On This Day: Alien: Isolation was released on 7 October 2014

On 7 October 2014, Alien: Isolation, a survival horror game set in the Alien universe from the studio Creative Assembly, was released. Publisher Sega released it simultaneously on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Plot

The events unfold in 2137, 15 years after the disappearance of the Nostromo crew from the 1979 film. The player controls engineer Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley: she travels to the Sevastopol station of the Seegson company to learn her mother's fate, and finds the facility in decline after years of corporate negligence and the appearance of an alien on board. Over the course of the game, she also encounters hostile survivors and androids.

The alien cannot be killed, and it does not follow a predetermined route: the creature reacts to noise and tracks the player by sight and hearing. Progress is therefore built on stealth rather than direct combat, helped by a limited supply of ammunition. Amanda uses a flashlight, a motion tracker, and crafting, and can only save at specific terminals on the station.

Reception

The game received generally favourable reviews. The retrofuturistic art design, the sound, and the alien's artificial intelligence were praised, while the length and the long distances between save points were more often criticized. By May 2015, sales had exceeded two million copies. Among the awards: Best Audio at the Game Developers Choice Awards 2015 and Audio Achievement at the 11th BAFTA Games Awards ceremony.

Over time, the game reached new platforms: Linux and OS X in 2015, Nintendo Switch in 2019, and Android and iOS in 2021. In 2024, for the tenth anniversary of its release, Creative Assembly announced work on a sequel, and in 2026 the follow-up was titled Alien: Isolation 2.

Image: Ank Kumar CC BY-SA 4.0 · License

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.