How's the game past the 5 min mark?
It's certainly intriguing. I think the post above me is correct; the storyline could definitely a be a bit more engaging, but still the mood and atmosphere of the game manage to draw me in. Right now my objective is to retrieve something for someone, and I have to climb, jump, and fight my way toward a hard-to-reach location in order to get it. Without good writing or story to back it up, it feels kind of like I'm just on a long, tedious fetch-quest. Yet still I continue playing.
I have no idea what genre "I Am Alive" belongs to. There's platforming, there's shooting (kinda), there's stealth (I think?), and there's puzzle solving (sorta). The game tries a mish-mash of different elements; it dabbles in several things, but doesn't really nail anything.
Where the game does excel, however, is where it tries something completely new.
You're armed with a pistol, but ammo is EXTREMELY scarce (read: 1 or 2 bullets every now and then). Most of the time you don't even have your gun pulled out, it's just equipped and hidden away on your person.
What's cool is when you encounter a group of hostiles. Hostiles react differently depending on whether you're holding up your hands defense, if you're pointing your gun at them, or if you melee-kill one of them unexpectedly and surprise them. If the enemy doesn't have a gun and you point a gun at them, you can intimidate them and get them to submit.
For example: You encounter a group of enemies. There are 3 of them. They're clearly aware of your presence and have begun approaching you, but don't take your gun out just yet. (Do you have enough ammo to shoot all three of them? Probably not.) Study the hostiles closely; what kind of weapons are they holding? Do any of them have guns? Which enemies look stronger, and which look scrawnier/weaker? Can you kill the bigger guys first and scare the weaker ones into submission? If someone is getting really close to you, can you surprise-kill them with your knife, pull out your gun and shoot one of the guys in the face, then finish off the last enemy with a melee attack? Can you lure them around a corner and cut all of them with your knife?
It's a survival game that throws a number of hostile bandits at you every now and then, forces you to assess the situation before engaging, and lets you choose how to take them out. I've never seen a game do this before.