Planet Alpha

« Planet Alpha is a visual feast, featuring a fantastical sci-fi world and backed by a hauntingly atmospheric musical score. While it’s an old tale that treads over familiar ground, there’s plenty of new tricks to make it a rewarding playthrough. »

« Simply put, it’s colourful and spectacular, well worth the play-time. »

« A beautiful experience. Planet Alpha looks like the game that, if Gaudi was alive today, he could have designed. Platforms, stealth and puzzles based on the day-night cycle. »

« Planet Alpha is a gorgeous trek through an alien world and the strange timey wimey things that afflict it. While the pacing can occasionally feel a little bit off, the slower moments do allow you time to take everything in. The puzzles are the only real challenge throughout and most aren't so obtuse that they become frustrating so it works well. If you are after a striking world to get lost in then maybe this is the one for you. »

« Entertaining escape from a bizarre alien world, that shows a few minor problems when it comes to platforming. »

« Planet Alpha is a sci-fi adventure that is really excellent in itsartistic design, like a true moving fresco, but it's not as effective in everything related to gameplay, with obvious puzzles and imperfect stealth mechanics. »

« There are not many new things under Planet Alpha's alien sun when it comes to platforming and revolutionary gameplay. However, it manages to provide a pleasantly colored tale of alien exploration and mystery to experience in your living room. Not a classic, yet a decent title with memorable visual aesthetics. »

« Planet Alpha is a nice little platformer, well-paced and full of poetry. There are some glitches though, and all these colours are sometimes overloading the screen, thus the action can be chaotic at times. »

« Dropped at the beginning. The walking is too slow. The jump mechanic isn't fluid. There's some kind of lag in setting the direction of the jump and initiating the jump. The platforming requires a lot of overly precise jumps which are quite punishing (you fall down and then have to climb back all the way again). There's no map or arrow to show you where you need to go and if you get stuck it seems you can get completely stuck since the world is littered with many objects floating around that it's easy to get lost in where you need to go. In the first level I reached the right-edge but the edge wall was somewhat outside the screen area and covered with a lot of foilage that was difficult to make out. The game is very beautiful though. Hence 2 stars. But I don't think there's any story as such or at least wasn't revealed. The beginning is really slow and boring where you have to slow-walk for a long time. »

« The clunky love child of Inside & Isaac Asimov. While the eclectic sci fi visuals are quite beautiful to look at, the gameplay leaves much to be desired. The overly cluttered landscape make it’s difficult to solve even basic puzzles and it is often too unclear where you are supposed to go. The movement mechanics (jumping & crouching feel janky & usually feels more frustrating than a 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer should be. The time control mechanic is a great concept but mostly falls short in the way it is utilized. The devs obviously had a keen eye for aesthetics, and if you enjoy the prehistoric sci-fi visuals this game is a good value if you can pick it up on sale. »

« The game looks nice, features all sorts of locations, great soundtracks, runs smooth with no lags or bugs. I did get stuck once or twice, but managed to solve all the puzzles myself in the end. The difficulty is perfectly balanced. There are a few moments that are rather tough, and a few that are too easy, but the game is mostly fun. It's definitely not Limbo, so you won't RIP 10 times a minute. All in all, it might be too boring for you, if you're used to RPGs and crushing enemies. If you like puzzles, this one might be too action-packed, as there are some segments that require you to act fast. But I did have fun, and it felt satisfying. »

« 'Planet Alpha' is 2.5D contemplative and interpretative game. You navigate through a colourful world full of beautiful varied alien species and poorly-designed opponents. All you have to do is to keep rushing to the right. The gameplay is overly repetitive until you reach some puzzle. Game design is not that great since I already lost more than five minutes wondering how to solve one dumb puzzle. As you progress through the game, you will quickly realize that 80% of the puzzles use the same repetitive mechanic: pull a block from the left to the right to help you jump to the next area. Camera angle don't change until the very end. Controls are overly simple. Lighting is great but way too intense from time to time. As I said opponents are repetitive too but really easy to get over once you get their mechanics. Soundtrack is truly interesting and as varied as the environments you encounter. Overall, the atmospheres are the real quality of "Planet Alpha", they bring an unsuspected depth and an explosion of emotions in the middle of all the repetitiveness I mentioned. »

