Alien: Isolation sees 320% rise in player count on Steam

I would honestly go so far as to say that Alien: Isolation is one of the greatest horror games in recent memory. This terrifying love letter to Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece has shown that it’s still possible to do a successful adaptation of the iconic Alien universe.

Ten years on, and people are still getting the shit scared out of them. In fact, according to SteamDB (as reported by PCGamesN), many have flocked to Isolation recently. Over the last 24 hours, 1,839 players have been creeping around the Sevastopol station, hiding in lockers. While it doesn’t sound like a lot, that’s an increase of 328.7% when compared to July.

Given that Alien: Romulus released to cinemas a few days ago, it’s not hard to see what’s caused this spike in popularity for Isolation. Indeed, it kind of makes me want to go back and play the game. Again.

Not an isolated incident

The film seems to be doing pretty well, which is positive, seeing as the last installment, 2017’s Covenant, didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Before that, we got Prometheus, a prequel to the original 1979 film, which was received pretty favorably, but still had plenty of criticisms. At the time of writing, Romulus has an IMDb score of 7.5, so it’s doing alright so far.

To add onto that, Alien: Isolation‘s spike in Steam playerbase may also be down to the fact that the game is currently 80% off on PC, with generous discounts on PS5 and Xbox as well. The promotion is ongoing for the next few hours on Steam and the next few days for console if you haven’t checked out the game yet. No doubt these slashed prices are to coincide with the launch of the new film.

It’s no surprise to see Alien: Isolation included in a list of the best sci-fi horror games of all time, up there with the likes of Dead Space and System Shock 2. It’s a terrifying ordeal having to outwit the intelligent Xenormorph that stalks the halls with pretty advanced AI. I remember the first time I finished playing it. Steam clocked me in at around 28 hours in total. I’m pretty sure at least 23 of those hours were me cowering in lockers.

It is a shame Creative Assembly hasn’t given us Isolation 2 – especially as the first game is nearly a decade old at this point – but we can at least look forward to Alien: Rogue Incursion. Well, if you have a VR headset, that is.