Video Game / I Am Still Alive

"It's truly astounding how different everything can become once you let your guard down."

I Am Still Alive is an RPG Maker game developed by MollyAvast, and released in episodes (or "acts") from September 29, 2018 to August 22nd, 2019. The full game can be freely downloaded on its IndieDB page.

The game is divided up into seven acts. Each act follows a different character, but all of them contribute to the same overall story. The first act places you in a bizarre world that your player character, Emily, is forced to navigate. The rest of them show how the world ended up in this sorry state.

There are also "Intermission" videos released between acts, although each one is typically tied strongly to the most recently released act. Only one is currently released, taking place between acts one and two. Intermissions can be viewed on MollyAvast's YouTube channel.

Has no relation to the 2012 Ubisoft game I Am Alive.

I Am Still Alive contains examples of:

Act One: Desperation

• Big Bad: While the extent to which he is "bad" is debatable, Chauncey Avis a.k.a. Chance is arguably the reason that the world is in such a sorry state. Even if you believe Emily's way of justifying it — that the Entity would've caused what Chance's deal resulted in regardless of how cooperative the latter was, it's undeniable that his daughter Olivia suffered for quite some time due to him.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: Emily serves as the main damage-dealer in the party. Lyght's Ferocity is far higher, but he has less magic potential, and cannot target enemy weaknesses (aside from the heart,) resulting in most enemies being more resistant to his attacks than Emily's. Despite this, Lyght's Tolerance is significantly higher than both Emily's and Osilus', even if he sacrifices a chunk of it to use the Experimental Armor for the fight against Hoarsefly. Osilus' Focus is somewhat higher than Emily's, meaning he could theoretically have a higher damage output, but his offensive skills are limited to utility-type magic such as damaging multiple enemies. He is, however, the only party member to have a powerful healing skill, save for Emily's Clear Mind which can only target Emily herself.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: If you use the Debug Room to acquire two hidden party members, Molly and Nene, as well as some broken gear, you can defeat the Entity on your first encounter with it. It doesn't end well. Emily is never led to meet Chance, as things do not play out as Pearce intended for them to. As a result, Emily and every other character in the game presumably fall victim to the Entity's plans, dying or becoming Afflicted.
• Faux Action Girl: Emily is this. She proclaims herself a heroine, and claims that she's going to "save the world" (and is mocked for it, as many consider this to be a childish desire). It turns out that she's actually very insecure, and wasn't taking things seriously enough. She begins to doubt herself after losing a battle against the Entity just after starting her "journey". She eventually regains her confidence, but still relies on her allies to boost her morale for her to be capable of heroic acts.
• Good All Along: Skip. While he's very hostile towards Emily initially, if the player finds all of his hidden rooms, he reveals through a letter that he only acted harsh to prevent her from getting attached, as he knew he was dying. As an apology and last act of kindness, he offers Emily his Faith, allowing the Argentum Fidei to grow stronger.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Entity. While they're the main antagonist of the overall story, after killing Emily, they remain in the background up until the end of Act One. The more pressing concern is what Chance is doing.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Gaile, during the first boss fight.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: While there's no doubt that Emily has some degree of power herself, the only way she's able to survive what her twisted world throws at her is through abusing the world's distorted reality, creating choices out of thin-air and allowing herself to teleport through "Faith". Faith is also what fuels her sword, the Argentum Fidei, which grows in size and strength with every bit of Faith Emily acquires. These growths are immense, adding a very large amount of power to the sword with each rank increase. As of right now, it's unknown how she has such a large amount of Faith stored up when most of the population is deceased or has gone completely insane — not even Osilus, a wise scholar who seems to have knowledge on all things Faith and Warden-related.
• Heel–Face Turn: Chance during the final battle. After breaking down and revealing that he never intended to win the fight, the man falls to his knees, asking Emily to take his life. When Emily refuses, offering the broken man a hand, he's hesitant. She convinces him to give the world another chance by claiming responsibility for the world. Taking into account the fact that from his own point of view, Chance is the one who left the world in such a ruined state, he's overcome with guilt, and accepts her hand. From here, he becomes an ally, showing deep regret for his actions.
• Mysterious Backer: Pearce. While he can be seen stalking Emily and co. throughout the Veril Spire, he doesn't do anything to hinder their progress — in fact, he only does the opposite, breaking open a locked door in the library to allow the group to reach Egon and, eventually, stepping in to save the lives of Emily and Chance. His reasons for doing so are kept under tight wraps, though, and after the reveal that he manipulated Emily completely and successfully predicted all of her actions, it becomes doubtful that he doesn't have his own agenda.
