Alien: Another Life

"'Don't be afraid of the dark. Be afraid of what's in it.'" "- Release tagline" Alien: Another Life is a real-time strategy survival horror game concept by Red-Verse-Writer, based on the Alien franchise. Loosely based upon the first movie, it has gameplay inspired by the 1984 Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum game of the same name, the 1990 action arcade game Aliens, the often-reviled 2013 first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines, the well-received 2014 survival horror Alien: Isolation, and even other games such as This War of Mine and ''Silent Hill. The game is set in a alternate timeline to the films, and follows the crew of the Nostromo'', a commercial space freighter that docks on board the mining space station Zeus, where they come across the hostile extra-terrestrial organisms known as Xenomorphs.

Gameplay
Alien: Another Life is a real-time strategy game with a emphasis upon survival, exploration, item management and team co-operation. The player is placed in command of the eight members of the Nostromo, who must scavenge around the Zeus, fighting Xenomorphs and acquiring supplies to survive and attempt to make a escape. The player does not have direct control over the crew members, but can instead give them commands, which they will follow depending on the circumstances, such as the order, the danger proposed by it, and the character's mental state. While a crew member is out on a mission, the player may view their progress using various security cameras located around the ship and station, switch to the character's perspective, or use a menu-based system to track movements around the area. The player can also give other alerts to the characters, such as alerting them to the presence of Xenomorphs in the nearby areas, informing them of hidden items in the areas, or telling them what has been detected in a nearby room.

The player is tasked with managing the health, oxygen, mental state and inventory of each crew member. Due to a lack of a heads-up display (barring status alert icons included in certain situations), a separate inventory screen must be consulted to check a character's health, oxygen, stability and inventory while they are on a mission. All eight of the main characters require a constant supply of oxygen to survive, and will die immediately if they run out of it. Health is depleted when they are attacked, and they will die if their health is fully depleted. As their health depletes, a character's performance is affected and they begin moving more slowly. Each character can carry a limited number of items at a time, and can store more items at the Nostromo 's living quarters. A crew member's mental state is affected by the circumstances around them, and when given a command they will interpret it based on both their personality and emotional state. A character's mental state can be decreased from confident (green; they will always be able to follow the player's instructions and do better on missions) to stable (light green; they have average performance on missions and will still always obey the player) to uneasy (blue; they retain the average performance of the stable state but may sometimes disobey the player) to scared (yellow; they perform worse on missions and have a higher chance of being unable to follow commands) to shocked (orange; they perform even worse and some equipment becomes unusable by that character) to terrified (red; they often do not follow commands and even more equipment is unable to be used by that character) to hysterical (black; they will rarely obey the player's commands and will be unable to use most equipment), progressively decreasing their performance and ability to copy the player's commands. At lower states, there is also a increasing chance of the character having a nervous breakdown, causing them to become frozen with fear and preventing them from following the player's instructions. A character's mental state can be improved by having them sheltered at the Nostromo 's living quarters, which functions as the game's main safe room, having them pick up weapons and other useful tools, guiding them through a mission safely, or having two or more crewmembers back each other up on a single mission. Conversely, their condition can be worsened by sending a crew member off alone, engaging in combat with hostiles, putting them in a claustrophobic environment such as a air duct, having them put down tools when outside a safe zone, or if they are damaged by enemies or are running low on oxygen. The player will need to keep all the crew members healthy and sane in order to be effective.

Littered around the Nostromo ship and the Zeus space station it has attached itself to are various useful items, including tools such as motion trackers, flashlights, spanners, tool kits, image intensifiers, fire extinguishers and welding torches; materials for crafting such as gauze, alcohol, computer chips, bullets, medicine, paper, metal scraps and wood; and weapons such as electric prods, nets, laser pistols, shotguns, revolvers, flamethrowers, bolt guns and grenades. Characters can collect these items and either use them directly or as ingredients in crafting recipes to make other items, such as Molotov cocktails and EMP grenades. Different characters have specific weapons they are highly skilled at using, making equipping them with their "favourite" weapons a significant advantage. Some weapons, such as the net and flamethrower, do not have such a impact on the character's ranged performance, and can be equipped by any character without penalties or benefits.

Throughout the game, the player and their crew members must contend to battle against enemies, the majority of which consist of various types of the predatory, hostile alien lifeforms known as the Xenomorphs. Xenomorphs are fast, strong and durable, and often travel around the Nostromo and Zeus using air ducts. While they are restricted to close-range combat with their fists, teeth and tails, they are usually able to quickly approach the player. Xenomorphs can also climb across walls, camouflage themselves against walls, and detect the characters using pheromones. The Xenomorphs come various different varieties, all of which have their own specific special abilities and weaknesses that the player must exploit. All Xenomorphs are afraid of fire, thus making weapons such as the flamethrower very useful in combating them. Aside from the Xenomorphs, the player and their crew members must also engage with Infectoids, human corpses revived by the Xenomorphs into zombie-like troopers, and reprogrammed robotic combatants deployed by the Xenomorphs as expendable combatants.

Plot
The commercial space tug UCSCC Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with several thousand tons of mineral ore when Ash, the android pilot of the ship, detects what appears to be a distress signal coming from a nearby remote space station, the Zeus Station, which orbits around Jupiter. With the Nostromo running low on fuel, he decides to take the opportunity to investigate the signal and acquire supplies, and awakens the seven human members of the crew - Captain Arthur Dallas, Executive Officer Thomas Kane, Navigator Joan Lambert, Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, Security Officer Gilbert Fazio, and Engineers Dennis Parker and Samuel Brett - from stasis. As they dock onto the Zeus, they find the station damaged and seemingly abandoned. Dallas, Kane, Lambert and Fazio decide to investigate the station while Ripley and Ash attempt to decipher the radio transmissions and monitor their progress, and Parker and Brett work on fixing the damage the port has sustained.