Aliens Are Rude!

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow our curator page: [b]IndieGems[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote] [i]Aliens Are Rude![/i] is an interesting retro-style, half strategic, half shoot-em-up roguelite with separate platforming components that is recently released in Early Access. That sounded like a mouthful, but it's more or less true. The shmup component is mostly dodging based with selection of which abilities that you use, because the aiming is automatic. So it's more of which abilities you can deploy appropriately looking at what your enemies are doing, what your cool-downs are, while dodging everything in sight on screen. There are upgrades available as you play that serve as permanent upgrades, and you accumulate the in-game currency between runs so that you can purchase these upgrades. The upgrades are permanent it would appear. Aside from these upgrades, you can also learn abilities from enemies, who you scan at the beginning of each battle encounter. As you scan them, some times an ability will pop up that you can learn, which is done automatically. Then you can use their abilities back at them to destroy their sorry little behinds. This is unique to each run, the abilities that you can use differ based on which enemies you encounter and who you decide to scan. As such, these are not permanent upgrades. You can toggle between two different screen-size options, one around 960x540, the other one around 1440x812. (I tried to measure these dimensions, please don't bite me for being slightly off.) There is not seemingly a full-screen function for a 1080P screen. The retro-style of the game is evident. There is a story, it is really not necessary, but it acts as a little glue for those who like to see even a little bit. I have only seen a little tiny bit in the beginning, and I have not progressed any further to see additional scenes, if they exist. This is a very interesting game, and with some randomization of enemy types and abilities, you have to find out what the best decisions to make are. And as such, the strategy component. Fortunately you just worry about dodging and your aim is automatically locked on. You can choose which enemy you are targeting. The platforming component is purely a time-limited energy acquisition. Once I understood this, I stopped trying to kill enemies in my path, instead, I started to run as far to the right as possible and gathering as many energy crystals in the process. This is all you need to worry about, dying is not an issue in this mode, or so far I seem to not have resulted in any game fail states from dying in this mode. You have 30 seconds to gather the crystals, when the time is up, your ship picks you back up into the regular game mode again. Don't overlook this simple platforming component though, because these energy crystals result in Max HP increases. What I don't understand is, what is killing me here at the end of my video? All 3 of my lives seemed to have been lost to a void, I am watching and rewatching my video and I cannot figure out what's going on. https://youtu.be/8POcsRYxGqg Please keep in mind that this game is priced at 0.99 USD and is still in Early Access. And I think it's got potential to go places. [h1]Controls[/h1] Gamepad works well, the D-pad only works to adjust screen size at the title screen. The movement is controlled with the left joystick. I am uncertain about using any other controls, I tried using the keyboard, but couldn't figure out what keys to use. The on-screen display prompts were always controller, even if I tried to press some keys on the keyboard. I do prefer the D-pad for movement, so it would be nice to have this available as well. [h1]Graphics and Music[/h1] Retro style graphics and pretty befitting music. Nothing outstanding, but looks pretty good in the regular game mode. The platforming component could use a bit more TLC, I think the hitboxes are perhaps a bit funny, and the physics could use a bit more adjustments. The elephant sitting in the room is the lack of a full-screen mode. [h1]Audience[/h1] This is an interesting category that I usually don't entertain too much. The retro-style graphics and current inability to go into full-screen might put off a lot of younger gamers. Casual gamers might not like the dodging part of the half shoot-em-up regular gameplay. Those who enjoy platformers might be put off by the simplicity of the small platforming sections. People who enjoy strategy and turn-based combat might think the action part is too stressful while thinking that the strategy part is too simple. I am having a good time with this game, but because I feel like being adventurous, and I derive joy out of seeing the tiniest improvement from trial to trial, without a need to make huge leaps and bounds in progression. I think it's a really interesting mashup that takes a creative mind and a daring soul to put together and push out to the public. [h1]Pricing[/h1] There is a nominal fee of 0.99 USD for such a complex and interesting game. I think this is a really cool project and could use additional attention and input from indie game enthusiasts into further development. As for the price for when it comes out of EA? The developer writes: "This is undecided, but the price in early access will remain the same." [h1]Potential For Improvement[/h1] 1. Giving a full-screen (preserving vertical/horizontal proportions of course) would be great. 2. I didn't unplug my controller, so I don't know about keyboard/mouse inputs. If these are supported, on-screen prompts that change based on the received input would be nice. If they are not supported, they should be. 2.a. I would like to see D-pad input for moment. 3. I cannot figure out why I am dying at the end of my video. Subsequent attempts (after I stopped recording) were better. I was able to gather more energy crystals earlier, and I didn't run into the same issue consistently, but every once in a while, death creeped up suddenly without me knowing why. 4. My note above about the potential audience makes me a bit worried that most people will just pass this by without giving it a fair shake, especially if there is one part they don't like, out the whole. While this is a risk, there is also potential for reward. I think if there are introduced different play-style options to be able to toggle some parts on-off or auto/AI simulated for parts that people don't want to touch, that might be good too. I have no idea how feasible this is, just a thought. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [i]Aliens Are Rude![/i] is a seriously unique game that is definitely worth your time, especially if you enjoy all genres of games and want to help out an indie developer cut and polish a rough gem into something that could be so much more. The cheap price currently in Early Access and the creative and daring mind to put the elements together for this game are enough reasons for me to recommend this game. I think if you are interested in anything I mentioned above, you should give it a go. [quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]

