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. 4P.de
    Feb 1, 2019
    74
    The mixture of resource management, ship-builder and shooter is conceptually quite interesting, but especially the planetary missions don’t live up to the potential.
  2. Gameblog.fr
    Feb 11, 2019
    70
    First thought as rogue-like, Genesis: Alpha One brings a lot of interesting management elements. Thus mixing design, action / FPS and strategy in the way to reach its goal (to find a new planet and to colonize it), it proposes a large number of different directions and a beautiful variety of situations. Beginners in rogue-likes may be a little bit lost because of the not-so-clear indications on how to proceed, but if they manage to go beyond frustration and a technical level below average, Genesis : Alpha One might deliver some good experiences.
  3. Cultured Vultures
    Feb 4, 2019
    65
    Genesis Alpha One could become a good game, but at the moment, it’s limited, slow and very boring indeed.
  5. GameCritics
    Feb 4, 2019
    60
    Everything in Genesis Alpha One ultimately boils down to being over-ambitious. I appreciate the attempt and see something great beneath the surface somewhere, but in its current state it’s just too rough to recommend. With more assets, more things to do, and shortening the grind of finding resources and blueprints, it might be worth building a spaceship and breeding a clone army. For now, it looks like humanity’s mission to repopulate is a failure.
  6. GameWatcher
    Jan 30, 2019
    60
    The truth is, Genesis Alpha One feels like an Early Access game, far from the polished status one would expect from a full release – even an indie one. While the concept is intriguing and very promising, the lack of immersion and design decisions make everything exhausting. If you’re interested in a roguelike sci-fi game, you could give Genesis a shot, but don’t expect much from what is clearly an unfinished title.
  7. PC Gamer
    Feb 28, 2019
    59
    Genesis Alpha One splices the DNA of some good ideas, but doesn’t execute any of them well enough.
  8. Hooked Gamers
    Feb 4, 2019
    50
    Genesis Alpha One, at its best, is an engaging resource-management sim that gives a good approximation of what I imagine running a ship out in the middle of space would be. However, the first-person perspective seems to have shifted the design towards a combat-oriented game with resource management elements, and unfortunately that is not where the game’s strengths lie. If you can get on board with the lacklustre gunplay, there’s some fun to be had organising your ship and crew, but the combat elements seem at odds with the slow pace of the rest of the game.
  9. Hardcore Gamer
    Jan 31, 2019
    50
    Unfortunately the considerable lack of polish, indecisively wonky aesthetic and utterly dismal implementation of random events both visually and structurally — of which can leave your six/seven/eight hour run feeling wasted for nothing — leaves Genesis Alpha One feeling like an early build with far too many a hole to plug. There are some pleasant joys and novel moments to be had amidst the mundane and the cumbersome, but in the end, Radiation Blue’s multi-genre spanning venture — ambitious its intentions may be — delivers both an underbaked and amateurishly constrained effort.

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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