Thwarting an Alien Invasion, one home run at a time.
Aliens Go Home Run! is a combination of Breakout and the Shoot 'Em Up genre with a Baseball theme. The game was developed by ANIM•ACE and released for PC in January 2017.
The game puts you in the shoes of Sally, a young girl with a passion for baseball. When she hits a home run so hard, the ball flies into space and crashes into a faraway planet belonging to an alien race called the Gui, creating a crater in the process. Now, the Gui are invading Earth as revenge, and its up to Sally to save the day!
A beat 'em up sequel called Homeworld Run was announced
in 2023.
Play ball!
- Alien Invasion: The main invading force.
- Bag of Spilling: Averted. Powerups are kept between levels, so you'll find yourself back at 1-1 a lot later on.
- Batter Up!: The protagonist is a batter after all. You can aim your hits towards the sides or straight up and fire projectiles when BatWave is active.
- Big Bad: Commander Malloc is the leader of the alien invaders.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: The final battle starts with no ball for you to use, but Guis you can knock around soon walk by.
- Boss Rush: Unlocked after clearing the game.
- Breaking Out: You must clear every block on the screen while avoiding enemy fire. A combination that's been hardly heard of other than the very first Touhou Project game.
- Bullet Hell: The grey Radix can fire bullet spreads towards you. The danmaku can get pretty dense later on.
- Degraded Boss: The Big Theta shows up as a normal enemy in World 5, but it's hard to call it degraded when it can respawn and is backed up by the rest of the enemy cast.
- Drought Level of Doom: Powerups become much rarer towards the end of the game, where most blocks take three hits to destroy and the enemies are relentless.
- Excuse Plot: A young batter named Sally accidentally provokes an alien invasion and now must fight them off. This involves clearing walls of colored blocks for some reason.
- General Ripper: Commander Malloc, as evidenced in the opening cutscene where he's the only one intent on invading Earth as retaliation for the ball crashing into their planet whereas the other aliens couldn't care much until he "persuades" them to. His Steam card outright describes him as ruthless to the point that he makes even the rest of the Gui's military force worried, but unable to do anything about it due to his high rank.
- Helpful Mook: Guis that come on foot to take shots at you can be used as free multiballs.
- Hit Points: Three "strikes" and you're out. Using the first slot in the powerup gauge or landing a hit on a boss will recover your health.
- Level Editor: Available from the beginning.
- Mercy Invincibility: Both you and the enemies get a period of invincibility after getting hit.
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Nintendo Hard: The hardest stages in the game have dense Bullet Hell and require you keep track of several kinds of enemies at once who are all designed to complement each other. Some stages can take a while and, inevitably for this kind of game, you might have trouble getting the ball to hit that one last block and end up starting all over after getting caught off guard by some stray bullet. - Personal Space Invader: Floats are green blobs that float towards you in groups. They take damage from any of your actions but will trap you if they do manage to catch Sally. Smashing Survival will set you free, but often not quickly enough to avoid damage from something else.
- Power-Up: The game uses the Gradius powerup system. Items spawn from blocks or the sky seemingly at random and must be picked up to change the active slot at the powerup gauge. By activating the gauge, you can heal yourself, set a bubble shield, spawn a temporary multiball or get 30 projectiles to use.
- Razor Wind: The BatWave powerup allows you to fire 30 projectiles.
- Respawning Enemies: Destroyed enemies will come back after a while.
- Score Multiplier: You get bonus points for every block you clear without letting the ball hit the ground.
- Scoring Points: The game records your best score and time for each stage.
- Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Destructors slam themselves down if Sally stays under them for too long. And you'll need to do that because they can only be damaged by Sally's slide.
- Tennis Boss: The final boss battle devolves into this once Malloc pulls out a bat of his own.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Sally scoring a home run that goes right into space is what causes the aliens to declare war on Earth when the ball crashes onto their planet.
- Victory Pose: Sally begins happily jumping in place when the last block is hit. Notice that this works against you, because the last block always drops an item. You better be right under it when it gets hit.
- Video Game Dashing: You can slide through most of the bullets in the game. However, certain attacks from some bosses can't be phased through.
- Video Game Tutorial: The title screen is playable and contains basic instructions for playing the game.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Ferror is the first boss with a heavily shielded body that's immune to your Razor Wind projectiles.
- Home Run!
