Alien Hominid

Alien Hominid is a popular Run 'n Gun flash game made by Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin. Tom did the action scripting and Paladin did the artwork. Alien hominid was the first flash game to become a console game.

The Design
Alien Hominid consists of a single level, with a large number of enemy agents, a miniboss robot, and a final boss. Although the game can be defeated in less than ten minutes, it is still considered fairly difficult. Players start the game with ten lives, have few ways of getting new lives, and lose a life in a single hit. Combined with the large number of enemies, who can shoot in various directions, and the lack of checkpoints, this can potentially make the single level very difficult for the novice player. This difficulty is reduced somewhat by the occasional power ups for the Alien Hominid's gun, which increase its strength for a limited number of shots.

Procedure and Controls
Alien Hominid is controlled using the arrow keys, A key, and S key. The left and right keys are used to move left and right respectively, while the up key makes the Alien Hominid face up. The down key is used to either duck and crawl or to face down while in the air. The S key is used to jump, an important technique for avoiding enemy attacks. The A key is used to attack in a variety of fashions. Usually, pressing the A key will cause the Alien Hominid to shoot in any direction he's facing, be it left, right, up, or down. If he shoots down, his descent is slowed, due to the gun's strong recoil. If an enemy is directly next to the player, the Alien Hominid will automatically use his knife instead. When attacking an enemy from a short distance above, the Hominid will leap onto their head and ride around on them for a short while before killing them.