Alien Invasion Simulator

Summary: 

retro-styled 2D arcade / psychological horror game  made over a couple weeks for the 'Themed Horror Game Jam #18' (https://itch.io/jam/themed-horror-game-jam-18). The theme of this jam was 'Alien Infiltration' (with mutliple other optional themes as well), and so I created a game that initally has you controlling 3 humans as you try to avoid the beams from alien space-ships, and then, in the second level, the player has to try and work out which of those 3 humans has been replaced by an alien imposter.

​

Inspirations:

Gameplay for the first section was inspired by classic arcade games such as 'Space Invaders' and 'Tetris', but with the added twist of having to control multiple characters by cycling through them frantically.

And the second section was inspired by many alien invasion / bodysnatcher movies such as 'The Thing', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', 'Alien', and 'The Faculty'.

The Art Style was designed to have a retro, pixelated feel, emulating the style of games on the original Gameboy. This was to pay homage to the movies the game was based  on and the technology that was available at the time, and hopefully create an unsettling retro-horror feel to the game. 

​

My Role & Collaborators:

The game was a solo project, so I was responsible for all aspects; the artwork, animations, programming, writing, and audio implementation.

The music and sound effects were sourced freesound.org and freemusicarchive.org (all of which can be found in the game's credits).

​

If you want to try the game for yourself, you can play it for free from itch.io here: 

https://commandershizzle.itch.io/alien-invasion-simulation

​

Above and below, you can see a few in-game screenshots, bits of 2D artwork, and the flowchart made in Twine of the level 2 branching conversation structure.