Alien Swarm

This article is about the 2010 Source engine game. For the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, see Alien Swarm (mod). For the Ben 10 movie, see Ben 10: Alien Swarm.

Alien Swarm
Developer(s)	Valve Corporation
Publisher(s)	Valve Corporation
Engine	Source
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	July 19, 2010
Genre(s)	Shoot-em-up
Mode(s)	Four player co-op

Alien Swarm is a free top-down shoot-em-up by Valve Corporation. It is a remake of the Alien Swarm mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, and it was developed by the original team after they were hired by Valve.

Gameplay

Alien Swarm is a top-down shoot-em-up set at a 60 degree angle. Four players can join a single co-operative game, the aim of which is to progress through science-fiction themed levels killing waves of aliens with a selection from a 40-strong arsenal of weapons. The game includes persistent statistics, unlockables and achievements.

Classes

The game is class-based, with players choosing from the roles of Officer, Special Weapons, Medic, and Tech. Each class has two selectable characters with a difference in abilities.

The Officer grants a passive bonus to damage and damage resistance to nearby allies. He has access to a class-restricted shotgun with an incendiary grenade launcher and has general all-around abilities. They are also capable of throwing extra amounts of explosive ordnance, and may find class-restricted ammo caches on the field for his Vindicator shotgun.

The Special Weapons brings raw damage to the table and starts out with a customized autogun with superior parameters, high magazine capacity, and auto aiming ability. The Special Weapons gains access to a powerful minigun at a high enough level, and can pick up class-restricted ammo caches on the field.

The Medic is able to equip and deploy temporary healing beacons, and at a high enough level can use a "healing gun" to selectively heal teammates and themselves.

The Tech carries a motion sensor, can set up sentry guns faster, and is the only class capable of unlocking certain door panels or completing certain objectives by means of a hacking minigame. They also have access to a prototype assault rifle with auto aiming capabilities and the ability to fire stun grenades.

Development

Alien Swarm was announced in 2005 under the title of Alien Swarm: Infested as a Source engine based follow up to the original Unreal Tournament 2004 mod. However by late 2007 the development blog had stopped updating, leaving the future of the mod uncertain. In July 2010 with the announcement of Alien Swarm it was publicly revealed that Valve had hired the team behind Alien Swarm, who had finished the mod between working on other Valve products such as Left 4 Dead and Portal 2.

SDK

An Alien Swarm software development kit including buildable source code was released alongside the game. It is free to all users of Steam, rather than only to owners of existing Source games (as is the case with the 'mainline' Source SDK). This allows total conversion mods, which do not rely on content from other Valve games, to be free to all as well - a significant business decision that echoes the strategy of the Unreal Development Kit.

The SDK includes a tile-based level designing tool called TileGen, which allows level designers to prefabricate rooms and hallways that can be either arranged in a certain way or randomly arranged based on generation rules. The tool does not replace the Valve Hammer Editor, the use of which is still required before a map can be distributed.

Plot

The Alien swarm has attacked over a colony, and the marines are sent to find survivors and if need be, destroy the colony to prevent the spread of the aliens. <-- More to be added --!>

External links

• Homepage
• Steam Store page
• Steam User Forums
• Alien Swarm Wiki, an external wiki