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.