Alien Apocalypse: the sense of invasion lands, the rest is fine and no more

Some games are judged on execution and others on what they manage to make you feel. Alien Apocalypse belongs to the second category, and that is its best quality.

You genuinely feel like you are living through an invasion. Not watching one in a cutscene, living in one: the world has tipped over, civilisation has collapsed, and what is left of humanity is trying to hold on one more day.

The premise, and it holds

Nobody knows exactly how it started, only that the world has changed beyond recognition. Humanity is no longer in control.

Studio Umbu Games sums its intent up in a line I find accurate: to simulate what it means to survive in a world taken over by aliens. There are no heroes here, only survivors trying to make it one more day.

That absence of a chosen one changes a great deal. You are not trying to repel the invasion, you are trying not to die of hunger, cold or fear, and the overwhelming enemy is part of the scenery rather than a boss to beat.

It reminded me of Falling Skies, the series I devoured in two weeks. Bad idea, as it happens: at that pace I got tired of it towards the end, which is quite something for a story about a resistance lasting years. The game hits exactly the same mood of a precarious camp and a threat far beyond you.

What you do

It is an open-world survival sandbox, with the expected actions of the genre, competently implemented.

You scavenge for food, craft tools, fortify shelters to withstand constant threats. Hunger, thirst and exhaustion are advertised as being as deadly as any creature, which is the right hierarchy for this kind of game.

The element that gives it colour is alien technology, which you recover and turn against its owners. That is the game's progression thread: start with makeshift tools and end with equipment you do not fully understand.

Where it plateaus

Let us be clear: beyond the atmosphere, the rest is fine without being remarkable.

The gameplay does the job. Gathering, crafting, building, defending: it is all there, it all works, nothing surprises. This is the upper middle of a very crowded genre, without the signature system that would make it a recommendation over its dozens of rivals.

The graphics will not mark anyone either. They serve the atmosphere, which is what matters, but they will not be among the arguments.

It is early access, with what that implies: final content remains to be seen, and the longevity question will not be settled today.

The game launches today, with no community reviews yet.

What sets the score

It rewards the one thing that really counts here and that lands: the sense of a world turned over, with no hero, where the threat is structural rather than scripted. Turning enemy technology around is a progression thread coherent with that premise.

It accounts for execution that stays within the genre without adding anything of its own, presentation that will not stick with anyone, and early access whose volume is still to be proven.

For anyone who loves invasion fiction and wants to settle into it rather than win it, this is an honest proposition.

Do you survive by fortifying or by never staying still? Tell us on the InsertCoins Discord.