Playtime: 31 minutes (tutorial completed)

Intro

GAO is a mix of FPS and ship management. You have a ship where you have to manage modules, crew, resources and threats - somewhat like FTL. You can also land on planets to gather resources while being attacked by aliens à la Deep Rock Galactic.

Review

The first indication that this isn't a good game is the menu. It has wildly moving animations and loud music. The controls are also weirdly bad. I still have no idea how to close some of the menus. The game is also pretty vague when it comes to some elements. You can "reassign the crew on the right" or something like that, but i have no idea what they mean or how to do this.

The worst thing is that the gameplay just isn't very good. I absolutely love building bases like in Fallout 4, Hinterland and Riftbreaker. But that aspect is incredibly basic here (no pun intended). You can just build pre-designed halls and rooms. The combat is equally basic with a vague promise of becoming more interesting later on. Presumably after a lot of grinding.

Conclusion

I love the concept of this game, but the execution is bland and user-unfriendly. With pre-designed corporations and rooms there's basically no personal input. Everything seemingly interesting (like artifacts) has to be unlocked through luck and grinding. It's such a weird design choice. The whole thing feels half-baked, like some mod that got abandoned after a few months. Except if it had been a mod would probably have been better.

A while back I believe I mentioned I felt No Man's Sky was a newer genre of game, but unable to really place it. Whatever this genre is or entails we are seeing more come out like it and rub shoulders with those close by. Alpha Genesis One is in the same camp and borrows a lot of the same elements, but it also has a very different approach and introduces other elements.

Still, it's a massive single player world that borrows off the best design elements of some 20-or--so games I could rattle off.

That's maybe the best description of the genre because it seems they all have in common.

That's not to say it's balanced or gets things right. a lot of the size of this game is a bit gimmicky and random, however some things are actually static and really well thought out (cough space derelicts), and as far as design goes there's a lot of leeway and things to be improved, but some things are really cool. all in all it's very cool and entertaining and satisfying, and a great time sink.

Alpha Genesis One's strongest trait is probably the setting and story it does this all with. unlike NMS which is completely open and abstract... The fact it's a transhumanist pushing game about spreading to other parts of the universe to establish life, lets you 'role play' as a family of clones on a ship that time to time are killed in the heroic effort 'for the greater good' of finally finding a world to colonize is all quite gripping to me. This is the Genesis Protocol. Basically you pick a weyland-yutani megacorp (different starting stats and really cool 'theme videos and music' on the selection screen for each.) you then build the XCOM like facilities of your ship with what resources you initially have, and you set off for the stars.

From there the game divides into many different styles and elements yet is never really that daunting or has much of a learning curve beyond trying things out and seeing what happens. It has very rogue-looking like interfaces with the terminal font and slow classic trek-like movement on the galaxy map. You send personnel to facilities and manage research and production, while building and battling alien invaders in FPS (or going down planetside, to harvest minerals)

These FPS elements are very generic, (in the beginning I thought I was playing reskinned version of Slime Rancher)you have turrets and lots of researchable weapons. However research is kinda dumbed-down and isn't the research heavy game you might at first imagine a game like this to be.

The aliens themselves are very varied. You have more simple lower order alien life (like toothy-annelids for example) to hardy muscular soldiers with guns, to energy based spirits. Oh there's also microbial infections, spores/illnesses and a lot of overlap between these things and former... all of which are the thorn in your side as clone-captain of the ship. As you go deeper into the galaxy alien life also starts to evolve and gets more difficult. (I'm getting close to the center so will see)

(Without giving away spoilers) This biodiversity is where the game is really cool. Because the core of the game after you build your ship is protecting it from such a wide variety of things in different forms getting in, which is really hard. There's ways in which stuff gets in (That you'll figure out as you play the game) so places you have to watch and patrol. You gotta check corners and go under the crawlspaces of the underdeck of those levels/floors you make those facilities before aliens can nest and kill crew or harm facilities to the point of destroying your ship. You can take different approaches to this and some secret ways which are rather unconventional

Ship compromise is also interesting. You have to have a continuous circuit from one adjacent facility to the next. You can experience power disruption, oxygen cut off, fire and a lot of problems if you don't respond quickly to situations that worsen. This is where the game kinda sucks because there isn't much you can do if things go sideways. I did have a problem in my current run (still going) where i built some corridors or something and blockaded some facility which was doomed from the rest of my ship.

Ultimately this is a cool game that reminded me a whole hell of alot like Alpha Centauri in it's transhumanist theme, combined with Ridley Scott's movies (literally all of them) combined with bits of No Man's Sky and X-COM, but it's more than anything like a new version of something like elite wing commander or some old school space exploring game where you battle space pirates. While it's not the best game design it makes up for it in these themes and well as imagination and some well executed ideas and design here and there.

What the game really needs most? a proper UFO-paedia with the same kind of 'video-pages' you get for certain intelligence bulletins and the introductory corporation select screen. It's hands down the slickest looking thing in this game and you just can't go wrong having video lore pages to add to context when you Build Better Worlds.

(Also some better personnel management overview screen with a proper research tree really would make the game feel more proper, but this is serviceable enough.)

I do love games like this. And I really do enjoy knowing that over time there's only going to be more and they'll get bigger and better and combine more things together.

Until then, this rogue trader has lots of space pirates to board and purge in my spread of Holy Terra's glory.