Genesis Alpha One, an unusual mix of roguelike shooter and spaceship building management game, has a new trailer that gives us a better look at how the roguelike elements work. Check it out above.
It was announced back in 2017, but it looks like I've sleeping on Genesis Alpha One. Now I won’t be, because it looks like quite the ambitious thing—a smorgasbord of systems and layers and games within games, all of them things that would be appealing on their own. It might be trying to do too many things, or at least too many to do well, but my interest is piqued all the same.
As the captain of the titular ship, players have to traverse space to find new homes for humanity, or at least humanity’s DNA. Doing that involves building and managing the spaceship, creating clones and fighting aliens in FPS battles.
As long as there are crew left, the mission has a chance of success. When a captain dies, one of the crew is promoted and becomes the new player-controlled character. They might not be entirely human, either. As new lifeforms are discovered, clones can be created by splicing human and alien DNA, giving the crew new abilities and traits. And judging by the trailer, there are sometimes unforeseen physical side effects.
While you’ll be in direct control of the captain, it looks like you’ll still get help from the rest of the crew, who run around the spaceship and join their captain on dangerous away missions. On planets, there are resources to harvest and new aliens to meet (and also harvest), and from the looks of things, plenty of threats. Presumably there will be nice planets, too. I mean, you're not going to pick a horrible, deadly world as a new home for humanity.
We'll find out if there are any pleasant holiday destinations in space when Genesis Alpha One launches on January 29. It's another Epic Games Store exclusive, at least for now. On Steam, the release date is January 2020.
