By 2003, the Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment had created the critically acclaimed "Max Payne" (2001), and its sequel, "" (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.