• Optional Boss:
  • Rotten Hardale, found in the Fume Tomb, which by itself is a hidden area accessed through the Realm Beyond Life. Its expansion of the story aside, the window of time to fight this boss is small, and it can be quite a challenge due to inflicting the "Dying" status effect so early. If the player can manage to defeat it, they will be rewarded with multiple Hardale's Bottles, which can make the boss fights against the Peacemaker and the Old Hero much easier.
  • Fear, found in the Veril Spire area by taking a certain route in the first warping puzzle. Serves as one way to acquire the 6 of Hearts/Spades/Clubs cards, the only other way being to purchase them from Gaile after returning to the destroyed Mansion — a section that can also, potentially, be missed entirely. This boss also serves as a reward to players who play on the standard difficulty level, as he does not appear in the game's Leisure Mode.
• Sad Battle Music: The fight against the final boss of Act One, Chance has "Alone" and its short intro, "The Last Fight" for the first phase. It's somewhat upbeat, showing just how determined both Emily and her opponent are — but this only makes it all the more sad once you realize that both potential outcomes of the fight are tragic. Either Chance, a man who lost his home, his wife, all of his friends (or so he believes), and his daughter, will die, or his daughter's tormented soul will continue to suffer for an eternity, and Chance will be even more hopeless and guilt-ridden than before.
  • His flavor text when using the Diagnosis skill only makes things worse: "The man who lost everything." In addition to this, unlike other enemies whose Hearts are described in terms of strength (Strong, Weak, etc.) his is simply labeled "Broken."
  • The name of the intro song, "The Last Fight", references both the fact that this is the last battle in Act One, and the melancholy, creepy "song" Chance played to properly express his emotions about losing everyone he loved, entitled "The Last Light."
  • It only gets sadder. The second phase occurs when Chance breaks down into tears, and tells Emily that no matter what, she has to win the fight. "Rest in Peace" begins to play as the name of the enemy you're fighting changes to simply "The Father", and Emily is forced to fight against a man whose will has become so broken that he can barely deal 20 damage to Emily.
    • During this phase, the information gathered from Diagnosis changes to reflect just how low Chance's stats have become. The flavor text also changes into: "Man fueled entirely by desperation." Couple this with the fact that the only skill (aside from normal attacks) he will now use is called "Desperation", and suddenly the name of the act starts to make a lot more sense.
  • To a lesser extent, the song that plays for the fight against Lyght's deranged mentor, Grand Paladin Egon, "To Battle", is a mixture of an intense orchestral battle theme and a melancholy violin/choir duet. It emphasizes how powerful Egon was before losing his sanity, without glossing over the tragedy of his descent into madness. It doesn't help that his "Diagnosis" flavor text reflects on the irony of his nickname, "Unbreakable Egon", and the fact that he inflicts a status effect on himself called "Unbreakable" in one last desperate attempt to protect his Queen. This is made even more tragic when it's later revealed that the Queen he was trying so hard to protect was actually the one he was attacking with an axe — Emily.
• Secret Character: Skip, who can be found in three separate hidden rooms throughout the first act. Each room only becomes accessible after you find the previous room (and exhaust all of the character's dialogue). It's heavily implied that Skip is Bradley Skipper, Chance's old business partner. Turns out he survived after all, using his own device to escape in what could be considered an act of betrayal to his partner.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: The Bearer's Lid accessory is a rare drop from the Crown Bearer enemy in Veril. It grants the highest defensive boost in the game, adding 6 points to both the Tolerance and Persistence stats. Once Osilus and Lyght depart from your party immediately following the fight against Egon — in which they could definitely benefit from having that accessory equipped, the accessory is lost. Luckily, if the player found all of Skip's rooms, they'll have Skip's Hat as an effective replacement.
• Talking Animal: @%#38$&, the talking dog.
• Tears of Remorse: Chance, after explaining why he can't bring himself to do the right thing and end his daughter's pain.
• Tragic Villain: Chance. While his actions led to the forced insanity of all but a handful of people in the entire world, it can be debated that he was only a pawn in a much greater scheme, as Emily herself believes. His only motivation was to save his daughter, the only source of happiness left in his life after losing his wife, home, and friends.

Act Two: When the Smoke Clears

• Big Bad: Pades.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: It can be presumed that Alain/Allen knew about the Failsafe's plan to destroy Anilles, but due to his hidden agenda, he did nothing to prevent the death of his employer, Gattran.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Though Ray isn't present for his death, it's heavily implied through Rade/Cinder's dying words that he harbored feelings for the former. Wendel seems to understand this, too.

Cinder: I never told him how much I appreciated his loyalty. I never told him...a lot of things, I guess.

Wendel: [surprised] ...ah.

