Some of the most interesting games are those that take familiar genres and mash them together in ways you might not expect. Imagine my surprise when I sit down to demo Genesis Alpha One and find out that it’s a roguelike first-person shooter ship builder. Yeah, the crazy look I’m imagining on your face is exactly what I was feeling. It’s a clashing of genres unlike any other that creates a game with a fascinating premise and gameplay loop.
Upon starting the game, you select a faction and receive a randomly generated crew, a new ship, and a procedural galaxy map. The massive grid showed a ton of sectors, each with a number of planets to visit and mine for resources. I know, this is sounding similar to another recent space travel title, but bear with me for a moment. The next part they showed me was building your ship. This switches things to an external builder style view, allowing you to place different rooms (called modules) needed for your ship to survive in deep space and hallways that connect them. The moment you place a module or hallway, you can instantly jump back to first person view and explore your new ship.
The ship is fully customizable, so you can change the color of your hallways (a beautiful magenta color was selected for my demonstration), as well as naming each of the modules at the doorway, so maybe hydroponics has a scrolling sign above the door that reads “Chandy’s Treehouse” or something else much more clever tha...