Some games benefit greatly from switching mechanics on the fly. Farming simulator Stardew Valley’s mines are designed to function like roguelike dungeons, while action RPG Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom contains a fully-fledged town and kingdom-building section. In Moonlighter, the protagonist manages a shop by day and crawls dungeons as an adventurer by night. In each of these instances, these gameplay mechanic mashups don’t merely result in empty minigames that act like “filler” but instead lead to much more robust and complete experiences.
Genesis Alpha One takes this principle to a whole new level. The game is at once a roguelike, a base-builder, an FPS, and a survival game, all set in a procedurally generated universe. Instead of overwhelming the player with demands, however, the game prefers to take it easy; players are free to focus on the activities they find most enjoyable and play how they want to play.
In Genesis Alpha One, the player assumes the role of an interstellar pioneer who has been tasked with finding a new home for humanity’s DNA after Earth has been ravaged by war, over-pollution, and global capitalism. The player must build and design their own spaceship, explore alien planets for resources to loot, fend off alien infestation aboard their vessel, and research and breed clones to aid them as crew members throughout their journey.
Sascha Jungnickel, creative director at Genesis Alpha One developer Radiation Blue, explained that they made a conscious decision to blend different genres together. “Our main intention was to create a game that is unique, especially gameplay-wise, to give players a new experience,” he explained. While the studio houses employees who have worked on a number of action-adventure games (Hitman, Rime, Velvet Assassin, etc.), they decided that wanted to change things up for Genesis Alpha One.
What makes the game special is that it adopts a hands-off approach to tasking players with completing these objectives. Though it might seem like the player is juggling a lot of responsibilities, they actually have a lot of flexibility in terms of prioritizing the activities they find most rewarding. “We’ve created a dedicated tutorial which we’ve worked hard to refine based on user feedback from usability testers,” Jungnickel explained. “Once players are familiar with the mechanics of the game, they really can play it their own way. Some may prefer to create beautiful, fully customized ships whilst others may prefer to get straight into exploring the galaxy and taking on alien lifeforms.”
Thus, the game promises very high replayability, given that playthroughs will vary greatly depending on the way players structure their priorities. “These choices make each game round unique, depending on each player’s minute-to-minute desire,” Jungnickel said. “Combined with the random universe, Genesis Alpha One keeps the experience fresh, surprising, and demanding for a long time.”
The ship-building element of the game alone contains a ton of variety, promising dozens of special modules for use in your own personal space vessel. These modules include a greenhouse for engineering a suitable biosphere for your ship’s crew; a hangar module for deploying dropships onto alien planets; bar and lounge modules for the crew to socialize and auto-heal; and a refinery for processing resources into usable materials for making weapons, more ship modules, and so on.
Planets are also randomly generated, giving each new world a unique look and feel. Players should also expect surprise alien encounters during their travels, with a number of hostile species to combat.
Genesis Alpha One will be released for PC on January 29, 2019.