''Alien Breed 3D'' is a

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

, the fourth game in

Team17 Team17 Group plc is a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish developer Team 7. A ...

's ''

Alien Breed ''Alien Breed'' is a series of top-down science fiction shoot 'em up video games developed by Team17 primarily for the Amiga in the 1990s, heavily inspired by the ''Alien'' films and featuring game play reminiscent of the classic arcade game Ga ...

'' franchise, a series of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

-themed shooters. It was published in 1995 by

Ocean Software Ocean Software Ltd was a British software development company that became one of the biggest European video game developers and video game publisher, publishers of the 1980s and 1990s. The company was founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and wa ...

. It was followed by a sequel, '' Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds'', in 1996.

Plot

Osiris III's commanding officer, Captain J.T. Reynolds contacts Earth Defense Force General R.E. Grant reporting how the secret Project Osiris has slipped out of scientists' hands: attempts have been made to cultivate the alien eggs found in Azirin by

cloning Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, cl ...

them and combining with

human DNA The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the n ...

, leading to remarkable results, but due to system failures, the Breed has been unleashed and killed people at the research station. In the message, Reynolds announces that he has found weapons and other supplies in a decommissioned

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

and plans to return to the base to find an escape route from the planet and possibly destroy the Breed's source in the meantime before his own oxygen supplies dwindle.

Gameplay

''Alien Breed 3D'' is a

. The game has maps of varying depths with platforms and floors above others, something the ''Doom'' engine was not capable of.

Development

Team17 released the source codes for ''Alien Breed 3D'' and its sequel, ''Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds'', for personal use on the March 1997 cover CD of ''

Amiga Format ''Amiga Format'' was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future plc. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling ''ACE'' to EMAP, Future split the dual-format t ...

''.

Reception

''Alien Breed 3D'' was released to critical acclaim among the Amiga gaming press. Reviewers widely compared its gameplay to ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * L ...

'', with some calling it the best ''Doom''-clone for Amiga. The game was ranked the 12th best game of all time by ''

Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. Philosophy ''Amiga Power'' had several principles which com ...

''.

Legacy

''Alien Breed 3D'' reappeared as one of the 25 games compiled for the

A500 Mini The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to tha ...

console, released in 2022.

Project Osiris

In 2021, a remake of ''Alien Breed 3D'' was made under the name ''Project Osiris'', which uses the

GZDoom The present article is a list of known platforms to which ''Doom'' has been confirmed to be ported. ''Doom'' is one of the most widely ported video games. Since the original MS-DOS version, it has been released officially for a number of operatin ...

engine; for example, with this engine, all maps and textures from the original game were converted with new visual effects.Project Osiris - Alien Breed 3D for GZDoom (v1.0.3)
- Doomworld

References

1995 video games Alien Breed Amiga games Amiga 1200 games Amiga-only games Amiga CD32 games Commercial video games with freely available source code Cooperative video games First-person shooters Multiplayer and single-player video games Multiplayer null modem games Ocean Software games Science fiction video games Sprite-based first-person shooters Video games scored by Bjørn Lynne Video games developed in the United Kingdom {{fps-videogame-stub