With the rise of popularity in the indie gaming scene and the unfortunate closure of larger scale AAA developers, the gaming community is being treated with a renaissance of the home brew games that started it all back in the early days of the hobby. Just a few years ago, if you said “indie game” I would’ve probably cringed at the thought of spending my hard earned money on something that would never be up to par with the latest Halo or Mortal Kombat. Now, indie developers are seeing the same success that the heavyweights such as EA or Microsoft would’ve earned. It’s usually due to a group of like-minded individuals who break the mold and give the world something new and refreshing. When I saw the list team members associated with Radiation Blue, I got a warm and tingly feeling inside, because their resume includes a number of my all-time favorite titles, including Hitman Blood Money (one of the best in the series) and Spec Ops: The Line (if you haven’t played this, get out there and do it as soon as you finish reading this). With talent of this pedigree, I assumed their debut Genesis Alpha One would be amazing. Does it live up to my high expectations? Kind of.

The game is a unique mixture of a few different genres which don’t mesh as well as they may on paper. The world is run by corporations that task small crews to go out into deep space to collect resources. The main focus of this experience is resource gathering, so if you’re into survival and crafting, this may be more enjoyable to you than I found it. If you follow us, you probably know that hoarding stuff to craft is by far one of my least favorite things to do, but this makes it a little more manageable as you can assign your AI crew mates to assist you in these menial tasks. The resources will be used to upgrade and build your vessel, which is just another layer of the game.

You’ll start out on your ship with a simple area, having the ability to add things such as tractor beams to pull in space treasure (read: junk) from outside, storage areas, and a wealth of other options, some of which I have yet to attain. Once you collect the proper materials needed, you can craft and arrange your ship’s layout however you’d like, providing the items would realistically fit together. Sadly, the placement is the only area able to be customized, with no additional options (even color swaps) to be found. Placing the pieces together manually is a tad bit tedious, as lining up the connections between areas can be a bit difficult due to design of this mechanic. Luckily, you can automatically connect it to the closest joint with the press of a button. Because I didn’t know any better, I just threw things together as quickly as possible on my initial run, not realizing that I would need to visit specific locations regularly to manage the crafting and exploration systems (think FTL).

My favorite chunk of the overall Genesis Alpha One puzzle is by far the boots on the ground exploration of the solar system, which plays out like a Left 4 Dead style battle. As your ship grows, you’ll eventually be able to start traveling along the planets in the area, searching for blue prints, scrap, and resources. On most of these planets there will be some hostile creatures, as well as unique plant and rock formations. These are procedurally generated, so each game will be a bit different, but after playing for 20 hours or so I can confidently say that the planetary assets are repeated pretty regularly, and the creatures even more so. Much like how foraging in real life would be, not every trip yields anything of worth, adding a nice risk/reward element. Do you risk losing one of your precious crew members to potentially find nothing because scans show there are hostiles, or do you move on and look for something safer?

In the event you have to fight off the alien creatures, you have a few different offensive options in your arsenal and can carry two at any time. Out of the ones I have discovered thus far, the shotgun and pistols seem to pack the greatest punch, with the automatic weaponry lacking in accuracy and stopping power. Regardless of the weapon, there is no iron sight aiming option; call me crazy, but this should be in every FPS game this day and age. The gunplay feels a bit off by default, so I would strongly recommend adjusting the sensitivity if you decide to pick this up.

In addition to your carried weapons, the Mass Effect’s Nomad/Aliens looking tank has an auto turret that helps you in the event you need to make a fast exit. Unfortunately, the way you exit the area doesn’t make for the speediest of escapes. You’ll have to interact with another archaic style computer, hover over a button, and then manually exit or suffer the wrath of something nasty biting at your heels. This isn’t a huge issue once you know it’s a requirement. My biggest disappointment with this was the fact that I could not drive the shuttle like one of the previously mentioned tanks.

