Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition

Great retro-future setting and manages to keep up engagement, eventhough the loop is a little grindy.

Fun little game. Not usually a big fan of those types of games you have to beat in order to unlock things for the next playthrough, but this one has an interesting ship builder and exploration aspect that I like. Could use a bit more substance though

Played it 11 hours. Lots to like. Weakest part is the landing-on-planet grind.

This game is somehow very addictive, and it never really pretends to be realistic, except in the wording and thoughts of the main protagonist, which somehow is the vocalized memory of your predecessor through Video Files. Most of the cutscenes that I remember was a guy typing the things he says in a console, which is hilarlously stupid. You play most of the game on your own ship, so take good care that you like your designs, or revamp it with a natural 100% ressource refund. Basicallly you're the Commander, the Architect, and the most reliable Infestation-Cleaner on your ship. The planets are minimalistic farming areas where you can farm enemy DNA and weaponry. If you don't need those, you can send your crew to the planet (it's way faster - WAY faster). The planets' ores are procedural, so it's ridiculously easy to read the area (except when the bushes grow so tall and tight that you can't even see your closest crewmates) and it's quite funny to hop around and just see something different than your ship. Also: Everything is an Ore! Even the Plants! After the Laster Pistol, you'll favor the Energy Rifle as a Main weapon (because it actually kills the ship infestation with 1-3 shots - unlike most other weapons that don't kill you, too). On enemy ships you can play anything else though. Except the extremely disappointingly useless and disgusting-to-play Flamethrower. The game is ridiculously stupid fun and the only thing I still struggle with, is the Eye-strain of the incredibly bad contrast in this game. You can't do anything, it'll hurt after a while even with external programs to reduce brightness. Even after 100h in the game I'm regularily still trying with Gamma and Ship Coloring to find a cure that works even without actual sunlight coming through the reallife window during sunny daytime.

in the line of Dark Star and also the Alien franchise, it will feel very familiar to anyone who played survival open world games like Valheim, Death Stranding, The Forest (franchise games) or Subnautica. It has an eerie beauty of the lived-in horror and loneliness of multitudes of clones, as we start our days as one and end them so, like some sort of a "message in the bottle" ship a fool's hope or a fool's errand. Some mechanics may be infuriating , but acceptable. It remains to be seen as well if the research tree will show itself to be interesting enough in mid and later game.