Alien Hominid Invasion Review Summary

Fun Co-op & Chaos: The game is highly enjoyable, especially when played with friends in co-op, offering a chaotic and addictive experience. Its fast-paced gameplay and on-screen madness are a major draw.

Signature Behemoth Charm: The game successfully maintains The Behemoth's distinctive art style, humor, and overall charm, reminiscent of their previous titles. This consistency resonates well with fans of the studio.

Engaging Difficulty Curve: The game offers a challenging yet fun gameplay loop, with difficulty increasing over time through stronger enemies and stage hazards. This progression keeps the experience engaging and prevents boredom.

Excellent Alien Hominid Sequel: The game is praised as a fantastic sequel to the original Alien Hominid, expanding on its story and gameplay while retaining its charm. It successfully builds upon its predecessor, offering more content and a familiar yet improved experience.

Extensive Customization: The game offers a wide array of customization options for characters, weapons, and gadgets, allowing players to personalize their experience. The variety in weapons and perks makes each run feel fresh and unique.

Repetitive Core Gameplay: Many players found the core gameplay loop, including missions, levels, and overall objectives, to be highly repetitive and monotonous. This lack of variety quickly led to boredom and a feeling that the game offered little new content after the initial hours.

Unbalanced Difficulty & Grind: The game suffers from significant balancing issues, with frequent difficulty spikes and a perceived lack of coherent difficulty curve, especially for single-player. Players also noted a tedious progression system that often required excessive grinding to make characters viable, rather than relying on player skill.

Excessive Screen Clutter: Players frequently report that the screen is overwhelmed with enemies, projectiles, and visual effects, making it difficult to see their character, identify enemies, or understand objectives. This visual chaos leads to frustration and a feeling of being lost in the action.

Lacks Previous Game's Charm: Many long-time fans expressed significant disappointment, feeling the game was a step backward and lacked the unique charm, fun, and depth of the developer's previous titles, particularly the original Alien Hominid. This sentiment often stemmed from changes in core mechanics and overall design direction.

Flawed Roguelite Design: The shift to a roguelite format with procedural generation was largely criticized, with players finding levels bland, repetitive, and lacking the charm or depth of a true roguelike. The random elements often felt uninspired or shoe-horned in, contributing to a frustrating grind.

Core Roguelite Gameplay: The game is a side-scrolling roguelite with procedurally generated levels and a core loop of running, gunning, and completing randomized objectives like gathering intel. However, this mission structure can become repetitive, following a predictable pattern of tasks.

Flexible Death & Revival: The game offers flexible death mechanics, allowing players to choose between permadeath (losing items/progress) or retaining progress, often trading off XP gain. A revival coin system also provides limited continues, but these can be consumed quickly by challenging tasks.

Enemy & Level Design Issues: While the game features various enemy types like FBI agents with different weapons and special level types (key levels, boss battles), some players found certain enemies (armored, snipers, AoE) and level designs to be annoying or obstructive, particularly clashing with the downshoot mechanic.

Game Length & Pacing: A single playthrough to the final boss can take around 30-50 minutes, with the overall story completable in a few hours. The game aims to provide new content to prevent boredom, suggesting a focus on replayability rather than a long single campaign.

Alien Hominid Legacy: The game is explicitly recognized as a roguelite sequel to the original Alien Hominid, incorporating its combat style into an endless wave shooter format. Players often compare its features, like vehicles and specific level designs, to the previous title.

Excellent Performance & Optimization: Players consistently praise the game's strong technical performance, noting it is well-optimized with no stuttering. This includes specific positive feedback regarding its smooth operation on the Steam Deck.

Minor Bugs Present: Reviewers noted the presence of minor bugs within the game. While not game-breaking, these small issues were observed during gameplay.

Highly Recommended Purchase: Many reviewers strongly recommend the game, citing its overall quality and value for money, often rating it highly.

Prefer Other Behemoth Titles: A significant number of players recommend other games by The Behemoth, particularly Alien Hominid HD, over this title, suggesting it doesn't quite live up to their previous works.

Buy on Sale Recommended: Many reviewers suggest the game is not worth its full price, advising potential buyers to wait for a sale or purchase it at a lower cost to get better value.

Enhanced by Multiplayer Co-op: The game is frequently highlighted as being significantly more enjoyable and a "perfect party experience" when played with friends or a partner, suggesting co-op is a key feature.

Appeals to Roguelite Fans: The game's roguelite elements are a significant draw for fans of the genre, though some negative reviews stem from players who simply dislike roguelites.

Excellent Art, Humor & Audio: Reviewers consistently praise the game's signature cartoonish art style, detailed animations, vibrant visuals, and well-developed environmental effects. The Behemoth's characteristic absurd humor and catchy, fitting music also significantly enhance the game's atmosphere.

Direct Sequel, Different Gameplay: The game is recognized as a direct continuation of the original Alien Hominid, taking place after its events. However, many note that it plays significantly differently from the original side-scrolling shooter, feeling more like a party game or a spin-off rather than a traditional sequel.

Behemoth's Signature & Effort: Players acknowledge The Behemoth's distinctive humor and graphic style are present. Many appreciate the developers' effort in creating diverse weapons, customization options, and ongoing updates, expressing continued support for the studio.

Short Game Length: Reviewers note that the game offers a relatively short experience, typically around 4 hours. This aligns with observations that The Behemoth's latest games tend to be shorter.

Chaotic Arcade Visuals: The game aims to capture an old arcade game feel with its dynamic, chaotic screen filled with action. While some describe the visuals as minimalistic or messy, others find them crispy, colorful, and contributing to the game's high energy.