A rather neat little game, though a little rough around the edges in regards to some of the reaction based attacks that come against you. The goal of the game is to destroy aliens as they come at you in waves. Before each wave you can take a moment to scan enemies and see how much hit points they have and what abilities they can throw at you. Sometimes you can learn those abilities to make use of them against the aliens. Engaging the enemy they charge up their abilities, helping to give some semblance of what the player needs to do to dodge the oncoming fire. Outside of the enemies, their are also environmental hazards and outside influences that get thrown in to try and destroy you. Outside of battling the enemies in space are planetary expeditions that see you jumping around on platforms trying to advance forward to get some upgrades for your ship. Compared to fighting ships in space, the time on the planets felt a little too simplistic. Overall I see this as a decent enough game to check out, especially for its price.

Pas facile,mais géniale!entre le shoot em up,rpg,plateforme,et rétro.bien fun !! Oui je recommande.

Aliens are Rude! is a sci-fi shooter/platformer. It consists of three sections; the upgrade menu before each start of the game, the space shooter section, and the platforming section. To make this review as neat as possible, I will be breaking it down into three parts, plus an overall summary and opinion of the game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Space Shooter Section: Pros: -Very good music -Hit detection is seamless. I never had a moment where i thought to myself,"That shouldn't have hit me". -Ships are well designed and unique -Variety of attacks keep gameplay fresh -Lock on system works well -Good difficulty curve -Thinking tactically and prioritizing killing one enemy ship over another adds to the gameplay experience Cons: -For someone just starting the game, the UI before each wave may seem a little overwhelming. However, this is not as prevalent once you understand what all of the boxes in the UI mean. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Platformer Section: Pros: -Good music -Gorgeous levels -Good difficulty curve -Challenging -Rewards fast and smart play -Unique enemy design, each with different movement patterns and attacks Cons: -New players may find this section too difficult ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Upgrade Section: Pros: -A wide variety of upgrades that will enhance your ship and player -Upgrades keep the game fresh -Hundreds of combinations of upgrades to experiment with -Good looking UI, not cluttered or confusing Cons: -While using a researcher upgrade, the player selects an ability from an enemy ship to steal by pressing 'f'. Sometimes, just hovering over an enemy would pick the enemy's ability, and, if you did not want it or find it useful, you're stuck with it for the rest of the run. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overall Summary and Final Opinion: For the price of 1.99, Aliens Are Rude! is definitely worth your money. It was an action packed, entertaining game with beautiful visuals. 9/10

The music in this game is awesome and puts you inside the game's atmosphere. Each time you play, enemies change as well as their powers and abilities. In addition, each game is very fast, especially at the beginning, but every step of the way until the destruction of the mother ship begins to get more difficult. The platform stages are very cool to play, and as in the combat part of ships, it is very fast, intuitive and fun to play (I hate the snow stage, by the way haha). The only complain I have is that I can't change the size of the screen and the music's volume sometimes is too high, I think that a volume control is needed. I see a lot of potential in this game and a lot of quality in all the parts involved inside. Although I got the key to this game, I could easily pay up to double the price of it, because it's a lot of fun. Keep it up the good work, David!

Heres the name of the game. Using WASD keys fly around dodging timed enemy attacks. By killing certain enemiy ships or using the skill steal skill you can get enemy skills such as stun, poison, shield. When you win a stage you go on to a little platforming mini game where you can collect 4-8 extra upgrade points Using better skills you defeat harder enemies till you kill the boss and unlock hard mode. During the runs you collect upgrade/skill points and use them to purchase the skils on the start up page. These skills do basically what they say they do. All in all very bare bones game that can turn into horrible bullet hell when there is 12 bombs on screen and you are getting barrages of enemy fire at you. Fun interesting. Keys are a little confusing at first due to the lack of tooltips but i managed to figure everything out after 30 minutes. The artstyle fluctuates between thousands of pixels to create bootiful space art to 10x10 monsters that look basic generic yet cant insta kill you. My favorite parts are the minigames because of the themed platforming areas with lava and ice stage hazards. Do not like how it only lasts a few seconds and you basically speed run for as many bonus points as you can Artstyle or sprites need to be tweaked to match eachother better. tooltips with better explanations necessary This game can probably be beaten in an hour all in all real solid 7/10 not too bad for 1-2$ bigger skill tree more music more bosses and levels. basically more content in general will help

This is a cute little shooter game!

