Alternate Reality (series) - Gameplay

Gameplay

At the top of the screen were character statistics, such as game-world time, Strength, Health, etc. This brings up some of the unique aspects of the game: the character is not omniscient with respect to himself, but has some attributes that stay hidden except in special cases—for example, the player never knew the character's alignment (good/evil/neutral), and poison, drunkenness and disease tricked the perceived stats, or temporarily or permanently changed them. In fact, the player never chose an alignment, but came to learn it through how other characters treated them in the game.

Among these hidden stats were things to keep track of how hungry, tired, thirsty, hot or cold, or encumbered the character was. Fifteen years before The Sims, this game managed the character's well-being by tracking more than just their hit points. In fact, this game shared many game play aspects with The Sims.

The Sims uses several constantly diminishing stats: hunger, happiness, etc. and balances the player's ability to fulfill them with the length of time it takes to accomplish tasks. Alternate Reality, similarly, required the player to balance all of these things. While food and water could be carried, supplies were limited and the player would have to find or purchase new packets. The character could only sleep in an Inn, so if the player was off adventuring and the character started to get hungry and tired, they'd have to return to a safe area before the player could fulfill these needs.

Another feature was the non-linear game play, and extremely large game world that could be explored at will, rather than according to how the game expected.

Due to budget constraints, the first game was released, essentially, without a plot. Only in the second installment were any elements of a traditional RPG plot added in, but the player could (and probably did) spend days playing before realizing the importance of any of their actions. This was nearly two decades before Grand Theft Auto III would be called revolutionary for offering the same feature.

The bottom of the screen alternated depending on user choice and situation between consumables like food, water, money, and torches, equipment, combat options, spells, and other things. The sides held the compass at left (when the player had one) and directional arrows at right.

The gameplay of both games is reminiscent of other RPGs but more sophisticated than its peers—while the player wandered around gaining levels and equipment, there were things like a finite number of items in the world, and items stolen could be regained. Near overflows of memory from possessing too many items resulted in an encounter with The Devourer, a fearsome creature that sucked items from the player, and thus removed them from memory. Death was permissible and mostly uncheatable since the game cleverly marked the character as dead as soon as the user started and only let the character to become "alive" once they saved. (It was possible to "revive" a lost character, but it caused a loss in one of the character's stats.)