When everyone is trapped in a time loop without their knowledge or consent, only the few chosen ones, The Remembrants, who know the truth, can spread the information.

Alt-Frequencies is an audio focused story game where you are put in control of listening to the radio. You need to go through the channels and find information to record and share forward. The twist is that the time loop happens every once in awhile and will make you listen to the content multiple times.

It's a such a fun and unique concept of a game, and I enjoyed it a lot. There is definitely a lot of repeating and you need to find the right things to record to share forward to get through to the next chapter. There is a few choices along the way that will shape the outcome of certain things, and there is also a few different endings you can get. The achievements weren't too difficult to do and even if some require multiple runs of certain chapters it was easy to do with chapter select from the main menu.

I definitely had a blast playing through this game and can highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a little bit of mystery.

I was such a big fan of the Normal Lost Phone series. I thought that they used their mechanics and context to tell really compelling stories about everyday life. I find it difficult to forget the counter in Laura’s Story, for example. Something that appeared innocuous/meaningless on the surface but became integral later on, not just as a puzzle but as something that added texture to the story.

I knew nothing about Alt Frequencies going in but I’m sorry to say it didn’t suckerpunch me in the same way the last Accidental Queens games did. It introduces a neat mechanic- copying and pasting phrases from one broadcast to another- that, while not giving the same level of Eureka! moments a Phoenix Wright game would, is solid enough. But Alt Frequencies squanders its potential to say anything at all. Why WOULD a government use a time loop to control its citizens? What are the implications of this hypothetical idea? Nothing Alt Frequencies addresses rises above surface-level “the gov’t is lying to us” aphorisms, and its cast of radio actors-while competent- are too annoying and heavy-handed to elevate the material. I was disappointed. The closest parallel I can draw to it is Not For Broadcast, which I also hated, but Alt Frequencies is mercifully much shorter.

This is also coming from someone that recently played through The Forgotten City and Heaven’s Vault, so my standards for time loop narratives may have been set too high. Please buy and support those games, as well as Accidental Queen’s previous games. This one is a pass.

Alt-Frequencies es... Bueno?

Si bien este juego es bueno y tiene una historia... No he entendido toda la historia, osea si entiendo que hay un bucle y bla bla bla pero es demasiado corta la historia

no niego la experiencia pero realmente no se siente muy bien que se repita la misma mecanica por 5 capitulos y de paso no se pase suficiente tiempo con los personajes para encariñarte con ellos

Ojala el juego durara mas, las mecanicas son interesante pero si se siente muy monotono

Yo lo jugaria solamente si tienes la suerte de conseguirlo muy barato o lo consigues en una suscripcion como Play pass

I've always been romantic about radio. Maybe it's just inherited from American Graffiti, but I think I would actually listen to modern radio if there was more personality. That feeling that songs aren't just being spit out by a playlist, they have to be physically started by a DJ, someone selecting the programming and keeping you company in between. You and them, alone together, before the internet made that our default state.

So a game about listening to and interacting with radio DJs is immediately interesting, and given the inherent limitations I think it mostly works. The messages you send have to be phrases heard elsewhere, which meshes with the hacker angle. The story keeps it simple and I found a handful of fun easter eggs.

But that story just didn't engage me. This should not have been a time loop narrative. I get those are in style now and it's an easy explanation for why the radio broadcasts are so short (a couple minutes per chapter) but it's a video game, no one would mind if it just repeated. Time loops are such fantastical plot devices that every time the DJs matter-of-factly discuss "the vote on the proposed time loop" it's hard to take seriously. I get the sense the writers weren't quite sure where to take that story, because it ends on an anti-democratic note that's just as disconcerting in 2022 as it should have been in 2019.

I played this on Apple Arcade and it took like an hour or two. Can't say it's not worth it for that time and price.