I started playing this game not expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised, because it’s a solid game by itself, despite its age. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but overall the game is very well done. There is no nostalgia here, I never even saw this game on the few shareware discs of the late 90s that I had. I played the GOG version, but it’s also available on Steam.

Keep in mind that 1996 was the year Quake and Duke Nukem 3D were released, so a number of less technologically impressive games were more easily ignored by players. It’s also interesting to note that the game began development under Apogee, but ended up sold to Inner Circle, who finished the development.

The good stuff:

  • Really good looking pixel graphics
  • If you like violence and gore, there’s plenty here
  • Death sends you back to the last checkpoint with full health - the only setback is that you lose 20% of your cash and some enemies respawn. I never would’ve expected this mechanic in a game from 1996
  • Levels will take around 15-25 minutes to finish the first time and offer a good variety of platforming and exploration
  • Plenty of speedrun possibilities - jumping is much faster than walking, shooting while walking allows you to rapid fire by tapping a direction, dying can be a time saver.[1]
  • Decent enemy variety
  • Only bugs I’ve encountered were sound related, and only twice during ~5h of total playtime
  • My overall feeling regarding level design is that they’re well done for the most part, with some light puzzles and help from the friendly ape aliens. Only 2 times I really felt like I had no fucking clue of what to do or where to go.

The meh:

  • I can’t enter the hall of fame at www.alienrampage.com anymore :(
  • The fucking camera not following you properly while you’re jumping
  • Money is only used to buy ammo, no shop sells health packs
  • Action keys can only be remapped between CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and SPACE BAR.
  • Couldn’t get a XInput controller to work with the game, the analog kept reading/inputting up for some reason. The face buttons worked fine, tho.
  • You’re better off playing with the Numpad instead of the arrow keys - easier to aim. Also, the camera will only pan downwards if you’re aiming down (1 or 3 on numpad), crouching won’t do.
  • Most of the free ammo you find on stages is to renew your bolter, which has regenerating ammo.
  • The first boss is much harder than the 2nd, the latter is only hard because of bats.
  • Saving is only between levels. Can’t replay levels unless you load a game for that specific level.

The shit:

  • Fucking bats
  • No music. Not a bug or a version problem, the only bit of music in the game is in the short opening cinematic.
  • Some levels are really asshole-ish in design, this happens more later on. Lots of leaping towards places you can’t quite see. The last 4 levels have some mines that are like 5x3 pixels.
  • Tiny enemies that swarm you will shred your face in no time
  • Armor and Cloak powerups border on being useless, given how short their effect is (i think 15 seconds?)
  • The levels where you pilot a ship. The last level even crashed the first time I actually beat it, after 20+ deaths.

  1. Judging from the times available at the archived Hall of Fame, a legit run can be done in 41 minutes and possibly less (#18 Locritani Nicola’s time is 0:41:40). There are a number of sub 10 minute entries, which means there might be some exploits or level skips - or those fellas actually cheated and got away with it :) ↩︎