• Good All Along: Wendel. Though his methods were very extreme, he reveals to Rade after he is defeated that he never intended to assist the corrupt Wardens after all, instead having his own agenda which just so happened to match that of Rade's original task — saving the Queen.
• Heel–Face Turn: Wendel is this. Though he's not explicitly "evil" from the get-go, with his civil side being much more prominent if Rade avoids fighting him in their first encounter, opting to talk him down instead, he's definitely a shady character who does, eventually, try to kill Rade. After being bested at last by Rade and Ray, he reveals himself to be Amelia/Emily's "brother", though only technically. Seeing a lot of himself in Wendel, Rade sympathizes with him, opting to join up with his former adversary, with Ray tagging along as well. Though he can still be rather cold at times, it becomes clear that he has no true hatred for Rade or Ray, or humanity in general, and only wants to find his place in the world.
• Holding Hands: Rade and his sister, Millie, do this in a flashback.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Rade kills Jasmin out of belief that she's actively harming innocents — and he's not wrong, but he himself begins to question whether or not he could have prevented her death by simply trying a bit harder to understand her situation.
• Mysterious Backer: Wendel is this, at first. Despite being hostile when they first meet, he goes on to save Rade's life in Ralis, and clears a path for him outside of Anilles, but never gives explicit reasons for doing so. It's later revealed that his fluctuating "good" and "evil" actions were a result of the eternal conflict between light and dark raging within him.
• Old Friend: A common theme in this act. Rade and Vera's relationship is the greatest example — the two were best friends throughout childhood, and their reunion scene makes that very clear.
  • Rade and Gattran, as well as Rade and Gaines, both to a lesser extent.
  • Acacius also directly refers to Pades as this.
    Acacius: This hurts me far more than it hurts you...old friend.
• Plot Parallel: Act Two's general theme is based on parallels to Act One, but with each one having a few key differences.
  • Both acts start in the same location with a different name.
  • You wind up with three main party members in the end, but this is only after two other party members, Allen and Jasmin, die.
  • The protagonist is emotionally insecure, a fact they have difficulty talking about. Unlike Emily, who feels insecure due to not remembering anything about her life, Rade remembers too much, and is weighed down by his past tragedies.
  • The first party member you acquire is more "soft", someone who dislikes violence. Unlike Osilus in the first act, however, Ray joins you almost immediately, and his moves in-combat are more buff-centric than heal-centric.
  • The last party member you acquire is more "edgy", having reservations about the main character's journey. Unlike Lyght, however, Wendel is only keeping up a facade, and is giving his all to do so, to the point where he must be fought prior to recruiting him. In the end, Lyght storms off angrily, but Wendel remains by Rade's side as the latter dies, regretting that he couldn't do more.
  • There is an enigmatic "observer" character in both acts, but unlike Skip from the first act, Eivad is not "hidden" around the world — she just has shady mannerisms.
  • Both acts include a fight that can be considered the final "challenge", an encounter that is not the final boss, but is harder than the actual final boss. In the first act, this is Grand Paladin Egon, and in the second it is Warden Pades. The main difference here is that Pades is set up to resemble a final boss, only for it to be revealed that the one calling out to Rade all along was the lost king, August Mercer.
  • Both acts end with the protagonist alone having to fight a distraught father, in the form of Chance in the first act, and the late King August in the second. Unlike the first act, however, in Act Two August cannot be saved or spared, and losing the final boss fight does not result in a game over. The end result is the same, to emphasize that August was not entirely wrong.
  • Both acts' main protagonists undergo some sort of identity/appearance change by the end. Emily recalls her true name, Amelia, and her eye colour changes to reflect this. Rade takes on the title of Cinder, gains a few scars on his cheek for his trouble, and has his hair stained with ash.
  • Both acts' main protagonists die before the end of the act. Rade is different in that he doesn't return to life until Emily comes along, and they're revived together.
• Sad Battle Music: The fight against August, the benevolent king who was too paranoid to rest in peace, and eventually succumbed to his paranoia and sorrows while stuck underground, has a melancholy piano rendition of the song from his music box as the battle theme. From his perspective, he was doing Rade a favour, showing the other the "truth" of the world they live in.
• Talking Animal Pades and Acacius.
• The Mole: Allen, revealed to be the Warden Alain. He used his abilities to infiltrate the ranks of some powerful humans, specifically the Council, by serving as Gattran's advisor. Rade's appearance in Anilles complicated his plans, leading him to fake his own death, only to return later and kill Rade.
  • You could also consider Jasmin this, who is serving the Wardens and has no qualms about defying orders or endangering the lives of others if it is necessary. As it turns out, there wasn't really anyone for her to fight for in the first place. The last living Warden is Acacius, and even he eventually stopped lending her power, allowing Rade to kill her for the sake of preserving humanity. In the end, Rade considers her life (and its abrupt end) to be a tragedy, becoming inspired by Jasmin to do more for the people rather than resenting her for her betrayal.
• Tragic Villain: Pades. Consumed by sorrows thanks to the Entity, a feeling of hatred began to grow inside of him that he admitted, in the end, made no sense to him. The former protector of humanity realized that he'd been manipulated only minutes before his death, calling out to his old friend, Acacius, in an attempt to apologize for his actions — but the latter had already left.
  • It's difficult to consider August a "villain", seeing as the act builds him up as being the exact opposite. But it's also difficult to consider the shambling body plagued by darkness you face as this act's final boss to be August at all. In the end, he's only trying to protect Rade by fighting him, as well as trying to accelerate the fate he believes to be sealed for himself.

