Genesis Alpha One

 PC
Metascore
67

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 16
  3. Negative: 1 out of 16
  1. Riot Pixels
    Feb 10, 2019
    40
    The game quickly loses steam, even though at first it seems fun, and its retro-futuristic design is charming throwback to fan-favorite movies of the 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, the monotony inevitably leads to boredom as the game has nothing to challenge you with except to repeat the same few actions over and over.

Awards & Rankings

80
#80 Most Shared PC Game of 2019

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
4.7

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 56 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 56
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 56
  3. Negative: 27 out of 56
  1. Nightvol
    Jan 31, 2019
    6
    Lifeless would be the best word to describe it. It feels more like an unfinished job and the premise gives me little hope.

    You spend most    Lifeless would be the best word to describe it. It feels more like an unfinished job and the premise gives me little hope.

    You spend most of the time assigning clones to do jobs on the ship. For reasons I do not understand those jobs were unable to be automated by a space faring species. Your clones must manually scan planets, manually take care of plants etc... This would not be a problem if you had enough clones to go around. But you do not. And you must manage every aspect of their activity constantly and only from very specific rooms. For example if you finished collecting the materials around the ship and no longer need clones in the beam room you must go to the refinery and use the console there to assign them to work at refining things. They do not go about doing needed tasks like in most of this games (Rimworld for example).
    Then there is the part where you are descending onto planets to gather resources, plants, biomass and intel for new things to build. However this whole business gets old really fast. Remember how a species able of intergalactic travel does not have a smart enough AI to manage plant cultivation... well they can't automate mining either. So you must click hold some ray to a rock to collect stuff from it. Time and time again. While random aliens spam around to attack you. The whole area is the size of a sports field. It has hardly any detail. Some rock formations here, some grass there... The very messy graphics do not help much either as the area around is even uglier.

    Maybe it is because I played through SOMA a few days ago, but I can not help feeling a bit of unease when playing the game. You are a clone, on a ship inhabited by other clones. Nothing wrong with that but the said clones have 0 life. I do not much care about voice acting but I wish i could at least work on their appearance to at least simulate some personality.
    The human clones look like cheap plastic mannequins. The alien ones make no sense. If the purpose of Genesis was to expand humanity in the universe how does cloning aliens achieve the purpose!? The game says that alien DNA is used to enhance the human one. But the product is described as being of different race and appears to be as far away from humans as you could get.

    You get no overall information regarding your ship. No information regarding your crew. The ship looks bad. The alien worlds are just open boring space. Your crew is made of nothing but mindless clones. The enemies run towards you in a straight line. 0 inteligence. 0 life.    … Full Review »
  2. konvice
    Jan 31, 2019
    0
    First impression is positive, but its only first impression. Game is Empty, there is only one playable mission(harvest resources) andFirst impression is positive, but its only first impression. Game is Empty, there is only one playable mission(harvest resources) and defending "ship" is boring when you figure out how to defend.
    Only one mission...in which you can gain resources and technologie made this game just other clone of tower defense.    … Full Review »
  3. Skotchberry
    Feb 27, 2019
    8
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. After reading the negative reviews, I'm not seeing much "review" content. Some folks seem to generally dislike the game. Understandable. But it's a gem. Could the developers have done more? Sure. But like a professional review stated, they "stuck with what worked and didn't try to complicate that". There's a lot of simple in this game. Quite a bit of "repeat tractor beaming debris fields while sending dudes on planets to scavenge for **** All of this comes with a situation to be dealt with. If you choose to go onto a planet with your clones to scavenge, you will do battles down there and most likely come back to your ship without any dangers to bring on-board, with the goods. If you send your clones alone and stay aboard your ship, they will most likely come back with some alien stowaways, as well as the goods, which your crew can deal with easily alongside some well placed turrets. The downside being some aliens, upon death, emit a toxic cloud that can infect crew-members or spread beneath the flooring of the ship, prompting the captain, you, to manually go on a clean-up expedition around the ship to prevent further outbreak and module destruction. A very big part of me feels like I'm inside a 3D FPS version of FTL (Faster Than Light) without ship-to-ship battles. The only control of the ship is by warping around a grid-based galaxy with around 300 locations to scavenge/explore. There is a threat similar to FTL, but it randomly moves about the galaxy grid, and when coming within range of your ship, will begin to beam it's hostile crew aboard to do wanton destruction to your hard-earned resources and newly built modules. The game is tough in the beginning, but the mechanics don't seem to change much beyond finding dangerously EXTREME planets and debris fields which will almost 100% of the time bring about the baddiest of baddies to your scavenger or aboard the mothership. Once you get enough modules built, and scavenge enough sulfur to plant an army of turrets around your ship, it's a matter of finding a planet suitable for colonization, and filling your ship with the required number of species to begin said colonization. Once that happens, you beam onto the suitable planet, commit to a small expedition through some caves to kill a queen alien, which can be challenging (even on first play-through), and then you begin the settlement process which is "Game Win". After, at the game menu, you have a new option that you can begin a New Game+ with your previous ship in the state it was in upon completing the game. I have yet to do this, but I imagine the stakes are raised quite a bit and there's more of a reason to get upgraded rooms and upgraded weapons and DNA injections for clones to have abilities, which I did not need to do to complete a first run-through. Needless to say, just like FTL, you won't get what you want out of this game with one play-through. It needs to be played multiple times, with the multiple corporations and the multiple ship designs they come with. Just like FTL, each play will be random, and you can adjust, to some degree, your starting conditions. I played this for 48-hours straight after purchase. It takes a lot for a game to do that to me. This deserves more recognition. Amazing game.… Full Review »
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