It’s very rare these days to see a developer that listens to any of their fan base. You can just browse through the forums of any major game like Apex and Overwatch and it’s akin to wading through a toxic sewer of negativity. Imagine my surprise when both the developer and graphics person for Alien Life Simulator dropped by my stream while I was playing this game in order to observe, take notes, and implement immediate changes and I do mean immediate.
The very next day, while the developer was on vacation, they worked hard to push out changes to address my criticisms. This is insanity. That takes true dedication and humility to do so. We’ll move on from my gushing praise of the developer and move on to discussing the game.
So how does the game compare to itself two years ago when I first encountered Alien Life Simulator? It’s definitely changed in many ways and it looks and feels much better. To keep things brief, the game is by no means perfect and still requires work. The developer is constantly fixing bugs and adding new features.
There used to be a main hub with villagers, a rudimentary crafting system, and a hunger meter. The updated game is much more streamlined. You start off in a small ship and teleport straightway to other planets and get right into the action. Ammo is infinite and doesn’t need to be crafted and the hunger meter is gone. This does feel better as the action hits you immediately but I can’t help but look fondly upon the old mechanics. It was broken but the base idea did have some charm.
The emotion system has been further developed into a more complex system where each emotion powers the adjacent one. The emotions are essentially ammunition for your weapons and abilities. Each emotion has a different set of buffs as well. For example, apathy has a lot of poison related buffs while sadness has a lot of bleed effects.
The game play loop has evolved into exploring each level, obtaining new weapons, powering up your emotion based abilities, defeating enemies, and moving on to the boss. The mechanics were a bit obtuse at first but having the developers explain everything made it clear.
The game definitely feels more enjoyable to play. It’s still lacking on many fronts but the one major selling point of this game is having a developer that cares and willing to actively engage with the people playing it. This is actually one of the few times where I’ve seen this in action firsthand. Wishing you the best of luck JustinSix!
Here are the links to the developer and game if anyone is interested:
►Dev Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/justinsix
►Dev YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTF55vLsfcuI2epJShoZa0Q
►Steam Store Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478310/Alien_Life_Simulator/
Ducky Obrien 