Planet Alpha - Review
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VOICE OVER: Riccardo Tucci
WRITTEN BY: Kurt Hvorup
This ambitious side scroller transports players to another world and while the visuals are stunning, does the out of this world title deliver when it comes to gameplay? Join MojoPlays for our review of PLANET ALPHA.
Ambitious works in any medium have a tendency to fall into two vastly different categories: they can be largely successful projects that go on to help shape entire genres… or they can be deeply flawed tragedies undone by hubris and overreach. That Planet Alpha finds itself in the latter grouping isn’t half as hard to deal with as the knowledge that the game comes so close to truly delivering on its intriguing premise, yet ultimately falls short.
Said premise puts you in the shoes of a nameless, faceless astronaut left wandering an alien world after some unknown injury befalls them. It soon becomes clear that the astronaut is to walk from checkpoint to checkpoint, activating ancient technology in the scattered ruins of a lost civilization, in order to reach the planet’s core. Along the way, all manner of bizarre creatures and natural hazards will test their mettle, to say nothing of the looming presence of robotic invaders whose aims seem sinister...
If that description of the general plot seems vague, that’s very much by design. Lacking narration or any kind of conventional direction, the game conveys its events and objectives purely through imagery and vague environmental clues. Getting to grips with this style of presentation can be challenging at first and never really shakes off its tendency to deliver only the barest of details, but there’s a kind of simplicity to Planet Alpha’s visual shorthand that’s admirable if nothing else.
That restraint in narrative works in tandem with the gameplay experience, which entails a refreshingly combat-free blend of puzzles and platforming. Anyone familiar with titles such as Limbo and Inside will recognize the basic structure here: long stretches of running and jumping through gorgeous landscapes, broken up by harrowing chase sequences and the odd physics or switch-based puzzle. It’s a familiar style of gameplay, but one that serves as a solid framework upon which to layer delightful visuals and impressive spectacle.
Planet Alpha does offer one distinct feature that makes it somewhat unique among its peers – the power to alter the time of day. Various times throughout the game, the player is subtly prompted to fast-forward or reverse time in order to affect the surrounding area and access something of significance. Sometimes the effects are as simple as making a platform-like flower bloom, and sometimes the results are far more drastic. Regardless, it makes a strong first impression and never ceases to impress, even if we wished it was integrated more often into the puzzles.
More immediately and consistently astounding is the scale and splendor that are central to the experience. Over the course of approximately five hours of play, we experienced a multitude of utterly fascinating environments – jungles, swamps, cloud-obscured ruins in the sky, caverns lit with luminescent crystals, and more. Every locale bursts at the seams with background detail, every texture and surface a joy to take in, and all of it hitting the mark in terms of seeming “alien”. There was always a sense of being out-of-place, out of one’s depths, that befits the nature of this game.
It’s clear with each step taken through this world, from the bizarre flora and fauna to the way light interacts with objects, that the development team put so much love and effort into the game’s construction. Unfortunate, then, that the game seems hell-bent on undermining those good intentions at every turn.
There’s no guarantee of avoiding frustrating given Planet Alpha’s clear preference for pixel-perfect platforming skills. It’s one thing to miss a jump or mess up the timing on climbing a wall because of one’s own inexperience – where things become out-and-out unfair is when the timing and contextual clues are hard to parse. Sometimes you’ll hide behind cover as a massive laser-firing robot looms overhead, only to be vaporized because you weren’t perfectly positioned behind an object, or having to make a fatal leap of faith because it’s impossible to tell where the next ledge is.
What’s worse, the positively overwhelming nature of the game’s visual design proves a double-edged sword in a surprising way. Again, Planet Alpha is committed to conveying the most information necessary for solving puzzles and clearing jumps with the least resources expended. In practice this amounts to certain sequences where the means to progress are obscured, lost amid a busy landscape. It’s even possible to lose sight of your character in some of the more frantic set-pieces.
Speaking of which, when it comes to plentiful on-screen activity the game simply cannot keep itself composed. Frame-rate drops were regular and blatant, though predicting precisely what will cause substantial slowdown is certainly a challenge. Foliage-littered sections of jungle and vast ruined temples might be easily overcome with nary a decline, whereas charging across an open field could send the frame-rate spiraling into the teens. Odd bugs and glitches cropped up – like our character getting stuck mid-jumping animation while gripping the air – and the game even straight-up crashed at one point.
A couple of bright spots come so very close to bringing Planet Alpha back into the light, if only for a moment. Scattered to random corners of the game world are glowing orbs, which lead to a string of platforming challenges set in an anonymous black void. While the in-universe cause of these pocket dimension segments remains unclear, the detached nature of these gameplay sections actually proves a decent change of pace. The climactic encounter, too, comes close to being a redemptive measure as it semi-cleverly adds further context to the game’s earliest moments.
