In Adrian Lazar together with David Kamp’s story-driven, sci-fi puzzle platformer Planet Alpha 31 you need to manipulate a constantly changing alien planet while investigating a catastrophe.
The back story here is that mankind is being forced to leave Earth and so you, as one of the space explorers, set out to find a suitable alternate home. That ends up being Alpha 31, a planet that you then work upon as part of a team of terraforming engineers – making it so humans can breathe and, eventually, live on this new planet. But something goes wrong halfway through the terraforming process and you end up being one of the few engineers left alive. You have to investigate what happened.
As you head off to explore Alpha 31, there are platforming challenges and puzzles to solve, but the cool thing is that you have to use terraforming tools to do so. You can rotate the entire planet to affect its biosphere and control alien structures. You can also morph the landscape so that it completely changes in front of your eyes. And when nightfall comes new mechanics become available as well as new interactions with the environment. The idea is to interact with a living world.
You also have a range of other gadgets including a jetpack, and there’s a focus on bringing a “retro sci-fi atmosphere” to the game, evoking loneliness and danger during the experience.
There’s no release date for Planet Alpha 31 but you can keep up with its development on its website.
