While there were a few things we knew to expect from today’s Xbox Partner Preview event, like a new look at Stranger Than Heaven and the reveal of a new STALKER 2 expansion, there was a lot we didn’t know about before the show. Like the reveal of Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish, or that Sniper Elite and Atomfall developer Rebellion’s next game would be a first-person, sci-fi survival horror game called Alien Deathstorm.
The trailer (which you can see below) begins with the game’s protagonist, who Rebellion is mysteriously keeping unnamed for now, only referring to them as “The Combat Engineer” in the Xbox Wire blog post that went live alongside the new trailer, wandering around what appears to be some kind of destroyed station. As the trailer cuts between different snippets of them exploring this abandoned area, we see one of the game’s major threats in this monstrous alien creature that chases you around.
But by the end of the trailer, we get a look at what is clearly the main threat to be wary of, the massive storms that can tear apart whole buildings with deadly wind speeds. It’s quite the spectacle and definitely lives up to the name, at least at first glance, of ‘Alien Deathstorm.’
Ben Fisher, head of design at Rebellion, dug a bit more into what’s going on in Alien Deathstorm and where the studio took its inspiration from. Firstly, what Fisher and Rebellion are willing to say about the game’s plot and what you’re doing in this game so far is “the player has been dispatched to this remote, off-world facility as a result of a complete loss of communications. Their job is to determine what has suddenly caused the colony to fall silent, and then try to save as many lives as possible.”
A pretty vague and mysterious setting, but when Fisher digs into the game’s inspirations, that description makes a bit more sense. “We’ve been inspired by the slightly more analogue world of 1980s sci-fi, which is much more mechanical keyboard than it is touchscreen. We think it’s given our colony a chunky, lived-in aesthetic that has a genuinely unique feel. We’ve taken influences from everything from Lovecraftian eldritch horror to 1980s VHS sci-fi, so we think that people will be intrigued by what we’ve built.”
Fisher goes on to describe the game as a “true hybrid” between “high-tension exploration and discovery” gameplay and the kind of action-shooter gameplay the studio is already known for. “If we had to describe it as anything it’s an ‘action horror’ game with a layer of constant threat and environmental discovery that fully supports the second-to-second ballistic action,” says Fisher.
Fisher also adds that he believes the combination of a shooter and a survival horror is “under-explored,” and that Alien Deathstorm will stand out from other shooters or survival horror titles because of its hybrid nature. We’ll see how right about that he is when Alien Deathstorm arrives on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S sometime in 2027.
Alien Deathstorm, a New First-Person Survival Horror Game From Sniper Elite and Atomfall Studio Rebellion Revealed
