Alien Hominid is a 2D side-scrolling shooter flash game which lead to the development of the identically titled home console game. This version is a single level consisting of 2 boss fights and a mini-boss fight.
Combat
Shooting
This game features your standard side-scrolling shooter mechanics: The character can shoot in 3 (4 mid-air) cardinal directions. If an enemy is in close proximity, Hominid will use a melee attack instead. The player can only have 3 bullets visible on the screen at once, meaning spam-firing can result in missing out on damage and optimal kills.
Downward shooting mid-air is used frequently in this run to take out enemies entering the screen as quickly as possible.
Enemy riding
One unique feature of this game is the ability to ride enemies. This is performed by pressing Down+Jump above an enemy. Devouring an enemy's head in this state will scare nearby hostiles. One notable mechanic of this feature is that ridden enemies are suspectible to friendly fire. This mechanic is used a few times in the run(see 00:35).
Power-ups and Others
The game has additional ammo types obtainable as power-ups: Fire ammo and "Big" ammo. The former will deal x2 damage to the enemies and bosses but it introduces a lengthy death animation on regular enemies. The latter will deal x3 damage and can penetrate enemies. Both power-ups provide a limited number of bullets before reverting to the default type.
The game features a single barricade which the player must jump over. This barrier can also reflect bullets, which is used once in the run (1:13).
Boss Fights
Running Robot Fight
The intended mechanic is to use the awning of the nearby building to avoid the robot's running attack. Instead, I stick to the edges of the screen to stay as close to the boss as possible. The boss' second attack is a sweeping laser beam in two different heights. Luckily, the boss is dealt with before the floor sweep begins.
Helicoper Fight (Mini-boss?)
A small optimization is performed before the boss has spawned by sticking to the right of the screen: This prevents an additional enemy spawn on the left, instantly triggering the boss fight.
I have managed to bring "Big Ammo" for this fight, dealing triple damage to the enemy. Not much else to be said for this boss fight.
Final Boss Fight
The robot's laser cannon must be used as a platform to deal damage to its head. Besides the laser cannon, the boss has two reactive attacks:
- If the player shoots the head from close proximity, the boss will punch the player. While non-lethal, it will waste time due to having to climb on the laser cannon again
- If the player is below or on the boss' head, it will perform a lethal stomp move and kill the player instantly.
This fight consists of dealing as many shots to its head as possible during each jump without entering its attack range(s). This boss is not affected by power-up damage modifiers, hence the fire power-up was skipped prior to this fight.
RNG
While the enemy variety is limited (besides the bosses and the singular grenade enemy, the same two enemy instances are continuously recycled), the enemy movement is reliant on RNG, making optimizations quite tedious due to frequent de-syncs.
Similarly, power-up spawns and types are RNG dependent, with "Big Ammo" being the preferred type.
Possible Improvements
This run heavily relies on RNG, there's certainly room for improvement on enemy movements and item drops. In particular, manipulating the item drops to bring "Big Ammo" to the first boss fight could save additional time.
Info Teddy: Replaced file with corrected platform annotation.
Info Teddy: Great job here. Accepting to Standard.