« Yet another 2D adventure platformer that throws it's hat in the ring with the likes of Out of this World, Limbo, Inside and etc etc. But it sure does stand on it's own. The setting and game-play driven narrative really sets the stage for an epic adventure. You play as what seems to be an off world explorer who has landed on a strange planet. This planet sure is full of life, wonder and originality, making it easy to soak in the atmosphere. But the sight seeing is quickly cut short when an army of alien robots land and start tearing up the planet! The over premise creates a fantastic back drop for the over all game-play and art design. At first it might seem like a fairly straight forward puzzle platformer. But then quickly turns into a high octane adventure and fight for survival as you move from one intense level to the next. And each area of the game will greet you with a ton of vibrant level design, creatures and enemies that will constantly keep you on your toes. This game sure doesn't re-invent the wheel when it comes to the 2D adventure genre. But it does do it very well and stands right out amongst some of greats. If you love this type of game, it really is a must play. »

« Planet Alpha - 7/10 - {recommend, but not so much} The game is [good, but repetitive]. The game's ambiance is good and has several areas, but it is a relatively repetitive game with the levels (in actions), the graphics of the scenarios could be better, besides that there are sections that you die 100 times to figure out how to get through, with the over time it gets boring, and the story doesn't help, I just finished it myself because I had already done it more than half, but I didn't really feel like finishing. At the end of the day, it's a nice game, but there's a lot better out there, so think twice before you start. »

« Don't be fooled by first impressions of "looks nice and enjoyable enough". Yeah the visuals are nice, but it's a very poorly designed game and only gets worse as the game progresses. I'd recommend just watching it on youtube instead. I bought this for $5 and I've never wanted a refund for a game more badly than this. I feel cheated. »

« Planet Alpha is a brief and eminently forgettable 2.5D platformer. You are an astronaut, alone on some alien planet, and you… uh, well, need to keep going right, because reasons. You see, this is one of those games which has a very vague plot – there’s no dialogue, no voices, and no real context for anything you’re doing. You’re on an alien planet, you are navigating around platforms, and you are trying to avoid being killed by robots (that look like something out of the 1950s) and alien life (which is very pretty). The planet is mostly pretty lush alien plants, but there’s significant underground, lava, and hive sections to keep things varied. Visually, the game is very pretty – this is a really good-looking game, and while the graphics for some things are simple (such as the protagonist, and indeed, some of the terrain), the aesthetic of the game is very good overall, and the backgrounds and alien plants and animals, and even the enemy robots, are all distinctive and vibrant. There’s a lot going on with this game visually, and it does a good job of making itself be good eye candy. The game is very reminiscent of LIMBO and INSIDE – you are some small thing, out in a dangerous world full of scary monsters/enemies who are pursuing you for unclear reasons, and you need to get somewhere because reasons. However, Planet Alpha is even more vague than those games are, and while it is very artsy in the way that it comes back around on itself in the end to give you a little hint of context, it still doesn’t actually make any sense. All of this is backed up by fairly mediocre gameplay. You can move, you can jump, you can pull yourself up ledges and climb up climbable walls – all bog standard fare. The only real “special” mechanic is the ability to move time forward and backwards, which sounds like something out of Braid, but in this game, it is anything but – you are simply changing the environmental lighting, not rewinding or fast forwarding what is going on in the world. Some objects in the environment move around between day and night because reasons, and while the plants opening up or closing makes some sense, the big rocks moving around does not. But whatever, it is a mechanic, right? The problem is that the transition takes a while, so in the end, there’s nothing substantial to it – it isn’t a game like Hue, where you swap back and forth between two versions of a level, but rather a game that simply has you press a button at times to rearrange things. And in fact, this is pretty slow, so you can’t even readily do it to fluidly platform, as you have to wait for things to transition. Thus, this game ends up feeling pretty hollow. It isn’t really memorable in any way, and it doesn’t have anything to say but “Hey! We can make this look pretty!” And it does look reasonably pretty, but I wanted some fun stuff to back up said prettiness. What I got instead was bland gameplay and no meaningful story. I probably won’t remember this game in six months, but I didn’t feel bored while playing it. Still, I never really felt super excited, either, and without any thrills or anything to really hang my hat on, I can’t recommend this. »