Setting & official short fiction
Akatori Story & Lore
The Amber Storms are a corrupting phenomenon that infects and distorts people and nature across Akatori's worlds, while also producing the valuable amber crystals that give the game its name. Contrast Games has published its own developer vignettes — "Akatori Tales" — that flesh out this setting well beyond what the store page's short description covers, and this page collects every one of them in a single reading list.
Recurring threads run through those vignettes: Akatori Monastery monks show unusual resistance to amber corruption, debated in-world by at least one Imperial Association of Doctors researcher as either hereditary or trained; "amberized" is the developer's own term for corrupted people and creatures; and ordinary civilians navigate checkpoints, evacuations, and rumors about the monastery's own laboratory as background texture around Mako's story. Several of the vignettes are written as in-world documents — a physician's diary, a civil-defense notice, an instructional pamphlet — rather than as third-person narration, which gives them the texture of found records from inside the setting rather than a summary written for players.
World detail
The Amber Storms and the amberized world
Two of the eleven vignettes below are written as bestiary-style dev posts rather than fiction, and both describe amber corruption acting on animals rather than people: the Amber Mole, a once-harmless blind creature turned into an ambush attacker that still can't see and reacts slowly once provoked, and the Amber Anglerfish, an underwater ambush predator that becomes vulnerable once it commits to its sprint attack. Read alongside the human-focused tales, the pattern is that amber corruption changes behavior more than it changes intelligence — corrupted creatures and people alike keep recognizable traits from before, just pushed toward hostility. The setting also implies an inter-world structure: one vignette follows a merchant being warned off "amberized worlds" at an interworld checkpoint, which suggests Akatori's world isn't a single contiguous map so much as a set of connected regions with their own contamination status, evacuation orders, and customs rules. Named elements like the "Bell of Harmony" and "Internal Chaos" appear in one in-world instructional document (numbered "AKA-19/1") describing a mechanic for destroying "projections of chaos" inside a virtuality space; these are official developer text, though they haven't been cross-confirmed against in-game footage the way the Energy/Breath combat rework has been.
The human side of the vignettes centers on a handful of named characters beyond Mako herself: fellow novices Yumi and Bao appear alongside her before their monastery initiation; Hilda, a general's daughter left chronically ill by amber-storm exposure, is protected by monastery training in a way that contrasts with Mako and a character named Hana; and novice Haruko envies a merchant's ordinary family life, prompting Mako to reflect on growing up without a normal childhood inside the monastery system. One vignette even drops a spy quietly taking notes on an Empire Capital tram while citizens gossip about the monastery's resistance to amber and a rumored laboratory — a small detail that suggests the monastery's amber resistance is a subject of outside political interest, not just scientific curiosity from the Imperial Association of Doctors researcher named elsewhere in these tales.
Akatori Tales — official vignettes
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Akatori Tales — Dreams
Official short-fiction dev-diary vignette depicting Mako and fellow novices (Yumi, Bao) anxious before their monastery initiation ceremony, establishing the Akatori Monastery training-school setting.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Diary
Official short-fiction vignette written as a physician’s diary describing a world being evacuated and quarantined after amber contamination, introducing the term "amberized" for infected people.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - The General’s Daughter
Official short-fiction vignette introducing Hilda, a general’s daughter who is chronically ill from amber-storm exposure and is protected by monastery training, contrasted with Mako and Hana.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Imperial Scientific Society
Official in-world document from an Imperial Association of Doctors researcher hypothesizing that Akatori Monastery monks’ amber resistance is either hereditary or trained, framing "Akatori" in-world as a possibly mythic former deity.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Chaos
Official in-world instructional document ("AKA-19/1") describing a game mechanic/lore concept called Internal Chaos, the Bell of Harmony, and destroying "projections of chaos" inside a virtuality space.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Merchant’s life
Official short-fiction vignette about a young merchant warned away from amberized worlds by an experienced merchant at an interworld checkpoint, illustrating the setting’s inter-world teleport/customs system.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Civil Defense Notice
Official in-world "instruction for the population" document detailing amber-contamination signs, evacuation procedure, and prohibited actions, reinforcing the Amber Storms as a body-horror infection with a public-safety bureaucracy around it.
Read full tale →Underground Danger — Amber Mole
Official bestiary-style dev post describing the Amber Mole enemy: a once-harmless blind creature corrupted by amber that ambushes from underground with sharp claws but is still blind and reacts slowly.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Escape
Official short-fiction vignette featuring novice Haruko envying a merchant’s family life, with Mako reflecting on monastery children growing up without a normal childhood.
Read full tale →Akatori Tales - Gossips
Official short-fiction vignette set on an Empire Capital tram where citizens gossip about the Akatori Monastery, monks’ resistance to amber, and a rumored monastery laboratory, while a spy secretly takes notes.
Read full tale →Evil in the Deep — Amber Anglerfish
Official bestiary-style dev post describing the Amber Anglerfish enemy: an ambush predator hiding in underwater sand, vulnerable once it commits to a sprint attack and can be lured into obstacles.
Read full tale →