It Came From Space and Ate Our Brains

Developer: Triangle Studios
Steam Release: Mar 2015
Hours Played: 3.1
Similar To: Critical Annihilation / Deadalus - No Escape / Full Mojo Rampage / Shadowgrounds
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
With the camera view somewhere between isometric and top-down, your task in ICFSAAOB involves nothing more than running around and shooting aliens in a twin-stick set up while avoiding death. You are first zonked down into a dark enclosed location that covers an area of about eight times what you first see on the screen. Then with just a few dimly lit areas and a torch to light your way, along with your trusted firearm, you roam around the area picking off neon pink aliens whose distinctive feature are their glowing pink sinister eyes. Power-ups in the form of different coloured cubes are dotted around the area as well but need to be searched for. These redeem health (or hearts), give you a temporary weapon upgrade, add coins to your coffers or allow you to place a turret for extra support.   

BALANCE & PACE
The game is score-attack based and presents you with 12 unlockable levels or locations for you to explore. You can complete these in one of four difficulty settings (Easy, Medium, Hard or Insane). Aliens come at you in ever difficult waves of six in total via an airlift from a spaceship and vary enough to make the experience interesting. Some have no eyes and packed with more hit-points; some are giant sized and take even longer to take down, others leap at you in frog-like fashion while some snap around annoyingly while teleporting a small distance. The strategy is in finding the most effective area best to deal with them. The general gameplay mechanic is the same for each level: you're awarded coins as you kill; you purchase upgrades for your weapon and basically try and last as long as possible while amassing a high-score.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The first thing you'll notice about the game is its dominant black and neon-pink colour scheme. All aliens are pink and I just wonder what difference it would have made had they been rendered in different colours according to their type or in more distinctive styles. Still, it has a blocky paper-like feel to it approaching the voxel art-style with your character looking a bit like the Minecraft man. In fact the aesthetic reminds me of a less detailed Inside by Playdead. The game itself aims to blend the oddly comical with the downright creepy and succeeds in generating this atmosphere helped a lot by the dim light and shadows. Finally, the menus are quite fiddly and hard to navigate with the Xbox controller and as such I found it easier to just switch to the mouse when selecting which level and difficulty to play.

PROGRESS SYSTEM
There is a multiplayer component but we all know the community usually dies and moves onto something else with these lesser known indie games. In single-player, then, you're presented with 12 levels. These must be unlocked as you go, except Level 7 which is the first one on the next page. How you unlock them remains a mystery which kinda makes me feel I'm missing out on content. You select one of four difficulty settings and then pick a level. Each one displays your high-score and matches it with the difficulty setting you achieved this on. Your online rank appears on the right hand side as well which is always a good thing as it shows how you fair in the grand scheme of things and gives you something to aim for. Unfortunately, as mentioned, controller support for this portion of the game isn't that great.  

CONCLUSION

ICFSAAOB is a solid game that won't stretch you intellectually but scores high on the fun factor scale. You'll probably need to get used to its dark setting and dimly lit vibe at first but this is necessary to make the player imagine they've landed in Creepsville. There is definitely a bit of strategy in working out the best place to lure certain types of aliens before splattering them, and roaming around locations in search of power-ups is nicely rewarded so I would disagree with anyone who claims it veers towards mindless repetition. I have three gripes though: (1) you need only stick with one maxed-out weapon, making others obsolete; (2) mouse+keyboard control overrides the controller if you start a game with it, and (3) zero indication of what to do to unlock 75% of the levels. Still, fairly minor issues all. Great for a bit of squelch and splat.