What are the best Alone in the Dark settings? Whether you’re looking for more frames or a steadier gameplay experience, we’ve collated the best video and gameplay settings you need to tackle this modern revival of a horror classic.
We’ve already run through the Alone in the Dark system requirements, and it’s clear you won’t need the best graphics card to get good performance from this horror adventure. However, GPUs with limited VRAM may struggle, and there are some key tweaks to consider for aiming sensitivity.
Here are the best Alone in the Dark settings for graphics and gameplay:
Best Alone in the Dark video settings
- DLSS: Quality
- Resolution: 1920×1080
- VSync: On
- Frame Rate: Unlimited
- Volumetric Quality: High
- Ambient Occlusion: High
- View Distance: High
- Detail Setting: High
- Particle Quality: High
- Screen Space Reflections: high
- Subsurface Scattering: High
- Shadow Quality: High
- Post-Processing: High
- Texture Quality: High
- Anti-Aliasing Quality: High
- Shader Quality: High
- Effect Quality: High
- Foliage Quality: Low
- Anisotropic Filtering: x8
- High Dynamic Range: Off (monitor dependent)
- Chromatic Aberration: On
- Depth of Field: On
- Field of View: 90
- Motion Blur: Low
The above settings resulted in an average of 138fps at 1440p with 0.2% lows of 52fps. On none of the display types were we able to change our resolution, so this had to be done within the display settings on our testing rig so that we could also get a read on 1080p, which came out at 165fps average, with 0.2% lows of 59, a really good result considering the above settings have the game looking great visually.
With Alone in the Dark being a single player game, we aim for a balance between visual fidelity and frames per second as out recommended settings. You can cap the frame rate in the settings menu if you would rather keep to a consistent 60.
As for VSync, we chose to have this enabled given that there would be no benefit to allowing our fps to exceed that of our display, and if anything, screen tearing could detract from the overall experience.
Best Alone in the Dark gameplay settings
- Camera Shake Scale: 80%
- Controller Vibration: On
- Player Guidance: Modern
- Text Highlighting: On
- Map Highlighting: On
- Dynamic Objectives: One
- Reveal Interaction Points: On
- Aim Sensitivity: 6
- Camera Sensitivity: 5
- Toggle Run (Controller or Keyboard): On
- Button Mash: On
There aren’t too many gameplay settings in Alone in the Dark, and some of these are found in the display menu instead. Largely, it comes down to picking between the ‘Modern’ and ‘Old School’ playstyles.
Unless you’re a survival horror veteran from an era where games really made you work, you’re likely going to want to lean towards the modern settings, at least until you get one playthrough under your belt.
A bigger issue we encountered with the default setting was the aim and camera sensitivity. These were far too high when using a mouse an keyboard, and needed to be lowered considerably before we would consider them comfortable. A button mash toggle is also available as if you struggle with quick time events.
How we test Alone in the Dark
At PCGamesN, we use specific gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. Currently, our test rigs include the following components; Intel Core i7 11700F, MSI Ventus Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 8GB, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Widows 11 64-bit.
We use CapFrameX for capturing performance data and comparing the various performance levels using average fps with the 1% and 0.2% lows. Our goal in a game like Alone in the Dark is to get find the balance between visual fidelity and high frame rate for smooth gameplay.
Can you play Alone in the Dark on an HDD?
Yes, you can install and play Alone in the Dark on an HDD, although as with any game, there are performance benefits to opting for an SSD instead. As such, opting for one of the best SSDs for gaming is something we’d strongly advise.
How to monitor performance in Alone in the Dark
If you want to keep an eye on performance in Alone in the Dark, which doesn’t have in-built benchmarking and is unlikely to ever add it, there’s an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.
Or, you can download Frameview or CapFrameX, for a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking option that works with any graphics card.