I hesitate to describe Over The Alps as an interactive story or a choose your own adventure as those terms make the experience sound cheap or a novelty. In truth Over The Alps is a well-told story that is well presented.

Your adventure reads out like a journal and your decisions are represented as stamps on postcards that your character presumably sent home. And all of this is tied together with a 1940’s aesthetics that is clean and concise. The game is pleasing to look at.

Like most branching narrative adventures such as this, there are choke points where the offshoots bundle up leaving the player with a feeling of inconsequential decisions in its wake. However, the developers remedy this with excellent writing and by adding persistence.

Your character’s attributes, his relationship with other characters, the risks you take, and the police chasing you all plays a factor in how the story grows. This also adds replayability to Over The Alps, a rare quality in an adventure like this.

The game isn’t short either. Well, it’s not an epic RPG, but it is not so short that it would feel cheap.

I consider Over The Alps as one of the true gems in the Apple Arcade catalogue, and indeed there are very few. This is also one of the rare complete adventure games on the service. Why Apple lets developers offer incomplete (early access like) games on their service is a mystery.

Apple Arcade is also available on Steam.

According to its developers, the game will get an expansion in the form of a new story in the summer of 2020 and I look forward to it.

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