Death is handled uniqely in Genesis Alpha One – you play as a crew of clones. You’ll begin with a set number of clones depending on your starting corporation, and eventually will be able to add a cloning lab to the ship, allowing you to grow new lives by killing enemies and stealing their life source. These clones can be customized to a point, adding names and assigning roles on the ship. I’m not sure if I am doing it wrong, but I always seem to send the captain out on exploring duty, which seems like a dumb idea. I mean, did they ever send Captain Kirk out alone on Star Trek? No, they sent a stupid red shirt to get ripped apart by vicious toupees. Upon death, the game will automatically assign one of the other crew members as the new captain (funny way to get promoted I guess). Run out of clones and your game will be over, as this implements permadeath.

As you progress on each run, you’ll eventually level up and earn the ability to upgrade your starting loadout, as well as earn bigger and better corporations. Having put in around 20 hours and completing 15 or so runs, I only have a handful of options, but in terms of gameplay I haven’t seen much of a difference aside from the number of lives they begin with and minor buffs or weaknesses.

Overall, the game feels a bit incomplete, as the entire experience reminds me heavily of the optional resource gathering that was prominent in Mass Effect 2. This is mainly due to the lack of player direction. Sure, there is a handy Cortana-like AI that will give you info on the ship and work as a form of tutorial in the event you don’t know what to do in a specific area of the ship, but there is no proper narrative to be found.

Having visited upwards of 50 locations, I can say that the locales you explore look amazing. Whether you’re looking around on the ship or traversing an unknown planet, every background asset looks like what I would imagine alien flora and fauna to resemble, taking obvious inspirations from classics such as Alien. Realistic rain and fog effects are the norm, although annoying as they interfere with your flashlight, which is typically your one and only source of light on the foreign planets. The computer terminals even go as far to resemble the dated green and black formatting, often causing me to forget I was playing an indie title instead of Alien Isolation.

I wish the same could be said for the enemy types. About 90% of the xenomorphic (not that one) creatures you’ll need to defend yourself from will resemble giant cockroaches, spiders, or the venom bats from Pitch Black, which will make a bee line straight for your ankles. There are a few different skins for these enemy types, but they all behave in the exact same way, never providing a worthy challenge. After a few test runs for good measure, I rarely died from battling the creatures encountered, unless it was due to my own negligence in keeping up on my health and ammo from previous runs, as you have to manually heal. Many times, the hardest thing about battles is actually seeing the enemies, as they’ll hide in the lush flowing grass found on some of the planets, almost forcing you to retreat or suffer the wrath of Charlotte’s web. Occasionally, and I do mean occasionally, you will find humanoid looking mudmen (think Clayface from the Batman lore) that will attack you, in some cases with the bugs providing back up. The only other antagonist I have had the displeasure of running into was a complete surprise to me. There I was, wandering around my ship taking in the sights. I rounded a corner and saw some new NPCs hanging out, decked out like Darth Vader. I walked up to see what I could do with them, thinking that maybe they were reinforcements or had some better guns to offer me, and the bastards shot me. Before I could even reload into the other clones, my entire crew was massacred. There were no survivors. This situation has happened to me twice, without any hint, warning, or explanation.

Genesis Alpha One is a huge game that feels kind of empty after a few hours, coming across as an early access build or a piece of a larger universe. While I am certain that there are plenty of secrets tucked away within the sprawling galaxies held within, the repetitive enemies and environments may wear on you before you get to see them. At a budget price point, the amount of content found within is a worthwhile investment if you’re a fan of any of the eclectic influences.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Infinite Replayability
• Beautifully Rendered Environments
• Blends Roguelike, Resource Management, and FPS Elements with Moderate Success

Cons

• Lack of a Proper Story
• Uninspired Enemies

Genesis Alpha One was developed Radiation Blue and published by Team17. It was released on PC, PS4, and X1 January 29th, 2019 for $29.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Genesis Alpha One, check out the publisher’s site.

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.