Aliens: Roguelike

aka: AliensRL
Moby ID: 27325
Windows Specs

Description

Aliens: The Roguelike is a tactical roguelike, inspired by the classic Aliens movie and the Alien Breed: Tower Assault computer game.

The story is simple and traditional: in the year 2209, the colony Giger V sends out a distress call before stopping all communication. You are the fortunate soul who is to investigate this unexpected event. Unfortunately, your ship is shot down on approach; fortunately, you survive. Now enter the colony, stripped of your comrade and equipment, and go kick that alien queen's ass!

The game begins with character creation. Select one of five classes, like Marine, Scout, Medic etc. There are no attributes, instead, each class has different costs for improving the seven skills, three skills for handling weapons (sidearms, light or heavy weapons) and four others that improve your speed, reload time, throwing accuracy or the effect of medpacks. The final step before beginning your quest is to invest initial points in certain skills -- choose wisely!

You now start to explore the seven towers, each with several levels, to find the alien queen. You are only shown your immediate surroundings on the top-down map, and you have a limited view distance and can't look around corners, so you're in for some nasty surprises... the greenish text graphics and the ominous background music help to create this nice paranoid Aliens atmosphere.

Of course, you will encounter many aliens during the game -- juveniles, workers, warriors, and, who knows, maybe even the queen? Some of them are quite easy to kill, some of them harder, but none should be underestimated. They are not able to open doors, so closing in front of his ugly nose one can save your sorry life.

You will find weapons and ammunition, grenades, armor and medpacks to help you on your quest, but you will have to select your tactics carefully to survive: You can only carry one weapon of each type, as well as limited ammunition only. The weapons use different ammo and have different characteristics -- for example, shotguns are handy for blasting several enemies at once, but they are no good against armored targets.

You also should not forget to reload after each fight! Gameplay is entirely turn-based, yet, each action takes a different amount of time, so being able to reload faster or move quicker can make the difference between life and death -- so be sure to check the character screen to see if you have gained enough experience to increase one of the skills!

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

10 People (4 developers, 6 thanks)

Created by
Co-design
  • DaEezT
Music by
Voice by
  • AT&T Labs
Thanks to
  • GenTechJ
  • Fingerzam
  • Malek
  • BDR
  • Styro
  • RickVoid

Reviews

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 5 ratings with 1 reviews)

Very atmospherical tactical roguelike

The Good
Aliens: The Roguelike has appealed to me mainly because of two reasons: Its stylish, atmospherical presentation presentation and the tactical gameplay, which work together to create a never before seen immersive roguelike experience.

It is really amazing that a game displaying only ASCII graphics can be so immersive. This is mainly due to the great background music -- slow, menacing, ominous. Together with the really stylish, greenish ASCII and the tactical gameplay, this unbelievably achieves this typical paranoid "Aliens" atmosphere. I was crouched above my keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen, slowly advancing through the colony and wondering at each door what horrors may lay behind it, desperately trying to find some ammo... Just great. It goes to show what music can do for a game!

Then, the gameplay. Your standard roguelike is a straightforward dungeon crawl: Explore all levels, visit all rooms, kill all monsters, collect all treasure, go to next level, repeat until you found that one mystical object or are killed. Weeell... actually, even in the simplest roguelike and namesake Rogue, you'll have to learn and proceed very carefully -- any error can be deadly! Same here, but it's been taken to another level. Here, you won't get far with this standard hack'n'slay strategy.

As there are different weapons, each of which use different ammo, and as you can only carry a limited amount of ammunition, you will have to carefully decide which weapons to pick up (the best weapon clearly is of no use if you haven't got ammo for it), which rooms to enter, which aliens to kill and when to run away -- it's often not worth the ammo to enter an alien-crawling room.

The weapons all have different characteristics, just as the aliens. Trying to kill a hardy worker with your little M4A3 pistol is not a funny experience, you'll waste a lot of ammo. But doing it with a .44 Colt is entirely another thing. The shotgun is not too good against armored targets, but unbeatable when it comes to take down some juveniles standing close together. And even those juveniles can quickly shred you to pieces -- so be sure to be well-stocked in medpacks.

Furthermore, the games consists of several "dungeons" -- Civilian, Medical, Military tower --etc. -- which all have different characteristics. Medical tower is good for restocking on medpacks, while Military tower has tough aliens, but has some nice weapons to be found. Storage tower contains lots of ammo, etc. So while advancing in the game, you'll have to select when to go where.

