September 25, 2023 - Day 268 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 288

Game: Planet Alpha

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 15, 2018
Installation Date: Oct 14, 2019
Unplayed: 1442d (3y11m11d)
Playtime: 22m

Planet Alpha is a 2.5D sci-fi platform puzzle game with stealth gameplay mechanics.

You are a tall, slender astronaut in a fishbowl helmet, who awakens on an alien planet, and sets off on a left-to-right journey of survival.

The game initially opens at the resolution of your main monitor... on your leftmost monitor.

Since my main monitor is an ultrawide, and my leftmost monitor is a FHD monitor that's up and to the left, this is... irritating. Only made worse by the fact that the game doesn't allow you to specify which monitor to start on.

Oh well. WIN+Shift+Right Arrow, and it's on the main monitor. And away we go and... crash.

For the third time this month, I spend more time troubleshooting a game than playing it. This turns out to be the same issue as Rock of Ages 2. Using a version of Unreal 4 that has a buggy version of OpenSSL that triggers a crash on >10th Gen Intel CPUs. Add a start-up command, and finally we're off.

First off, this is a gorgeous looking game. The alien environment is truly alien, and lighting is used to great effect.

It is completely wordless. There is no explanation as to why you're there, or what your goal is. No obvious backstory.

At first there's a lot of climbing and jumping, and getting timing right.

Then you're introduced to the fact that you apparently have the ability to control day and night, and move the environment backwards and forwards through the day-night cycle at will...ish. When the game lets you, for specific puzzles.

Dev forbid you should use the ability for the stealth puzzles.

Ah, stealth mechanics. The gameplay mechanic I love to hate.

There are particular contexts in which I'm OK with it. This is not one of those contexts.

A few minutes after encountering the day-night magical power, you find yourself in a room that makes the whole game even more confusing. I'm not sure what it was trying to communicate, but the angry robots who smashed through the walls and started hunting you certainly seemed unhappy about it.

How do you avoid them? Stealth mechanic. Does it work? Sometimes. The game's 2.5D environment means I'm never quite sure whether they can see me or not, until they shoot me and I die. Several times.

This is one of those games where I *don't* like the stealth mechanic. There are also no save points, just "chapters", but no clear indication as to where chapters start and finish.

In the end, while the game is SO very pretty, there's just nothing to motivate me to keep pushing right on the controller.

Planet Alpha is pretty:

2: Meh

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