Alpha is an early game by Square, that had started its existence as a developer of Japanese-only text adventures before it became famous for its Final Fantasy series. Alpha describes the adventures of a female pilot whose space ship, the Daedalos, has crash-landed on an unknown planet. The interface is entirely text-based. Both the text messages displayed and the text input are in katakana (Japanese syllabic writing system). Several special commands can be accessed by pressing shortcut keys (Latin letters on the keyboard). The locations are displayed as still pictures above the text, same way as in Western interactive fiction games with graphics.