The Behemoth followed up its hit Alien Hominid with the action-packed sequel Alien Hominid Invasion.
Alien Hominid Invasion is an online co-op action roguelike. While you can play by yourself, it is meant to be played with friends. It was both developed and published by The Behemoth. The studio is known for Castle Crashers and the first Alien Hominid, both of which are level-based platformers.
Platform games have been around since the early 80s and generally have a goal of completing a level while navigating various obstacles. Alien Hominid Invasion features the same concepts, except you just need to add a little run’ n gun alongside some objectives to complete, and you get Alien Hominid Invasion.
While Alien Hominid Invasion features a lot of the classical platform mechanics, it also adds its touch with roguelike mechanics, such as being able to choose your pathway and your own choice of abilities and buffs to play around with over the many runs you may do, depending on the difficulty setting you choose.
Besides the three different difficulty settings, there are also two game modes you can play. The first game mode is Mastery Mode. You get 150% more experience in this game mode, but unfortunately, you will lose your items when you die. The second mode is Permakeep, which does not have any experience boost, but you will keep all your items on death. The three difficulty settings only change how much health you have when you play through a run.
The three difficulty settings are Friendly, Normal, and Insane. While the Friendly difficulty setting doesn’t put your character’s score on the scoreboard, it does give you 200% more health, which is double the health of the Normal Difficulty setting. This setting is great for those who just want to have fun and experience the storyline. The Normal difficulty setting is, well, normal; you start with a base amount of health, which is 100%. Lastly, it is Insane; you start running in this setting with 45% of your health, meaning if you aren’t careful, your run will come to a quick but tragic end.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you see it, an Alien Hominid Invasion can be incredibly difficult to keep track of as your danger level rises and you face more challenging enemies. Although with the bullet-hell mechanics of the game, it feels a little like Contra and ArcRunner when you’re trying to navigate around all the damage coming your way. All the levels are randomly generated, making the game fun to play through multiple runs of destroying the human bases.
Throughout any level you play, you will be barraged by enemies from all directions, no matter where you are in the level. There are many different weapons, abilities, and boosters that you can make use of to make your life easier, but the most significant mechanic that helps is your dodge.
Alien Hominid Invasion features an incredible amount of customization options. All of the options can be unlocked by gathering loot crates in the game and buying them from the hideout, provided you have enough coins. However, you can try out the different weapons and mutations in the hideout, allowing you to fine-tune your play style for the rest of the game.
Each weapon, hat, and buff you get will all have passive abilities that can help you build up a powerful arsenal but watch out for the slight debuffs that can throw you off. They aren’t the only customizable items you can get, as you can unlock new colours for your aliens as well as new abilities such as a sky ranger, allowing you to take to the skies and get to higher platforms more easily.
Weaponry in Alien Hominid Invasion all have their ranges, and some are more effective against a certain enemy type. An example of this would be your armoured enemies. While you could use a blade to attack them, you would need your charged attack to take them out, while normal attacks from a Combuster or even the Human Minigun will deal with them quickly. As long as you are smart with how you mix your buffs with your equipment, it won’t take you long to fly through levels and easily take down the bosses.
While loot boxes allow you to unlock equipment and cosmetics, it is not the only way to get them. You can also earn them as rewards for levelling up and completing a boss stage. If you are playing with friends, this can bring in a bit of competitiveness as you can see each other’s scores after completing a run. Loot boxes and coins aren’t your only pickup throughout your runs; you can also pick up USB drives that, once plugged into the mothership, give you buffs and bonuses for the next run.
Unfortunately, while each level is randomised in Alien Hominid Invasion, that doesn’t mean your objectives are. You will have the same objectives to complete at every level. Although they will have random orders for when they are activated, it does make the game a little tedious once you’ve hit your third or fourth run. The whole storyline will take six runs to make it to the end, as there are six different bosses for you to defeat.
While it would’ve been nice to have a few more objectives in Alien Hominid Invasion, the time mechanic more than makes up for it; when you are choosing levels from the map, you can move your character in most directions except backward, meaning you can try and complete as many missions as possible before facing the boss. However, this can have major downsides, as the more time you spend, the more dangerous it gets.
Over time, the danger rises, and you are faced with more powerful enemies. This can lead to a quick downfall if you aren’t careful, as the overwhelming amount of enemies can sometimes be far more dangerous than the boss itself. This is where the best aspect of the game comes in. Alien Hominids Invasion is a four-player co-op; this means that you can have up to three friends watch your back as you conquer each level.
The sound engineering for Alien Hominid Invasion is fantastic, from the sound effects, music, and even voice acting, even if there aren’t any actual words used. The music and soundtrack work great to create an immersive background as you blast your way through level after level, as it never really gets repetitive with how often the tracks change. The sound effects were great and suited the atmosphere and playstyle of the game well.
The voice acting, on the other hand, was great; although the characters didn’t use actual words, it added to the animations in a way that, if it weren’t there, they would’ve felt a little incomplete. There were only two voice actors. Monica Franco, who voiced the Vaggi in the pilot of Hotel Hazbin, and Jermey’ Disguised Toast’ Wang, who is a popular streamer who started his career streaming Hearthstone in 2015.
The graphics of Alien Hominid Invasion are great. The art style is a lot like some of the old animations you’d find on YouTube, like the ones done by Carbots, although the style is by far closer to one of The Behemoth’s games, Castle Crashers.
Overall, Alien Hominid Invasion is a fast-paced Run ‘n Gun platformer with roguelike mechanics that is great either alone or played with friends. While it would’ve been nice to have more variety in the objectives of a level, you can tell that The Behemoth put a lot of effort into giving players a lot of ways to play the game.
