Aliens: Neoplasma is a homebrew ZX Spectrum game that was released by a Russian dev team called “SaNchez” in 2019. The game is for Spectrum 128K models only and is a run-and-gun shooter with platforming elements. It’s available in English, Russian and Spanish (each language is a separate download).

You play as medical lieutenant Ashley Smith and are on a spaceship on its way back to Earth from Hadley’s Hope, carrying ore samples and colony staff. While the game doesn’t specify when in the timeline this is happening, it is unlikely to be after the events of the film Aliens (because Hadley’s Hope was vaporised by the explosion of the atmospheric processing station). What quickly becomes apparent, though, is that face-huggers and xenomorphs are prowling the decks of the ship and you are alone in fighting them.

At first you have no weapons at your disposal, but after a short trip to a weapons locker you get a pulse rifle and some grenades. The aim of the game then becomes survival, and searching through the maze of corridors and air vents in order to find an escape pod.

Graphically, Aliens: Neoplasma looks great. The animation of the player character and the aliens are excellent. The music is also very good, if a bit repetitive.

Gameplay-wise, running, jumping and shooting feels good. One particular gameplay mechanic I liked was shaking off face-huggers into fan blades. If a face-hugger attaches itself to you you can press left and right quickly to ‘shake’ it off. If you shake it off into a nearby fan blade it won’t keep coming back at you. That I thought was pretty cool.

Aliens: Neoplasma is a short game and doesn’t have a great deal of depth to it. You’re basically going from one communication station to another in order to progress the story and unlock doors that are blocking your progress.

Unfortunately the story and dialogue text is badly-written and poorly translated to English, and the ‘t’ in the game font doesn’t look like a ‘t’ and is difficult to read. These are the two weakest aspects of the game and could easily have been fixed, and it’s a pity they weren’t.

Overall, Aliens: Neoplasma is a decent enough modern homebrew game that is worth investigating, but it does make me wonder how much better it could have been if it’d been polished more, and also had a few more player tasks incorporated into the game. While the presentation is very good, the story and gameplay are somewhat lacking. I’ve also got no idea what the “Neoplasma” part of the title means (it doesn’t seem to be explained in any of the game’s exposition), which further adds to the disappointment.

More: Aliens: Neoplasma on zxonline.net
More: Aliens: Neoplasma on spectrumcomputing.co.uk