Making sense of Planet Alpha, even to merely determine who would get the most out of playing it, opens one’s self to a whole host of conflicting emotions and hard truths. The reality is, the game is at once a beautiful exercise in visualizing truly weird science-fiction concepts AND a troubled mess with deeply-rooted creative and technical flaws. For those with interested in troubled works defined – for good or ill – by sincere passion, there may be something worth experiencing here. Everyone else, however, might be best served skipping this particular outer space excursion.
Said premise puts you in the shoes of a nameless, faceless astronaut left wandering an alien world after some unknown injury befalls them. It soon becomes clear that the astronaut is to walk from checkpoint to checkpoint, activating ancient technology in the scattered ruins of a lost civilization, in order to reach the planet’s core. Along the way, all manner of bizarre creatures and natural hazards will test their mettle, to say nothing of the looming presence of robotic invaders whose aims seem sinister...
If that description of the general plot seems vague, that’s very much by design. Lacking narration or any kind of conventional direction, the game conveys its events and objectives purely through imagery and vague environmental clues. Getting to grips with this style of presentation can be challenging at first and never really shakes off its tendency to deliver only the barest of details, but there’s a kind of simplicity to Planet Alpha’s visual shorthand that’s admirable if nothing else.
That restraint in narrative works in tandem with the gameplay experience, which entails a refreshingly combat-free blend of puzzles and platforming. Anyone familiar with titles such as Limbo and Inside will recognize the basic structure here: long stretches of running and jumping through gorgeous landscapes, broken up by harrowing chase sequences and the odd physics or switch-based puzzle. It’s a familiar style of gameplay, but one that serves as a solid framework upon which to layer delightful visuals and impressive spectacle.
Planet Alpha does offer one distinct feature that makes it somewhat unique among its peers – the power to alter the time of day. Various times throughout the game, the player is subtly prompted to fast-forward or reverse time in order to affect the surrounding area and access something of significance. Sometimes the effects are as simple as making a platform-like flower bloom, and sometimes the results are far more drastic. Regardless, it makes a strong first impression and never ceases to impress, even if we wished it was integrated more often into the puzzles.
More immediately and consistently astounding is the scale and splendor that are central to the experience. Over the course of approximately five hours of play, we experienced a multitude of utterly fascinating environments – jungles, swamps, cloud-obscured ruins in the sky, caverns lit with luminescent crystals, and more. Every locale bursts at the seams with background detail, every texture and surface a joy to take in, and all of it hitting the mark in terms of seeming “alien”. There was always a sense of being out-of-place, out of one’s depths, that befits the nature of this game.
It’s clear with each step taken through this world, from the bizarre flora and fauna to the way light interacts with objects, that the development team put so much love and effort into the game’s construction. Unfortunate, then, that the game seems hell-bent on undermining those good intentions at every turn.
There’s no guarantee of avoiding frustrating given Planet Alpha’s clear preference for pixel-perfect platforming skills. It’s one thing to miss a jump or mess up the timing on climbing a wall because of one’s own inexperience – where things become out-and-out unfair is when the timing and contextual clues are hard to parse. Sometimes you’ll hide behind cover as a massive laser-firing robot looms overhead, only to be vaporized because you weren’t perfectly positioned behind an object, or having to make a fatal leap of faith because it’s impossible to tell where the next ledge is.
What’s worse, the positively overwhelming nature of the game’s visual design proves a double-edged sword in a surprising way. Again, Planet Alpha is committed to conveying the most information necessary for solving puzzles and clearing jumps with the least resources expended. In practice this amounts to certain sequences where the means to progress are obscured, lost amid a busy landscape. It’s even possible to lose sight of your character in some of the more frantic set-pieces.
Speaking of which, when it comes to plentiful on-screen activity the game simply cannot keep itself composed. Frame-rate drops were regular and blatant, though predicting precisely what will cause substantial slowdown is certainly a challenge. Foliage-littered sections of jungle and vast ruined temples might be easily overcome with nary a decline, whereas charging across an open field could send the frame-rate spiraling into the teens. Odd bugs and glitches cropped up – like our character getting stuck mid-jumping animation while gripping the air – and the game even straight-up crashed at one point.
A couple of bright spots come so very close to bringing Planet Alpha back into the light, if only for a moment. Scattered to random corners of the game world are glowing orbs, which lead to a string of platforming challenges set in an anonymous black void. While the in-universe cause of these pocket dimension segments remains unclear, the detached nature of these gameplay sections actually proves a decent change of pace. The climactic encounter, too, comes close to being a redemptive measure as it semi-cleverly adds further context to the game’s earliest moments.
Making sense of Planet Alpha, even to merely determine who would get the most out of playing it, opens one’s self to a whole host of conflicting emotions and hard truths. The reality is, the game is at once a beautiful exercise in visualizing truly weird science-fiction concepts AND a troubled mess with deeply-rooted creative and technical flaws. For those with interested in troubled works defined – for good or ill – by sincere passion, there may be something worth experiencing here. Everyone else, however, might be best served skipping this particular outer space excursion.
