The player controls a Heian period police officer who must defend the capital city from an alien invasion by digging holes in the ground and filling them back up after an alien falls inside. The player scores points for every alien trapped, and the quicker the hole is filled up after the alien falls in, the higher the number of points are scored. The aliens increase in number as the levels progress, and they can escape from holes after a certain period of time elapses or if another alien passes above their hole. The player loses if he comes in contact with an alien. There is a time limit for each level, and the number of aliens increases drastically when this limit is reached, essentially preventing the player from completing the level.
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cant believe sukuna went through this
Sitting around waiting for the aliens isn't fun, especially when all you're doing is digging holes that sound like your shovel of choice might be a shotgun. Actually, if you dug holes with a shotgun it would probably score better.
Heiankyo Alien is sort of an interesting game of perimeter defense. Armed with only the ability to dig holes and fill them in, and trapped in a Pac-Man-esque maze with a bunch of aliens that move rapidly and in seemingly random directions, your goal is to trap as many of those aliens as possible in holes and shovel dirt over their heads until they... die, I guess. Brutal. Anyway, with each round the number of aliens increases, until eventually the game loops back to the initial number of aliens (four) except they move more quickly.
Because of the slow shoveling speed of your protagonist, there's a certain amount of risk taking and guessing involved in the game. On the one hand, good strategy is to try to set yourself up a perimeter that leaves yourself some room to move and escape if things go south. On the other, your holes need to actually be close enough to the aliens that they'll walk in, and close enough to you that you can get to them and shovel them over in time before the alien escapes. This leads to some measured attempts at optimal decision making about how close or far one should be before digging their holes, but because of the seeming random movement of the aliens even the best laid holes of mice and men may occasionally not be good enough.
I think it's that tension that gives the game its fun, but it can also be a frustrating one. It's never fun to die in a game for what didn't really feel like your fault, and in a score based game this can be doubly frustrating. Still, the flirt with alien danger is fun in every round, and it's very satisfying when the aliens finally walk into your genius trap (I mean, as genius as it is to dig a hole near the wall, because that's where they seem to like to get stuck).
All in all, I think it's a fun play and a unique idea. I'm not really a big fan of the "dig a hole and cover 'em up" genre of arcade game that this one spawned, but in this extremely simple version of the formula, even I can see the appeal and have a good time.
Try to beat my score of 9100! It was only after a few rounds of play.
Because of the slow shoveling speed of your protagonist, there's a certain amount of risk taking and guessing involved in the game. On the one hand, good strategy is to try to set yourself up a perimeter that leaves yourself some room to move and escape if things go south. On the other, your holes need to actually be close enough to the aliens that they'll walk in, and close enough to you that you can get to them and shovel them over in time before the alien escapes. This leads to some measured attempts at optimal decision making about how close or far one should be before digging their holes, but because of the seeming random movement of the aliens even the best laid holes of mice and men may occasionally not be good enough.
I think it's that tension that gives the game its fun, but it can also be a frustrating one. It's never fun to die in a game for what didn't really feel like your fault, and in a score based game this can be doubly frustrating. Still, the flirt with alien danger is fun in every round, and it's very satisfying when the aliens finally walk into your genius trap (I mean, as genius as it is to dig a hole near the wall, because that's where they seem to like to get stuck).
All in all, I think it's a fun play and a unique idea. I'm not really a big fan of the "dig a hole and cover 'em up" genre of arcade game that this one spawned, but in this extremely simple version of the formula, even I can see the appeal and have a good time.
Try to beat my score of 9100! It was only after a few rounds of play.
I know this game has its ardent fans, but I don't know, I don't think it's that great. The whole main gimmick of digging holes to trap aliens is slow and convoluted, and even after practicing, I still can't land it most of the time. Not to mention the game punishes you for not trapping any of the aliens by throwing more aliens at you that are almost impossible to dodge, and they don't even reset after you die! Hard, hard pass on this one, even if the game has some historical significance.