Many gamers will remember a rather epic looking I Am Alive trailer back in 2009. The game seemed to disappear and then announced as an arcade bound title. I Am Alive creative director Stan Mettra recently revealed in an interview with Digital Spy that the studio actually we made two games. The first I am Alive was almost fully developed fully but was scrapped for not meeting Ubisoft’s standards.
Mettra explains that there were really high expectations to create a “unique game experience”, but while the first version of the game had an interesting concept, the game systems were “not entertaining enough.”
The new arcade bound I Am Alive is the second version and was specifically designed for XBLA and PSN. Mettra said:
“Knowing that we had to design something really unique, really different type of game experience, but we knew we had to push some levels that aren’t compatible with mass market gaming experiences. So a realistic, human-centric, tough, tension, a dangerous world basically, so that’s one more reason to go for PSN and XBLA.”
“Because we know it’s an immersive experience, you can’t make a 2D game, we had to make strong choices, but we couldn’t make a 2D, Flash-like game, or stuff like that. We needed the full immersive experience, we needed production value, all these expensive stuff. And head office was okay to support this. It was kind of pushing the limits of what has been done.”
