PLANET ALPHA is an atmospheric side-scrolling platform adventure game. Combining exploration, creative puzzles, stealth mechanics and a unique art style to create an unforgettable experience. You awake on a strange alien world that is home to many mysterious, exotic flora and fauna.

By Shawn Petraschuk The program, a $5,000,000 dollar development fund created by Epic back in 2015, provides a no-strings-attached monetary boost given out to select developers and creators every year. Among the winners of the inaugural offering was Adrian Lazar and his ambitious project, PLANET ALPHA.

Crediting the honor with being the catalyst he needed to turn his part-time passion project into a full-time development studio, Adrian is on the precipice of releasing PLANET ALPHA for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on September 4, 2018.Employing a unique mechanic of controlling the cycle of day to night and back again, PLANET ALPHA is a mixed bag of quick platforming, puzzle solving and stealth mechanics. Colorful environments brought to life by Unreal Engine 4 will see players tackle everything from lush forests alive with organisms of all sizes, mysterious caverns rife with danger, and magical skyborne lands complete with massive flying creatures of myth and legend. It’s a visual feast that’s full of life at every turn.As the title prepares for launch, we caught up with Adrian Lazar to learn more about PLANET ALPHA’s growth from being a personal project to becoming a highly-anticipated initial offering for a newly-found studio.

With a ton of experience on his resume, Adrian imparts his advice on what burgeoning developers should learn and tells us about the tools in Unreal Engine 4 that served the studio best over the past four years. You've put together a small, talented team for PLANET ALPHA. Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for jumping into indie development.At 32, when I started my game development studio, I had worked for other people for about 14 years in eight different companies of all sizes and I really, really wanted to try something new.After two years I managed to finance the project and at the beginning of 2016, I hired two people onto the core team with whom I had worked with before in other companies. In total, seven people worked on developing PLANET ALPHA.Together we took the game to a level I never thought possible and I’m looking forward to making more games with them in the future!For anyone unfamiliar with PLANET ALPHA, please tell us about the game's premise.PLANET ALPHA is an adventure that takes place in a living alien world where you have the unique ability of being able to control the day and night cycle. It combines fast platforming, puzzles and stealth elements with a unique art-style to create an unforgettable experience.So that’s the elevator pitch, but what I hope is for the game to be received as a fresh take on a genre that is almost as old as the industry itself, an experience that will carry the player to a place that fascinates and intrigues at the same time.One of the first things that struck me while watching the PLANET ALPHA trailer was how alive the world felt.

How difficult was it for you to bring your environments together into something very much moving and breathing?We did countless iterations on the game, including a complete change of direction, but the feeling of being stranded on a living alien planet was one of the few things that stayed true from start to finish. From the beginning, we built the team and the workflow with this target in mind and every asset that we created had to contribute to this feeling.Being a small team means that each of us needs to wear different hats most of the time, which worked great for the type of experience we’re building — a diverse game both in looks and gameplay.It looks like PLANET ALPHA has a broad mix of platforming crossed with some unique puzzle play as well. What can you tell us about the gameplay mechanics in PLANET ALPHA?Because the game started as a personal project, we skipped a few steps. For example, we never had a proper game design document. Instead, we relied on the game to develop itself in an organic way and we let ideas generate other ideas. This is true for the story, the environments, and the gameplay — each one feeding the other.We never planned to have platforming, puzzles, stealth, and exploration from the beginning but different situations require different approaches so that is how the mix of gameplay mechanics came to be.For example, the player was originally equipped with a gun and able to fight but we removed this about halfway into production.

Of course, that now left us needing to find another way for the player to overcome the enemies — that’s when stealth and the ability to use the environment to your advantage came to be.At the same time, it was important for us to keep the different mechanics as natural as possible, to avoid having them feeling forced. To give you an example of this, in the dark alien jungle you should be more worried about what could eat you, rather than falling to your death. On the other hand, while on the unstable floating islands, it’s more important to watch your steps because it’s a long way down.How much did it mean to the team being the recipients of the Unreal Dev Grant? How has that extra help aided you in development of PLANET ALPHA?The Unreal Dev Grant was what made our studio possible in the first place and I can’t overstate how beneficial it was.I started working on PLANET ALPHA in 2013 and for almost two years I kept trying to finance the production of the game without success. But at the beginning of 2015, I received the Unreal Dev Grant and things snowballed from there.It allowed me to submit a prototype to the Indie Prize Singapore where it won three awards for Best In Show, Most Promising Game in Development, and Best Game Art.

PLANET ALPHAPLANET ALPHA, a beautiful alien world filled with mystery and danger. Mantis burn racing xbox one. Pursued by relentless enemies, you must harness the power of night and day as you struggle to survive. Developer: Publisher:Genre:,Languages:,Tags: (42), (41), (40), (21), (13), (10), (9), (7)Category: Single-player, Steam Achievements, Full controller support, Steam Trading Cards, Steam CloudRelease date: Sep 4, 2018Price: $19.99Old userscore: 70% Metascore: 72%Owners: 100,000. 200,000Followers: 7,120Peak concurrent players yesterday: 12YouTube stats: 45 views and 3 comments for top 50 videos uploaded last week, 3 new videos uploaded yesterday.