Defend Earth or conquer it in The Day They Landed

The Day They Landed is a multiplayer shooter in which you take on the role of either an alien invader from beyond the stars or a rural American trying to defend your town from the intruders. This game features asymmetric gameplay, pitting desktop players against VR players.

Battle for the fate of the planet

The Day They Landed is an ambitious multiplayer game. The idea of splitting up different players according to their hardware has interesting effects. For instance, the alien player compensates for the lack of movement support in VR by gaining a teleport ability, while the conventional FPS human player runs around like any character in a shooter game. The downside to this bold idea is that genuine asymmetry can result in unbalance; the game can often feel like the human player has a significant movement and aiming advantage. The graphics are simple, but evoke the feel of a low-budget 1950s sci-fi movie effectively.

An interesting experiment

If you’re interested in the possibilities of VR and cross-platform gaming, The Day They Landed is worth checking out. It hasn’t quite cracked the secret of balancing multiple platforms, but it has some interesting ideas.