Act Three: The Gilded Prince

• Action Girl: One of Aurum's first actions with the party is advising Theodore to make a strategic retreat, but later goes on to punch a hydra and pacify the animal without killing it.
• Big Bad: Ofien, a.k.a. the Failsafe.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Everyone's favourite demon, Akehi, fights alongside Theodore during the first encounter with Tiaeusti.
• Heel–Face Turn: If Theodore spares Tiaeusti's life, he isn't quite sure what to do with himself, and we don't get to see what path he takes. However, he later shows up just before the fight with Ofien to repay the prince by weakening him before the fight starts, implying that he feels some degree of gratefulness to Theodore, and perhaps even regret for his actions.
  • A minor one is Marten, Theodore's old servant who was thought to have been killed during the war between Soreit and the Nameless South. His induction into the party is rocky, especially if the player chooses to fight fire with fire and threaten him back, but he's rather pleased to be a part of it at first. However, due to his disdain for the Prelude to Dusk, he's outraged if Theodore spares Tiaeusti's life. If the player does so, Marten will abandon the party after the fight with Ofien, and will not be seen for the rest of the act. This can be prevented by getting all of the Bond Heart conversations with Aurum and Marten, as Aurum will introduce Marten to her idea of mercy, something he slowly comes to respect and take inspiration from.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Cranford, the bodyguard outside of the Gazers' chapel in Deadleaf Village. He's very cold to the party initially, but if Theodore helps out the Gazers' leader Wilhelm, he'll give the party Marten's ultimate weapon, knowing that the reward received from Wilhelm likely had little practical use. He then asks the party to stay safe, and continues to show some degree of concern later when a Sorrow-ridden Theodore is brought to the chapel unconscious.
  • Additionally, one of the village residents comments on the fact that Cranford is a "huge sweetheart," but that very few people get to see that side of him.
• Optional Boss:
  • Synnuel, the People's King, who is revealed to have killed every single demon in the trap he was lured into, and starved to death just as his nemesis Arman did. He is able to be fought because of Ofien's revival of the old kingdoms.
  • The Twin Grey Warriors, a double boss fight. They're located in the hidden Grey Kingdom, having been given orders by Lady Ranhei (the wife of the Demon King, Rosem) to build a kingdom on neutrality, to give people a haven to avoid the conflict. For unknown reasons, they both perished, but were revived by Ofien along with the other kingdoms.
• Sad Battle Music: Noticing a trend? This act has more examples of this than any previous ones.
  • The fight against Zelhoff, the Betrayed King has an eerie and sorrowful tune, "Found and Lost," playing instead of the usual upbeat tune played for the previous Lost Kings, due to the pitiful state that the boss (and his kingdom) has been left in by Reiven.
    • It's made worse by the fact that the song starts in a manner very similar to that of Chauncey Avis' second phase battle theme from Act One. Sure enough, as the fight goes on, Zelhoff begins to use Chance's "Desperation" ability.
  • The battle against Southpaw, Theodore's big brother figure and your party member, is accompanied by "Noble Execution," which is fast-paced and semi-chaotic while also maintaining an air of sadness, symbolizing the abrupt nature of the sacrifice Southpaw is trying to make.
  • The song for the climactic fight with Ofien sounds slightly melancholic, particularly the first phase's theme, "Illusion." Additionally, at one point before the fight Ofien states that Southpaw and him were more alike than one would think, which is emphasized by the fact that the first few notes of the song are nearly identical to the bizarre piano melody Southpaw poorly played earlier in the area.
  • For the final conflict with the Burnt Knight, Lleyan, the immensely melancholic "Immortal Fear" plays. After all, Lleyan is only trying to protect the young prince, Yona, from the horrors of war. He just cannot understand that the war ended ages ago...
• Talking Animal: Acacius and his later form, @%#38$&.
  • Also applies to Ofien after having taken the form of Acacius.

Act Four: Subterranean Sorrow

• Big Bad: Ciren.
• Superboss: The Crimson Prophet, Yona's horribly deformed brother is easily the most difficult boss in the game. However, the fight can only be accessed by activating five hidden switches in Act Three.