Developer: Rokabium Games
Publisher: RoKabium Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Something Ate My Alien – Review
Puzzle games have always been pretty fun to play. Something Ate My Alien has combined the puzzle genre with some platforming mechanics to build a great combination of puzzling, digging and fighting in different environments while searching for resources that your hijackers demand. By controlling your little alien blobs, you need to explore foreign planets and fulfill their ransom. Will you find all the resources so you can escape from the pirates’ grip?
Story
Something Ate My Alien begins with an introduction that shows your ship getting hijacked by an unknown alien pirate ship. To free your ship and your crew from their grip, you are tasked to find a whole lot of materials that can be found in the four planets you are going to explore in this game. As you progress in finding materials, the alien pirates will constantly push you with more threats to find their ransom quicker. The conversations between your aliens and the pirates can be quite funny to read as sometimes, their remarks are pretty on point or just funny as hell.
You’ll start with only one planet to explore. On these planets, you’ll find numbered puzzles that contain a token as a reward for solving it. These puzzles are scattered on the planet. After solving each puzzle, a chest will appear containing one of these tokens. After you’ve collected all of these tokens and beating a boss for the final token, you’ll get access to a new planet to search for more resources.
Graphics
Each world in Something Ate My Alien is made up of a grid of square blocks in which you can move freely. The landscapes in this game are quite detailed and each is themed to the type of the planet you’re on. There are many different enemies that roam the area and each has its own unique design. The big enemies, which are eventually the bosses on each planet, are the biggest and toughest creatures you’ll find. The menus are designed in a simple way for easy navigation.
Sound
This game has quite a good mix of music and sounds that fit quite well into the game. The in-game music is very well composed, which makes it very enjoyable to listen to while playing. When fighting against a boss, the song turns up the beat to build some more tension, which is befitting for a boss battle. The music tends to stay in the background and complements the game perfectly. The menu music can be quite repetitive when not playing for a while, but aside from those moments, you won’t stay in these menus for a long time, so you won’t be bothered by it. When the boss comes to attack you (and probably tries to eat you) you’ll hear a loud metallic roar that warns you of its approach.
Gameplay
Something Ate My Alien is a 2D, digging and puzzle platformer game where you take the role of the AI Antalasia and control your alien blobs as they scour through planets for minerals, gems and other resources you can find on these planets to cough up the ransom for the pirates that have hijacked your ship. The gameplay of Something Ate My Alien is fairly simple, but sometimes, the game can be tougher than it looks.
The controls of this game are quite easy to master. You have some standard controls to move around, use your jetpack and use your weapons. The game also offers perfect controller support for those who prefer it. When looking at the controls scheme, there is one command that is only usable in controller mode, which is the command ‘Hold position’. This command will let you hold your position both on the ground and in the air. This makes mining in the air easier to do with a controller than with standard PC controls as with the keyboard, you need to hold your position manually, which makes your alien go up and down in the air due to the continuous activation of your jetpack.
Your alien crewmen are equipped with a spacesuit that provides them with oxygen, a jetpack to get to higher surfaces, a mining laser and some unlockable weapons to defend yourself. Your suit, equipment and mining laser can be upgraded with the materials you find on these foreign planets. Sadly, of each material you need, the pirates also have an amount included in their ransom, so you need to collect their share first before you can get your hands on these materials for upgrades. Your suit can be upgraded to resist things like toxic liquids or lava, while the mining laser can be upgraded for more efficient mining capabilities. Lastly, the equipment section provides your aliens with utilities like scanners and can increase your storage and jetpack fuel.
Aside from the mining you need to do on each planet, you also need to solve puzzles scattered around the whole area to collect tokens. These puzzles consist of a secluded area divided by electric gates that only open when you approach them after activating its corresponding switch. In these areas, there are a few colored blocks that need to be put in the corresponding colored locations. After you’ve completed a puzzle, a treasure chest will appear, containing more materials and a token. These tokens will grant you access to the next planet after you’ve collected all of them. Each planet has ten tokens to find by solving puzzles and all are necessary to progress to the next planet.
These planets are filled with a variety of enemies ad hazards for you to overcome. Each type of enemy on a planet has its own attack style that can vary from shooting particles to inflicting physical damage. By using the terrain to your advantage, you can evade most of the enemies, but in some situations, you need to act fast to avoid a lot of damage. Paying attention to your surroundings is a must to keep your alien alive. As you roam around on a planet, you’ll constantly see a big enemy called “Something” roaming around in the background. Sometimes, it will show up and attack you for a short moment. It has some powerful attacks and will try to eat you. After collecting all the puzzle tokens on a planet and you enter the planet again, this big enemy will be the final frontier before you can progress to the new world as it has the last token needed to access to the next planet. This boss battle looks quite easy at first, but it’s quite a bit tougher than it actually seems. The boss can suddenly surprise you with its movements and take a quick turn to swallow your alien whole, which directly refers to the game’s name. This happened quite a lot while fighting the boss, which was quite frustrating, but also quite funny as well.
Conclusion
Something Ate My Alien turned out to be a surprisingly fun game that even challenges you at times, which you wouldn’t really expect when you start playing. The gameplay is quite easy to master and can be played with both a controller or standard PC controls. After playing with both controls, we definitely noticed that playing with a controller is just a tad easier due to the ‘hold position’ command that is only available when playing with a controller. This game can keep you going for quite a while as the ransom demanded needs you to explore every planet and it also urges you to explore each planet to the max. If you like platformers and solving some puzzles along the way, then we’d definitely recommend buying this game when it releases.
Something Ate My Alien - Review,
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