Understand that when I give this the Thumb's Up it's because I bought it for $0.59 which is the lowest possible price for a Steam game in my region. I got about 20 minutes of fun out of it, and that was worth the purchase price. Even though the UI is clunky AF and the game could use about 500 buckets of polish, there was enough good to make me not refund. This is a combination of space shoot-em-up and a sort of infinite platform runner. The first phase of the game is space combat, then the second phase after that is the platformer. The space combat is actually pretty innovative and has interesting mechanics! The platforming is horrible and should be entirely removed from the game. In the space combat portion, you see a wave of enemies, each with different abilities and skills. You can also see that some of them are "absorb-able" which allows you to use their own attacks against them. So there's a bit of problem solving at first, where you plan out what ships to kill and in what order. For example, you might see that one of the ships will shield all of it's allies for 4 seconds... so you try to take that one out first. Or you might see that one of the enemies has a "stun" attack, so you'll go after that right away so you can then use the stun power on a different foe, then while it's stunned you can take out it's allies. This concept is really neat and I quite enjoyed it. Real-time re-prioritizing of kills and ability-stealing was really fun. I wish the developer would remove the platforming entirely. It's a little "bonus" stage between each space combat mission where you can pick up orbs that increase your ship's health. But it is totally unfun and irritating to play. While there's no penalty for not doing well in this 30 second mini-game, it's also completely annoying to play. I like the idea of a little mini-game between combat stages, but this one sucks. I beat "normal" mode in about 20 minutes which gave me the ending, and unlocked "hard" mode. But I don't want to keep playing because that platforming minigame is just annoying AF and it drives me nuts. I'm not kidding. I like the space combat part a lot, but the mini game is sooooooooo bad and annoying. The space combat part is really cool, and if the developer fleshes out that concept into a larger game I would buy it in a heartbeat. I like the combination of shoot-em-up, dodging, strategy and stealing the abilities of foes. I like figuring out in real time how to turn their abilities against them, and steal them in the most optimal order. Again, I find this to be a new and refreshing mechanic and the dev should put more time into it, expand the game or maybe make a new and longer game with this mechanic refined a bit more.

The developer of this game gave me a key to test it from a post in a subreddit, and from the installation I ended up hooking myself. The music in this game is awesome and puts you inside the game's atmosphere. Each time you play, enemies change as well as their powers and abilities. In addition, each game is very fast, especially at the beginning, but every step of the way until the destruction of the mother ship begins to get more difficult. The platform stages are very cool to play, and as in the combat part of ships, it is very fast, intuitive and fun to play (I hate the snow stage, by the way haha). The only complain I have is that I can't change the size of the screen and the music's volume sometimes is too high, I think that a volume control is needed. I see a lot of potential in this game and a lot of quality in all the parts involved inside. Although I got the key to this game, I could easily pay up to double the price of it, because it's a lot of fun. Keep it up the good work, David!

[h1]First Impressions[/h1] - I will update my review when I will progress more [i]sorry for my bad english[/i] [u]The game is made out of 2 parts:[/u] [b]Ship Combat[/b] The movment of the ship is solid, the combat is fun and satisfying and the scan mode is a really nice addition witch let you develop a strategy before the combat starts, but there are some problems: - Stun abillity is overpowered (12 seconds cooldown for 6 seconds of stun, stuned ship can't move/shoot, and the cooldown dosn't progress), both when you have the abillty and when they do it on you, especially ships that have 1/2 cooldown perk, and I lost a couple of games by just getting "stun-locked", I was stuned over and over and I couldn't do anything. I would suggest either incressing the cooldown or making it shorter (maybe like a 3:1 cooldown:abillity ratio insted of 2:1) - The combat is a bit repetative - The UI on the side takes too much screen space, making the play area small - The difficulty jumps too much, one round it's super easy and the next it's really hard [b]2D Platformer[/b] In this section you jump from platform to platfrom and collecting RP (that is used on the shop, I will touch on that later), while avoiding enemys and trying not to fall to your doom. the level design is good and the difficullty is balanced, but my main complain is the movment. Don't get my worng it's not bad but heres how it can be made better: - Making jumps diffrent height depending on how long you hold the jump button - Movment shouldn't get to full speed the frame you hold the button, in my opinion there should be a bit of acceleration, witch will make the controls feel less slippery [b]General[/b] There should be a options menu, currently the only option you have is changing screen size, and even that dosn't support resolutions that aren't 16:9, also you can't change the controls or the volume. There is a shop that lets you buy upgrades with the RP you collected in the platformer section, I don't have too much to say about it (because I have only bought one upgrade so far), but with my current progress it seems like it would take about ~8 hours to complete. Overall for 2$ (at the time of writing this review there is a 50% sell so it 1$) it's a nice indee game and is definitely recommended.