would make sure no vegetation would appear near the road though added sprout of grass near its edges, and would add approach ditches and other features along the sides of the roads to simplify the world creation. Remedy also wanted cinematic action, so light and darkness was to play a significant factor in the game, which was first built into a dynamic day-and-night cycle.

Alan Wake received "generally favorable" reviews on both platforms according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Michael Plant from The Independent gave the game a score of 5/5. He praised Alan Wake for its "flawless pacing", which "ensures a compulsive experience". The editing and plot were also received very positively, making the game "the kind of experience the current console generation was made for."