Alien franchise unveils Alien: Blackout game for mobile device; developers burst forth by revealing influence from original film

We knew those no-goodnicks over at Weyland-Yutani were up to something. (Aren’t they always?) After cryptically teasing that... something... was in the works, the Alien franchise has revealed that a new game following Amanda Ripley and her fight for survival against an acid-bleeding Xenomorph will soon be available for gamers’ mobile devices. Video game publisher D3 Go! has announced that the horror-themed mobile game Alien: Blackout, would be available later this month.

In Alien: Blackout, co-developed along with FoxNext Games and Rival Games, Amanda Ripley (daughter of franchise favorite Ellen Ripley) and her crew are trapped aboard a crippled Weyland-Yutani space station along with a deadly Xenomorph (though really, is there any other kind?) that’s hunting them down. Players must rely on the damaged controls of the space station to help guide Amanda and her crew out of harm’s way through seven levels. 

"[Fans] get to experience the fear for the first time on mobile, something that the first movie is famous for, that suspense, that fear. It’s right there to be experienced on mobile, especially I would recommend you using headphones because that brings a whole different level to the immersion of the player," Jukka Laakso, CEO/founder of Rival Games, told SYFY WIRE earlier in the week during a live demonstration of the game in Manhattan.

Here’s the teaser:

Late last month, the folks behind the Alien franchise hinted that they had something cooking through its Instagram account. Last week, the official Alien Twitter account teased that something was in the works.

"Unlike the first film where Ash’s orders [are that] the crew is expendable, in this game, the crew’s not expendable," added TQ Jefferson, VP of External Development at FoxNext. "You need the crew, you need to keep them alive or as many as them as possible alive because your goals are aligned. All of you want to get off of this station. So, keeping those people healthy is critical to your success."

Courtesy of D3 Go!

Photo: D3 Go!

And for those of you who literally cannot get enough of the horrifying and harrowing misadventures of Amanda Ripley versus the Xenomorphs, Dark Horse is issuing Aliens: Resistance, a four-part comic book miniseries written by Wood with art by Robert Carey beginning January 23.

Alien: Blackout is available via the App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore on Jan. 24.  It's currently available for pre-order.

"This is the tip of the spear for a lot of activity that’s going to roll out or get announced fairly soon for the Alien franchise," Jefferson said. "This being the 40th anniversary year and Alien Day being in April just three-and-a-half months from now, I think everyone’s gonna be fairly pleased with some of the things that we’ve got brewing and that we’re gonna start announcing and rolling out in quick succession."

This story was originally publishd on 1/7 and updated on 1/11