Planet Alpha

released on Sep 04, 2018

Planet Alpha is an adventure set in a living alien world where you have the ability to manipulate the daytime. To survive on this strange planet you will have to be observant of how the environment and the wildlife behaviour changes depending on the time of day.


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Ehhhhhh? Somehow it was both boring and too intense too frequently to be enjoyable (the sections of just platforming enjoying the scenery early on were amazing). Definitely slightly overstayed it's welcome slightly, if you cut maybe 3-4 of the chapters from the middle and added more low gravity sections it would've been significantly better. Gorgeous graphics, finicky controls, and a generally frustrating platformer that doesn't quite live up to it's potential or it's visuals.

Certainly has its clunky mechanics but I really dug the art style and overall vibe. Solid 3-star indie.

I think the idea is interesting and the visuals are good but something about it just made it hard to play. Maybe a game of this style could've been a smidge shorter

Es aburrido. Mucho. Nada de historia, mecánicas interesantes, puzzles mínimamente retentes, coleccionables, caminos alternativos, nada. Solo es bonito. Y con eso solo no basta.

For a game only cost me about $5 on sale in the estore, it was certainly well worth that low price.

I'm a big fan of puzzle platformers and this one paints a beautiful landscape with neat mechanics.

I would've loved more of the low gravity platforming levels though.

Original review published on: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2018/09/video-game-review-planet-alpha/

When Super Mario Bros. hit the shelves in 1985, the success of the platformer became built on innovation. Anyone was capable of making a game where you had to jump on blocks to reach the end- it was Shigeru Miyamoto’s decision to include warp pipes, power-ups, and water physics that made Mario the critically-acclaimed darling that it is.

Many games have flooded the genre since then, with only a few contemporary titles making it to the big leagues through some new gimmick or another: Super Meat Boy combined grody visuals with an extreme difficulty; Shovel Knight modernized 80s platformer mechanics, and A Hat in Time provided pseudo-parkour movements under a tongue-in-cheek narrative.

Planet Alpha, which was developed by the eponymous company Planet Alpha ApS and published by Team17, tries to make its way into that same category, with it relying on pure beauty for its special presentation. Does this aesthetic overcome its flaws or does it fall into decorative decadence? The short answer is this is ultimately a niche game, but if you want the long answer, read on!

Like most platformers, there really isn’t much of a story, with Planet Alpha’s made all the more difficult to discern because of the lack of dialogue. From what I could understand, you play as a martian cosmonaut who is gathering intelligence on an exotic astronomical body. Your efforts are immediately impeded, however, by the arrival of these robotic enemies that want to destroy you and the entire biosphere around you. There’re are some environmental themes I could gleam as I progressed through the game, and an admittedly-interesting plot twist does happen towards the end, but overall this is not a title that anyone is going to pick up for the narrative.

From there, we move onto the look of Planet Alpha. I have always been of the opinion that art styles outclass realistic graphics. Every console generation, technology brings us closer and closer to some of the most authentic-looking human sprites in video games. But no matter how close programmers get, their creations will always fall into the uncanny valley. Meanwhile, the crayon drawings of Yoshi’s Island look better and better each year.

Indie games that throw their budgets towards that kind of creativity always bring something new to the table, and in that regard Planet Alpha was nothing short of a visual orgy. If Limbo was an example of how to best utilize a monochrome setting, Planet Alpha is the epitome of bringing in the full spectrum of the rainbow. Throughout my 7-hour playtime, I believe I saw every single primary and secondary color on screen, from the green of the foliage to the bright red-orange of magma to the violet sky up above to the glowing hot pink crystals down below.

There was a good chance that this could have all gone wrong and turned into another Problem Solverz disaster, but the team, lead in this department by founder Adrian Lazar and 3D art-and-animation director Tim Løye Skafte, have funneled their evident chroma love into some of the most unique game worlds I have ever had the privilege to enter. To describe the visual style of Planet Alpha would be a challenge in its own right- it’s like there were four roommates: one of them was watching Avatar, the second was playing Pikmin, the third was playing ABZÛ, and the fourth walked in at that moment and had a eureka moment.

There’s a clear attempt at creating something alien, yet very Terra-reminiscent here, with extraterrestrial life meeting conventional Earth surfaces. You have your familiar grassy steppes and rocks in the foreground, but in the back are ginormous quadrupedal creatures that peacefully move with the clouds. During the game’s action beats, though, these scenic sights turn into full-blown nightmares with the flora and fauna devastated by the machines. These two extremes, in addition to the many other backdrops in the game’s eight levels, provide some intriguing panoramas, and there were times where I actually died because I was so invested in what was happening in the scenery.

