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Mobile

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ALFA-ARKIV Mobile App Overview

ALFA-ARKIV is a digital novel masquerading as a game. Combining themes of surveillance culture, genetic modification, and Soviet history, it is as culturally relevant as it is technologically innovative.

Released in 2014, ALFA-ARKIV was featured as a "Best New Game" by Apple and lauded by media outlets such as CNET and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as one of the top mobile experiences of that year. More of a digital novel than a game, the core of the experience is a journal written by award-winning novelist Shani Boianjiu, author of "The People of Forever Are Not Afraid". The game requires players to explore the story through different platforms and features an extensive use of a Siri-like chatbot character who is preprogrammed with over 100,000 words of code.

Features

  • Features an AI chatbot who serves as your guide, hintbook, and salesperson.
  • Over 100,000 words of discoverable text.
  • Adaptive, context-sensitive soundtrack.
  • Unlocks content across mobile and the web, with geospatial data, geo-fencing, image recognition, AI chatbots, and various APIs and SDKs, including augmented reality.
  • Powered by a feature-rich backend, including a user engagement tracking system.

 

Developer: Hexagram

Release date: 24 July, 2014

Platforms: iPad

Price:Free, $3 to see all chapters

Post-launch

After the release of ALFA-ARKIV, we have continued to develop Hexagram's backend in partnership with entities such as Twentieth Century Fox, Intel/Vice, and several non-profits. 

History

ALFA-ARKIV's story began in 2009, when over a million people from around the world explored the online mystery of JUNKO JUNSUI. Shortly after the Junsui vanished, the creators of the original material began thinking about a new kind of text-based adventure. In 2012, they enlisted award-winning author Shani Boianjiu to lead the writing efforts. Creation involved over fifty individuals from nearly as many countries.

 

CNET: Alfa-Arkiv

Best Mobile Games of 2014

" Alfa-Arkiv is about as ambitious a multimedia project as we've ever seen. The core of it takes place in the iPad app where you, as a new operator at a mysterious organization, are reading through documents pertaining to the detention of a young woman named Rhea, a member of a resistance movement called the Liberation Army of Dagestan.

While it technically falls under the definition of an alternate reality game, Alfa-Arkiv isn't easy to categorize. It's sort of an interactive novel, but it's so much more: nearly 10 years in the making, it will send you crawling the web hunting for clues planted by the development team years before the app's release in July of this year.

It failed to get the attention it deserves, partially because it's not easy to categorize as either a novel or a game; partially because it asks things of the user that go beyond a single screen; and partially because it's so very realistic. It is, however, a spectacularly executed piece of work, and a magnificent experience."

Dennis Hoekstra