By Jim Rossignol on December 15th, 2010 at 4:14 pm.
We’re used to corridor shooters, but corridor strategies? That’s what Sigma Team (they of Alien Shooter) are up to with Alien Hallway. It takes place in… a… hallway. Yes. Aliens are attacking and you have to use your mind to organise the defense. Of the hallway. Sort of tower defence with creeps on both sides, or something, single path sort of DOTA thing. Yeah, it actually looks about a million times more fun than I am making it sound. I’m terrible at this. Go watch the video, below.
Alien Hallway is out now. (News via Blues! Love you, Blue.)
15/12/2010 at 16:21 CMaster says:
It actually looks like another take on the Age of War style gameplay that’s enjoyed quite a lot of success in the land of Flash games.
15/12/2010 at 16:23 Gnoupi says:
Or like Swords & Soldiers, I would have in mind.
16/12/2010 at 07:21 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Exactly what I was thinking.
15/12/2010 at 16:25 NicoPonk says:
Looks like a solo variation on DOTA.
15/12/2010 at 16:42 Rich says:
So DOTA without all the venom directed at new players. Sounds good.
15/12/2010 at 17:48 Barnaby says:
I played DotA for quite a while (without realizing how popular it was) back in the day and I still have never understood A) why people think it is difficult B) how DotA player’s tone towards newbs is that different from other games that require a bit of skill/know-how?
Played Counterstrike? Played any game on the internet?
15/12/2010 at 17:57 socks says:
I had an aptitude for thing. Apparently others don’t, and it seems they had a different experience related to thing compared to mine. What gives?
15/12/2010 at 18:19 Kdansky says:
DOTA is very bad at giving you feedback if you are playing well. DOTA also excels at being cryptic and inaccessible, where you can choose from seventy bajillion items and spells in the beginning, and you have no clue at all what’s good or not. It’s like guild wars, except you have to select your skills under time pressure. It’s not hard to play when you have some experience, but it is impossible to get in and not totally suck. Even in an e-sports game like SC2, you can just spam some random units, and that results in you being decent. You don’t have to know about which units counter which (pro tip: Having more stuff counters everything), or even what some abilities of certain units do. You can get by with basic RTS-sense (build stuff, get money, build more stuff, attack his stuff).
15/12/2010 at 19:25 log says:
@Barnaby:
A) Because it is.
B) Because they are.
15/12/2010 at 22:07 Barnaby says:
Congratulations on being able to make snarky remarks, socks and log. Your names are about as interesting as your input.
Kdansky, all that does make sense. Some of the tomes and upgrades were confusing but after a few play throughs I was able to distinguish what was good and what sucked. Good point though.
16/12/2010 at 00:29 malkav11 says:
With most competitive team-based games, if you suck, you’re just not going to pull your weight for the team, whereas the game design of DOTA actively rewards the opposing team if you’re a bad/new player. So, I’ve never actually dealt with the community, but it would make sense for them to be problematic for a new player. You’re not just useless, you’re actively helping the other side. Who wants to deal with that?
16/12/2010 at 03:41 Jahn says:
@Kdansky
Regarding SC (not to derail), if you are spamming random units and doing decent then you are playing against someone who also does not know what they’re doing.
I think an important distinction to make is that in e-sports like codblops, it is pretty clear that you are not doing well because you are not fast/accurate/clever enough, whereas in DOTA I failed repeatedly without really knowing why.
15/12/2010 at 16:45 Schaulustiger says:
Looks interesting, but if I have to pay extra money to extend the download period to a mere two years, it’s basically a no-go right now. And I noticed: if you leave the payment site (regnow), you are offered a 20% discount via popup. Might be useful for those who actually intend to buy the thing.
15/12/2010 at 17:26 8-bit says:
So after years of making the same game over and over and over and over and over they are finally doing something different? Well that sounds like a risky strategy to me.
The 20% discount as mentioned above is now 15% still the price they are asking isn’t that bad, I remember they were charging £15 for zombie shooter when that first came out. Any word on a demo there doesn’t seem to be one on the site and I know they usually do have them.
15/12/2010 at 20:36 Malawi Frontier Guard says:
Hello.
It’s only different if you never played a Flash game in your life. The recent Swords & Soldiers is exactly the same thing, for example.
16/12/2010 at 00:30 malkav11 says:
And yet, it’s substantially different than the other dozen games that the same team has made, which are all slight variations on having a single player character murder the hell out of giant swarms of enemies.
15/12/2010 at 20:18 DrGonzo says:
It sounds like Power of Defence. Which seemed to get bad feedback, but I quite enjoyed it for a couple of evenings.
15/12/2010 at 20:37 simon says:
i misread the title & thought this was a remake of the speccy classic “Alien Highway”, took me back
to a happy time long ago…….
16/12/2010 at 02:07 DrazharLn says:
^^ spam
My plan is to teach your spam filter to delete comments that I reply to with the string “^^ spam”. Then I will (naturally) abuse the hell out of this power.
16/12/2010 at 02:07 DrazharLn says:
^^ spam
16/12/2010 at 02:52 ed hardy says:
This article is informative and interesting Good quality and cheaper! hope your life is full of happiness!
16/12/2010 at 06:58 Kektain says:
^^spam
16/12/2010 at 06:59 Kektain says:
^^ spam