Return to Earth Demo

Aliens are rarely portrayed as friendly creatures trying to teach us their ways and sharing their knowledge. Instead, most movies and video games present them as ruthless monsters with a single purpose: destroy everything in their path. Naturally, it’s much easier to make an action game when there’s no shortage of things to shoot, especially if those things are not even human.

Return to Earth is a 2D action-platformer with retro graphics and fast-paced gameplay mechanics designed to bring back memories from a simpler time and challenge your reaction times while you’re at it. Exploration is an important part of the game as well, much like in games like Metroid and Castlevania, so you can always go out of your way to visit different areas of each stage.

The story puts you in the role of a man by the name of Dr. R, who is just returning to Earth after a research mission on Saturn. However, it would appear that your home planet has been devastated by some kind of alien invasion in the meantime, so it’s up to you to destroy every nasty creature and find out what happened to the world while you were away.

Your character has a few special abilities that allow him to survive in harsh conditions, such as dashing really quick over obstacles or enemies. Many weapons become available along the way as well, each one of which has a different firing mode and more damage. Boss fights are part of the experience too, and they can be quite challenging, even for experienced gamers.

As mentioned before, the graphics are designed to bring back memories from a simpler time, but they are quite detailed, and they go great with the atmosphere. Each level features interesting sights and landscapes, although sometimes they get pretty repetitive and confusing. The music isn’t bad either, although it could use a bit of work.

In the end, Return to Earth appears to be more polished than your average indie platformer, especially when it comes to gameplay and graphics. Thus, the final version should be quite fun, so you might want to think about supporting the developers by backing their Kickstarter campaign.