Exoplanets Demo

Given the huge number of stars and planets in our galaxy alone, it would probably be selfish to consider ourselves the only life forms that ever existed. Science fiction thrives on the idea that we are not alone in the universe, although most aliens found in books and movies are not the type you would want to meet. Even so, different life forms are always exciting, even if they are trained assassins and basically invisible.

Exoplanets is a retro platformer in which you play the role of a robotic AI that has to accomplish a variety of missions on all sorts of dangerous planets. Besides the fact that the planets in question are randomly generated, even the missions are random as well, since the objective is always in a different part of the map, and the actual mission is created from a list of possible scenarios.

Story-wise, the background plot talks about an alien invasion at the end of the 1970s, when most of the Earth’s population was annihilated. Artificial Intelligence units were used to kill everyone, and after enough bloodshed, the human government decided to support the aliens and start helping with the production of AIs. Naturally, they also managed to gain control of a handful of these robots.

There are multiple AI units to choose from, each one of which has a different set of skills and weapons they can use in combat. It can be a lot of fun to try beating the game with every AI, but the actual levels are pretty challenging, even if you are a big fan of platformers. There are just too many enemies sometimes, and unless you manage to get your hands on some powerful weapons, it can be downright impossible to escape them.

The controls are usually responsive and precise, which means that you won’t die because of them. Still, you need to pay a lot of attention to the environments and the constant stream of enemies, otherwise it doesn’t matter how accurate the controls are. Even the artwork is intriguing, mainly because it’s quite dark and gloomy most of the time.

Even if Exoplanets is still early in the development phase, it shows a great deal of potential, especially if you are a fan of platformers. The high difficulty level may discourage some players, but all in all, the game can turn into something pretty fun.