“This is a survival horror game without any zombies or aliens or magic,” says I Am Alive creative director Stanislas Mettra. I haven’t been following the protracted development of I Am Alive, so I’m not sure whether this specific angle he describes has always been part of the game, or whether it has come up during development and then slowly took over. All I know previous to this hands-off demonstration is that it takes place after a disaster and that people thought that Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond worked on this game.
But when I see the unnamed dude walk around a desolate Haventown — a fictional replacement for what was originally going to be Chicago — I’m not really thinking “this is survival horror without monsters!” I’m thinking of the headline above — for the first half, I notice how the guy clambers and jumps a bit like (take your pick) Altair or Ezio. He drops down overhangs; he clings to rivets along a bridge; he makes precarious jumps across chunks of broken steel. The main difference I notice is that he has a stamina meter — which seems to be an indicator that while he somewhat moves and grasps likes the master assassins of Ubisoft’s other franchise, he doesn’t have the skill and training of those fellows. Just the simple act of climbing slowly saps this meter. If he does something daring — such as jump up while climbing — a hefty chunk of stamina instantly vanishes.
