I saved the best for last form games I checked out during Next Fest. An amazing looking sci-fi game that has quite a startling sci-fi twist to it. This is one of those once I hit the end of the demo I added to my wish list.

I don’t know what it is about a gaming opening, but I just knew I was going to be in for something special with how things started. My character excited his safety pod on an alien planet.

This scene alone was just amazing. There was also just so little attention to detail. This is something I started to notice a lot about this game. It’s one of those you just need to stop and look around when you can.

As if all the stress and drama from the crash landing on an alien planet was not enough. There was a bit of a short journey through a mountain pass to an emergency base that was set up. Along the way you end up discovering you are the lone survivor left.

The game also quickly goes over some tutorial-style stuff about movement and a few other things that need to be explained to the player along the way. I like it when games do it in such a natural state you are not so much as thinking it’s a tutorial then you are just progressing through a critical part to move forward.

That thing off in the distance ended up being my mobile emergency base. Not only could it be moved around (just not in the demo). You can also expand and add rooms to it as well.

I had some mixed thoughts about it at first. Before I knew it could move around and even be expanded on. It’s just so strange looking. It also ended up being such a sci-fi feeling kind of base I can’t help but love seeing it off in the distance anytime I was outside gathering resources.

It is also nice you can view a zoomed-out version of it while inside. Along with seeing where you are. Along with some other details as the storyline progresses along.

I was a bit shocked by how much space was going towards storage. Even more so after I went out on some mining trips and ended up filling up my storage. I would have thought rooms would have held a lot more stuff.

The movement did feel a bit funky while inside the base. It’s got that almost two-dimensional feel to it but you can move in three directions. I would not be shocked if this was something they polished up a little more. I will say after getting used to it I stopped having issues of running into walls and stuff.

With this being a survival game you do need to manage your sleep and energy. Down in the bottom left they have a bit of a gauge. I rather liked it telling you exactly when your character is expected to get tired and work less proficiently. Along with the current time of the day since the night is deadly on this planet for you to be outside.

I’ve always enjoyed gathering resources in games, so it was interesting to see there were at least two methods of getting resources. The first was as expected. You walk around the surface of the planet looking for exposed resources on the surface that you can mine yourself.

The second type is mining underground resources. Where you first need to drop probes in an area and scan for underground deposits. You then place down a machine that you must manually operate to extract the resources. You also had to connect the machine to your base.

In both indications, there was clear use of color you could see from a distance to start to home where different resources you could acquire are. It also seemed quite apparent that I would easily deplete an area of resources and need to move elsewhere to keep finding fresh veins to mine from.

Once I had gathered some resources it was time to expand the base. This game gets weird in a good way fast. I ended up building a cloning room that is called the womb. At first, you just clone a sheep. It was not long before that moved on to humans.

How strange did things become? Well, it turns out my character did not read his contract quite well before signing up with the company he was with. He ended up finding out they had imprints of his entire memory.

One where you could scroll through and see important choices being made leading the character down the path that it took for him to sign onto the project that led him to this very planet.

While that certainly feels like a major breach of privacy. That is only the start. The base was going to require more workers. More importantly, workers that had skills my character simply lacked.

Not only was I going to clone myself repeatedly. I would be branching my main memory chain off at a critical choice that was made. Giving that clone similar memories up to a certain point. Then giving them the knowledge they needed to perform the different roles needed on the base.

After a clone would be made of the new branched memory. Where you then had quite the most awaked and strange conversation with your cloned self. I decided to tell mine he was a clone, and he did not take that news at first well at all.

These clones they refer to as Alters. You can even check in on them to see how they are feeling if they have eaten, and things like events that have occurred with them.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of having to maintain certain relationships let alone the emotional states of characters in the game. It, however, seems to be something you end up having to keep an eye out for.

My mind did start to wonder what would end up happening when I have a few Alters running around my base repairing things and doing other tasks. I also wonder what happens when you conflict with other ones within the base. Will my character wake up one morning to find out one of the Alters murders or even sabotage the base? I have no idea but that would keep things interesting, that is for sure.

Final Thoughts

It seems like this game will be breaking the mold on quite a few different aspects of a survival game to keep things more interesting. This one seems quite different than other survival games let alone sci-fi games I've played in the past. I can’t wait to see more and how it all unfolds.

At least during the demo, I only had a couple of minor bugs. Compared to some of the other games I've played during Next Fest it was a lot better than most. One ended up being a camera issue and the other was that odd movement within the base itself. The camera issue ended up resolving itself once I went back into my base and did not reoccur again.

While I do wish I got to do a bit more than a little bit of exploring, mining three resources, and cloning myself. It was a demo after all. They could have shown a lot less and it would still have made a great demo.

I do wonder if the many invisible walls I seemed to hit will be removed at launch or if every area you end up visiting is going to be quite restricted, not letting you go elsewhere. I have a feeling it will be a bit more restrictive since the base has to be moving around every so many days to avoid getting destroyed. While that keeps exploration a bit more limited you are more focused on survival in each different area trying to maximize what you get out of it. I can’t wait to see how that ends up going.

Other Content

• Taking A Look At Aloft

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Aloft. This was during the Steam Next demo.