As last example, you have only a limited field of view -- view is obstructed by walls, of course, and there are also dark towers which reduce the visible distance. You'll never know what lurks behind the next corner, and if you forget to reload your weapon and then find yourself in front of a hunter, the game can be over quite quick.

Okay, that was a lot of talk -- but these are just some examples that the game -- despite it simple roguelike appearance -- really has some tactical depth. And this interacts with the atmospheric presentation to create an immersive experience. There is not a moment to relax, you'll have to keep an eye on your ammo storage, rethink your strategy, and each room, each alien requires a different tactics.

The Bad
AliensRL has been written during the 2007 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, which means it has been written in just about seven days. It's an impressive feat to get such a varied, differentiated and complex gameplay together with a stylish presentation in such a short time, yet the game has one big and some little shortcomings.

What I miss the most is definitely a save game feature. After three hours of concentrated exploring, having lived through several near death experiences due to accidentally forgetting to reload etc., I just can't go on anymore. Yet the only way to keep a game is to let it run. Being able to save your game would definitely keep me hooked; as it is, I always have to quit, which is quite frustrating.

Although I played the 7DRL++ version -- which already contains some bug fixes and minor gameplay balancing -- there is, IMHO, some more balancing to be done. My last game ended when I had completely explored Military Tower, level 2, and then went to Medical Tower to get some medpacks. There, after some turns, an "elite" alien turned up and just tore me to pieces. This is very subjective, but I expected Medical Tower to be somewhat more relaxing then Military Tower -- until then I only had encountered elites on Military Tower level 3 and up.

It also is often hard to find some decent weapons -- at least for beginners. Running around for an hour with just your standard pistol until you find that Combat Shotgun is not fun -- especially if your backpack is crammed full with shotgun rounds... Then again, the Colt is to be found quite easily, but its ammo is quite rare, so you can't really use that either. So all in all, you'll have to spend a lot of time looking for things, which can be a bit frustrating at length. But after playing the game a bit, you'll know that Military Tower has all the nice guns ;-)

Another small detail: The AI could be better. Aliens are dumb -- they just go straight after you, so not much tactics here. Well, this is not so bad -- it befits that well-known predatory Aliens mind -- but still, fighting aliens can get a bit repetitive. The same is true for level design -- despite taking some time at the beginning of the game, the levels don't show much variation.

Finally, the sound system is not quite perfect. It sometimes quite unexpectedly plays random sounds, and it would be nice to have a volume control because the FX is unproportionally loud in contrast to the background music.

The Bottom Line
Aliens: The Roguelike is, simply put, one of the most atmospherical tactical roguelikes I have every played. Great background music, stylish ASCII graphics and a gameplay full of suspense and surprise all work together to create a very immersive gaming experience. It captures the dark and paranoid "Aliens" movies atmosphere perfectly -- quite unbelievable for a text-only game!

Quite unbelievable also that this game has been written in just seven days. Of course, this is felt in several small details (gameplay could be better balanced, and a save game feature is desperately needed), but the game does not make the impression of having been hastily hacked together. The gameplay may be a bit repetitive at length, but it is not shallow at all. The weapons system with different weapons and ammunition is great, and with the limited carrying capacity, this really requires you to fulfill your quest carefully. Hack'n'slay is definitely not an option here, which is very unusual for a roguelike, and was a nice surprise to me.

All in all, AliensRL is an amazin feat. It's possible that it will be developed further -- I'd be looking forward to that! Still, the 7DRL++ version reviewed here is already a great experience. If you like roguelikes, especially tactical ones, you should definitely check it out. Same for fans of the Aliens series -- despite the simple text graphics, the soundtrack and paranoid, terse gameplay will make you feel right at home. All others should at least have a look -- just to see that Good Games Don't Need Good Graphics ;-)

Windows · by General Error (4329) · 2007

Trivia

Business Model

Although it is listed here as being freeware, AliensRL (as all of Kornel Kisielewicz's games so far) are actually Donationware.

Development

Aliens: The Roguelike was developed for the 7DRL Contest 2007, which requires all participants to implement a roguelike in just seven days.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by General Error.

Linux, Macintosh added by Rola.

Additional contributors: Patrick Bregger.

Game added April 1, 2007. Last modified February 13, 2023.