Unfortunately, all that hardwork in crafting Planet Alpha’s pulchritude doesn’t translate over to the sound design. I mean, there is technically variety in the sonority- the resonance of your character’s stomping varies with each surface you walk on. But the whole time I was playing the game, I couldn’t help but feel that the developers, guided in this department by Planet Alpha ApS sound designer Jesper Krogh Kristiansen, were using stock noises for the majority of their acoustic areas, particularly with regards to the mechanical enemies whose beeps and boops are reiterated ad nauseam. There’s just a lack of strong quality in the mixing and editing, with everything sounding generic compared to the awe-inspiring spectacle around you.

I could always be wrong about my stock theory, but even if I am Planet Alpha was disappointing in this field, especially for a game that takes clear inspiration from Ori and the Blind Forest and Limbo: two platformers that excelled in their sonic environments.

Luckily, this criticism doesn’t extend to the score by Siddhartha Barnhoorn. If you’re a fan of atmospheric music with distinct harmonies like myself, you’re going to love what Barnhoorn puts on the table. With his music in the background, you really do feel like an explorer as you traverse the game’s many places, both above and below ground. He is master of alternating between ataractic and thriller tunes, and it is for his score alone that I recommend playing the game with headphones on if you are willing.

Of course, the main reason people will want to play Planet Alpha is if it’s a good platformer, and on that front I am mixed. I said above that this is a niche title, and I say that because this is a game that feels like it started out as an arthouse game before it was changed to its current form. There’s so much beauty and ambiance, but little in the way of interesting puzzles. Most of the time you’re just dragging blocks from one end to the next to create makeshift steps.

Now, Planet Alpha does introduce one seemingly cool gameplay element, and that is the ability to actively forward or rewind the game’s dynamic day/night cycle. You’re given this from the beginning, but only start to use it about a third of the way in. I say seemingly because it unfortunately isn’t utilized to its greatest extent. Changing the time of day is usually just done to create platforms or stealth cover from whatever vegetation happens to be blooming in the area. There is one part later in the game where you have to use this power to guide a bioluminescent beast through some caves, though again, not much outside of that was done with this godlike ability. I was hoping we would be able to do more things, like change the environmental layout through the heat/cold of the morning/nightfall, similar to the Rod of Seasons in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, but that isn’t the case here.

There’s also a big pacing problem with Planet Alpha. You’ll be going through a place, taking in the view, and the next thing you know a bunch of drones appear out of nowhere and you’re on the run. This repeats again and again, and for a game that is reliant on its art presentation, this felt strangely at odds with that intention as the creators are punishing the player for wanting to admire their craftsmanship. Now, a part of me suspects that this was done intentionally. I mentioned earlier that I interpreted some conservation themes out of the game’s minimalist set-up, and this could be the developers telling us how we waste time rushing through life while other forces destroy our precious home. Or it could simply be a result of the designers trying to squeeze in as many different levels as possible, and pushing players to progress faster and faster to get to each one.

Both of these criticisms are significantly tempered in one of the game’s more extraordinary-looking areas (and that’s saying something), and that is these recurring interdimensional planes. You access them through entering portals hidden throughout the world, which drop you in an environment that looks like the smoke-filled heart of a purple supernova. Here, your time-casting is made null-and-void, with you instead having to navigate an area full of shifting stones and weak gravity. These reminded me of the secret levels from Super Mario Sunshine in terms of finding them and the subsequent gameplay changes. Getting to the end rewards you with an artifact, much like the shine sprites, and collecting all of them adds to the game’s replay value. Unfortunately, there’s no way of telling which ones you got, with the level-select screen not providing any indication, unlike Donkey Kong Country 2 which added an exclamation point to the level’s title to indicate if all the K.O.N.G letters had been collected.

Overall, I have to say that, objectively, I can’t quite recommend Planet Alpha for purchase. As readers know, my rule has always been $1.00 (or £0.77) should give at least 30 minutes of gameplay, and, as stated, it took me only 7 hours to beat the game. At the $20.00 asking price, this falls short, and though you might get some replay value from the aforementioned covert dimensions, it will be more frustrating than anything to try and find them, and even then you’re only going to get about 30 minutes extra.

But at the same time, I’ve always said that it’s good to support indie developers that put time and effort into their works, and it would be an understatement to say that Planet Alpha ApS put in the effort to create a visually memorable game. Combined with Barnhoorn’s music, this could very well be the kind of title that fans of games like Journey and Inside will enjoy. But with basic platforming, weak sound design, and an underutilized chrono mechanic, Planet Alpha feels like a Reservoir Dogs– a title with a lot of potential: potential that will hopefully be expanded upon in Planet Alpha ApS next project ala Tarantino’s classic follow-up Pulp Fiction.

Pros:
+Gorgeous graphics
+Superb score
+Varied environments
+Rift areas surreal

Cons:
-Weak SFX
-Rushed pacing
-Underused day powers
-Unmemorable platforming