Alien Earth

In Brief

Alien Earth is similar to yesterdays game Alien Earth 2, it's made with the Unity game engine, it has a similar story, i.e. two space ships travelling together on an expedition to a new planet, one crash lands, your ship lands to find the location of the crashed ship. Even the graphics are similar; however instead of being viewed from a third person perspective, you now view from a side scrolling 2D perspective; effectively making this a puzzle platformer.

The Game

The first part of the game introduces you to the various controls used, though you'll also find (most) of these via the options menu as well. The key mapping seen in configuration menu when you click on the input tab does not work. We are limited to the ASD keys for movement and space to jump or when in combination with the crouch key (i.e. S it allows you to drop through certain areas of spongy land to underground areas. Use K to hit and O to shoot.

Alien Earth is a pretty looking puzzle platformer where you have to find keys to unlock doors to new levels. There are moving platforms, acid baths and soft ground that allows you to drop through using a combination of keys as mentioned above. When encountering any enemies you can either use your melee weapon or shoot them. You have five lives. Don't worry if you lose some lives because there are chests to be found that contain extra lives. These are easily identifiable because they look like treasure chests, but also have +'s steaming/streaming from them (see images below. If you're lives are full (i.e. maximum of five), the chests will be left untouched and can be returned to if necessary while you are still on the same level. Use your melee weapon to break down certain walls to be able to progress further. Find all the keys required to open each door to the next level. You can see a video of game play [SPOILERS] HERE?

Don't forget to check the giveaway game discussion forums HERE; especially Delenn's threads for non Steam and steam freebies. Apart from the latest Epic Game freebies (i.e. the 2016 release of Hitman {brilliant game} and the Shadowrun collection that includes three games - Shadowrun Returns (Base Game), Shadowrun Dragonfall - Director Cut (Base Game) and Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition (Base Game)). Also available via Epic is the third episode 3 out of 10, EP 3: "Pivot Like A Champion". (Check to see if Ep 1 & 2 are still available free)

There's also a free standing version of Whispering Willows directly from the developers site (Interact with the spirits of the dead, solve the puzzles of the mysterious mansion and help Elena find her missing father in the horror/adventure puzzle game: Whispering Willows.) and Indie Gala are offering an excellent post apocalyptic car racing /shooting game called Death Track: Resurrection which was one of the first games I purchased on Steam back in 2009. The Indie Gala version is free standing. For those interested in the Tom Clancy franchise, you can play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege from now until September 4th 9:00 PM UTC+1. You can find details of the free week HERE, it does require 82.3GB of free disk space and you need to be logged into your uPlay account to be able to install it.