Alien Marauder is a RTS Colony Simulator set in a hostile alien planet where your main goal across the game modes is to build up your defence and survive hordes of Vaxan waves that is akin to the Arachnids in Starship Troopers.
Modes
Alien Marauder is currently in Early Access and has 2 game modes Survival and Last Stand. New players hoping to learn would be better off trying Survival Mode even though Last Stand has a more simplified structure to it. As the tutorial in Survival is more in depth and well explained whereas Last Stand left me a tad lost at times. Survival has 5 missions, consisting of 1 tutorial.
Missions are unlocked after certain requirements are met in the previous stages. In Survival you’re given a main objective to the mission, for example to survive 10 Vaxan waves or last till a certain amount of days. Completing either or will result in a victory. Last Stand is the skirmish type of gameplay and it does not have any resource gathering. It has 2 modes, Time Attack & Endless.
Heroes
In each game mode there’s 2 Heroes, 1 melee and the other a range character. Commander Layton and Baldur in Survival, Cowboy Bilson and Gladiator Gavius in Last Stand. Each Hero has their own passive and active skills that help during combat, their own specialty to help during the game.
Only the Heroes in Last Stand have specialties that can be unlocked as they level up, whereas Heroes in Survival have 5 fixed specialties. The unlockable specialities for Bilson and Gavius brings in Rogue-lite elements come into play where your heroes will have different skills on each playthroughs depending on whether or not you manage to level them up previously.
Gameplay
This is where the game shines very well. Like any solid RTS, there’s the base building aspect for you to plan your base, its defense and strategize the best layout for the map. Resources such as Oil, Ore, Steel, Mythril and Crystal can be gathered to make units/buildings. The base building starts off simple and then will get more in-depth the more you research via the Base Research Institute, which will open up more buildings and units.
The combat will have you defending against hordes of Vaxan, imagine the sheer swarm in numbers in Starship Troopers, that’s how it is. Numerous, perhaps even thousands of Vaxan would swarm your defenses in waves as you try your best to fight them off and seeing how the game handles it visually and technically is something to commend about. There’s no stuttering or freezes as the last wave comes and everything looks so fluid you can’t help but awe as your defenses start to crumble or in my case, destroyed.
Thoughts
Alien Marauder is an excellent RTS game if you’re itching for one. Visually appealing, technically it performed to a tee, gameplay very much enjoyable. Being in EA, this title is looking to be a very good game.
Hailing from a small Island. Huge football fan. Drinks too much tea.
Survival, Roguelikes, Turn-based or Indie games in general are my go to genres but I like to dabble in all kinds of genres. I tend to have a soft spot for Shmups and Hidden Object Games once in a while.
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