I Am Alive Moves to Shanghai

I Am Alive is a Ubisoft game first seen at the 2008 E3 videogame expo and described as a survival action title that puts the player in the role of a survivor of a catastrophic earthquake. Development duty was later revealed to be handled not by the Ubisoft team working on Assassin's Creed, as initially thought, but by the Darkworks studio. At one point, the publisher stated that the game could be out in March 2009, saying that development was pretty much wrapped up by the beginning of the year.

Now, it seems that the title will be delayed, probably for quite some time, as Ubisoft is saying that it has taken the title from Darkworks and will continue to develop it in its studio in Shanghai. Internal documents from the France-based publisher reveal that I Am Alive will be published no sooner than April 2010. Ubisoft has released a statement, saying that “In order to respect the new launch date for this ambitious title, and Darkworks having other obligations, we have mutually decided to complete development of I Am Alive at Ubisoft Shanghai, as the two studios have collaborated on aspects of the title over the past year.”

I Am Alive seems quite interesting in principle. Ubisoft is aiming for a game in which the main enemy of the player is scarcity. The massive earthquake, which pretty much leveled all the areas that the game would depict, has made all the basic resources needed for survival, from water to weapons, very rare. The player will have to employ a variety of tactics to get what he/she needs in order to be able to live up to the title of the game, I Am Alive. One early demo of the videogame showed off the main character using intimidation to get to a bottle of water, with the developers stating that the situation can be solved in a variety of ways.

With the recession looming, Ubisoft is saying that it will change its strategy in order to deliver less casual games and more high quality blockbusters.