The Altered: Anomaly Containment Archives

Mechanics (from transcript analysis)

• Branching choices — Players make choices that affect the story, character, and game unfold through branching paths.
• Character progression — Characters have starting skills, attributes, and can gain tags that affect story outcomes.
• Combat System — Involves dice rolls, card plays, and a system of affinities that counter each other (e.g., insight counters protocol).
• Deck Building (Combat) — A deck is built based on cards provided and additional cards added for specific boss fights.
• Lockbox puzzle — A lockbox requires a code uncovered during gameplay to reveal final parts of the game.
• Map and location exploration — A map provides context for the story's setting and areas, with descriptions of each location.
• Overlay system — Overlays are placed on the dossier to discover how choices affect the story's outcome.
• Persistent document — A dossier is stamped with choices that persist through multiple stories.
• Token Collection — Tokens are drawn based on story decisions, which can be used to remove damage or gain benefits.

Video topics + discussion points

No key topics recorded for this video.

Quotes (from this video)

• This is an immersive narrative experience where the choices you make are not only going to have ramifications in the story that you're working on, but in future stories that are going to progress as the game moves forward.
• I found that as I was playing through this game that I originally was just kind of like, "Oh, okay. Well, I obviously think it's this. It's it's I I feel this way. I feel it has to be this way." But, as I kept reading through this, I it started really kind of making it harder to make these decisions as we went through the game.
• The combat actually moves very fast in this game because it's a fun way to interact with enemies, but getting back to the story again is still going to be kind of the major point of this game.
• The writing in the game is really good. I did enjoy it. I had no issues with it. There was very, very, very, if not any, uh grammatical errors or things of that nature.
• the decisions became harder and harder to make because I had learned more about who this character is and what he's trying to do and how the whole story unfolds.
• it the story was written really well.

References (from this video)

No references stored for this video.

Mechanics (from transcript analysis)

• Blind bag token system — The game utilizes a blind bag token system.
• Boss combat mechanics — Details steps for boss combat such as flip, declare, roll, compare, resolve, resonance, overload, and clean up.
• Choice-driven narrative — The narrative is influenced by player choices.
• Immersive exploration — The game combines narrative with immersive exploration elements.
• Narrative-driven RPG — The game is explicitly described as a narrative-driven RPG.
• Save and Resume — The game allows players to easily save and resume their progress within chapters.
• Tactical investigation — Players engage in tactical investigation, using physical dossiers.
• Tactile card combat — Features tactile card combat for fighting bosses.

Video topics + discussion points

No key topics recorded for this video.

Quotes (from this video)

• It's going to be amazing.
• The best part about it, to keep the immersion real, they have also delivered things in a briefcase for me to check out.
• This game is coming to me straight from the manufacturer. So, I don't know what's [laughter] in here.
• This is just so much stuff, so many things that make this game just come alive. It's just so cool.
• How many games do you know come with lock boxes? That's awesome.
• Oh my gosh, this is going to be awesome.
• I love surprises.
• This is going to be an amazing game.
• I don't do many unboxings for prototypes, but all of this immersive material that came in it, I wanted to make sure you saw everything.

References (from this video)

No references stored for this video.