Aliens: Dark Descent strategy game announced for 2023 – features permadeath-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro

How long until a character starts quoting the film? (pic: Focus Home Interactive)

A squad based action game set in the Aliens franchise is coming next year and is aiming to be as scary as the original movies.

After last year’s Aliens: Fireteam Elite, publisher Focus Home Interactive is already back with another Aliens game. Instead of a co-op shooter, however, this one is entirely single-player and more of a real-time strategy game.

Titled Aliens: Dark Descent, it was announced during Summer Game Fest and is in development at Tindalos Interactive, the French studio behind fellow sci-fi strategy game Battlefleet: Gothic Armada – a Warhammer 40,000 tie-in.

Described as a squad-based action game, Dark Descent puts you in charge of a squad of marines who wind up stranded on the moon Lethe, which, surprise surprise, is full of aliens.

The announcement trailer was 99% cinematic with only the briefest glimpses of gameplay at the very end. However, Tindalos and Focus Home have explained a bit more about what to expect.

The game will see you recruit marines and equip them with weapons, armour, and special abilities before sending them out on missions to gather resources for fixing your spacecraft and tech upgrades for the crew.

It almost sounds like an XCOM game since permadeath is a thing. If a marine gets an alien tongue through their skull, they’re not getting back up and you’ll need to find a replacement.

The key difference is that Aliens: Dark Descent is in real-time, not turn-based, so you can’t afford to sit around and plan your next moves. Decisions need to be smart and quick, no doubt to better replicate the tense nature of the original movies.

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‘The entire team at Tindalos is dedicated to delivering a gaming experience faithful to the spirit of the Alien franchise and adding its own, never-seen-before elements to this iconic universe,’ says creative director Romain Clavier.

‘Translating from film to our game the sheer terror caused by the deadliest species known to man was quite a challenge, but I’m confident most of you will end up in strung-out shape – as Hicks himself would say.’

The game is currently slated for a 2023 release window and will come to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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